It turns out you can make money by wasting time on your smartphone. Locket is a new Android app that places advertisements on your phone's lock screen and rewards you for swiping through for more information. Once you've downloaded and installed Locket, it requests three pieces of information; your age, gender, and location. After that, you'll see ads each time you glance at your lock screen — something many of us do dozens of times each day. Just don't quit your day job anytime soon, since you'll (literally) be earning pennies.

The app gives users one cent for each ad they swipe, but profits are limited to three cents an hour. So if you used Locket to its maximum potential, you'd take in 18 cents every six hours, 36 cents in 12, and so on. Right now, Locket lets you "cash out" once you've racked up $10, but the company is looking into ways of putting your money towards gift cards and other forms of redemption. Referring friends also is a bit more lucrative, putting $1 in your pocket for each person you convince to sign up.

THE ADS ARE ACTUALLY PLEASANT TO LOOK AT

Surprisingly, replacing your normal wallpaper with ads doesn't result in an uglier lock screen. Locket's developers have placed a focus on design with high-res images, and ABC News reports they've turned some clients away when ads haven't proved satisfactory. But the Locket team is already responding to feedback on Google Play, a promising sign if you're at all interested in such a scheme.

Get the app at http://getlocket.com/r/?d10Skf

http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/19/4538910/locket-pays-pennies-to-cover-your-android-lock-screen-with-ads