How To Make Money With Quizzes 2022 ($200/Day With Quizzes In 2022!)

Most people hear “make money with quizzes” and picture some dusty content farm charging students for old college tests. That is not what this is. There is a real gap in the YouTube and blog space where small channels with under 5,000 subscribers are pulling tens of thousands of views per month on quiz content about popular TV shows and games. The opportunity exists right now because the supply side is nearly empty while the demand side has 2.1 million monthly searches just for the word “quiz.”

Alston walked through this opportunity step by step using Ahrefs keyword data to prove out the traffic. The numbers are real, the production tools are free, and you do not have to show your face on camera once. What follows is the full breakdown of how the strategy works, how to find a niche, how to make the videos, and how to build multiple income streams from a single quiz channel.

What You’ll Walk Out With

A clear picture of why quiz content has unusually low competition despite high search volume
How to use Ahrefs (or free alternatives) to find quiz keywords with difficulty scores of 10 or less
A simple YouTube channel format you can build using PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Canva for free
Real view counts and subscriber numbers from actual small channels doing this right now
Three separate monetization paths beyond AdSense: affiliate marketing, Patreon trivia nights, and merchandise
A step-by-step video production format that takes minutes per video, not hours
A way to find out which specific platform or skill is already your fastest path to your first $3,000 online at finder.platformproof.com

The Quiz Keyword Opportunity Is Hiding in Plain Sight

When Alston typed the single word “quiz” into Ahrefs, it returned over 2.1 million monthly searches and more than 1 million related keywords. That is a staggering amount of demand for a type of content that almost nobody is treating as a business. The people searching for these quizzes are not passive scrollers. They are fans who already have a relationship with a show, a game, or a topic, and they want to test what they know. That emotional investment makes them far more likely to click, watch, and buy than a general audience.

The most important filter Alston applied in Ahrefs was keyword difficulty. He set it to 10 or less, which means the search terms are considered easy to rank for by a new blog or channel with very little authority. At that difficulty level, you are not competing with major media companies. You are competing with other small creators who may not even be optimizing their titles. That asymmetry is where the money is hiding.

What came up at a difficulty of 10 or less? Terms like “impossible quiz 2” and “Grey’s Anatomy quiz.” These are real searches from real people who want a specific piece of interactive content. The supply side for most of these terms is thin. A Grey’s Anatomy quiz channel with just 37 subscribers was ranking on the first page and had accumulated 13,000 views on a single video uploaded only nine months earlier. That kind of result does not happen in saturated niches. It happens when you find a market the big players have not bothered to enter yet.

How to Find Your Quiz Niche

The fastest path to a quiz niche is to start with something you already know well. Alston used Grey’s Anatomy and The Office as examples specifically because he had watched both shows and could speak to why people love them. If you are a fan of a show, a video game franchise, a book series, or a sports team, you already have the domain knowledge to write 20 to 50 quiz questions without doing any research at all.

Once you have a topic in mind, open Ahrefs or a free tool like Google Trends and type in “your show name quiz.” Look at the keyword difficulty and the estimated monthly search volume. If the difficulty is under 10 and the volume is at least a few hundred searches per month, you have found a workable niche. Alston showed that “Grey’s Anatomy quiz season one” had real traffic and channels with 3,000 subscribers were getting 11,000 views on individual quiz videos.

The same logic applies to gaming. Alston searched “Fortnite quiz” and found a video from two years ago with 1.8 million views. Another Fortnite quiz video uploaded six months ago had 6,700 views. A third one from two years ago had 75,000 views. The point is not that every video explodes. The point is that even modest quiz videos in gaming niches accumulate enough watch time and views over months to generate real income. You can also search for sub-topics like “Fortnite quiz creative code” and find even narrower terms with less competition and more motivated viewers.

One important thing Alston pointed out: you do not have to limit yourself to fictional shows or games. Any topic with an engaged fan base and recurring search interest is fair territory. Sports teams have fans who want to test their historical knowledge. Cooking shows have fans who want to test their recipe knowledge. Anime series have some of the most intensely engaged fan communities on the internet. The keyword research process is the same regardless of the niche. Find the demand, confirm the low competition, then build for that audience.

Building Your YouTube Quiz Channel From Zero

The format Alston recommends is simple enough to film or record in a single afternoon. You do not need a camera, a microphone, or any professional equipment. The core structure is: display a question on screen, list four answer options labeled A, B, C, and D, pause for about a minute so viewers can think, then reveal the correct answer. That pattern repeats for 10 to 20 questions per video.

For the visual side, you have three free options. PowerPoint is the most familiar tool for most people and works well for simple text-on-background quiz slides. Google Slides is the same concept in a browser with no software to install, which means you can create quiz content from any computer. Canva gives you more design templates and can make your videos look polished even if you have no graphic design experience. You do not have to show your face at any point in this format, which removes the biggest hesitation most people have about starting a YouTube channel.

For audio, you can either record your own voice reading the questions out loud or use a text-to-speech option if you prefer to stay completely anonymous. Reading your own voice is better for building an audience over time because it creates a consistent personality that viewers start to recognize and return to. But the production barrier is low either way. Alston pointed out a Grey’s Anatomy channel with 37 subscribers that was already pulling 13,000 views per video. These are not polished productions. They are simple presentations that answer a specific need for a very motivated audience.

Once you have your first 10 to 15 videos up, you start building a catalog. Each video targets a slightly different keyword: season one, season two, the hardest possible questions, easy beginner questions, character-specific quizzes, episode-specific quizzes. That catalog structure compounds over time. A viewer who likes your Grey’s Anatomy season one quiz is likely to click over to your season two quiz right after. Longer session time means YouTube promotes your channel more aggressively, which drives more views and more income without additional effort on your part.

Real Numbers From Real Small Channels

Alston pulled up actual YouTube search results during the video to show what small channels were already earning from this approach. A Grey’s Anatomy quiz channel with only 37 subscribers had a video with 13,000 views uploaded nine months prior. A Grey’s Anatomy season one quiz video from a channel with 3,000 subscribers had 11,000 views. A channel focused on The Office had 25,000 views on one video and a total subscriber count of 4,000. Another Office quiz video from a channel with just 242 subscribers had accumulated 100,000 views over three years.

On the blog side, Alston looked at a Grey’s Anatomy quiz page on a third-party website and found it was getting roughly 3,000 page views per month with a traffic value of $489 according to Ahrefs. That traffic value represents what advertisers would theoretically pay to get those same eyeballs through paid search. A website with 10 or 20 similar quiz pages would accumulate substantial ad revenue over time, and that does not even count the affiliate commissions that come from recommending related products to that audience. The ad visible on that page during Alston’s review was for ESPN Plus, which itself has an affiliate program, meaning the page owner could potentially earn from both the display ad and a separate affiliate link in the same piece of content.

These numbers are not impressive in isolation, but they tell an important story. Tiny channels with almost no subscribers are generating meaningful view counts. The content is simple to produce. The keyword difficulty is low. And very few people are treating this as a real business yet, which means the early mover advantage is still available for anyone who acts before the niche fills up.

Three Ways to Make Money From a Quiz Channel

Alston identified three distinct income streams that any quiz channel can pursue at the same time. The first is the YouTube Partner Program. To qualify, you need 4,000 watch hours and 1,000 subscribers. Quiz videos tend to generate watch time efficiently because viewers stay through the entire video to hear all the answers after each question. A channel with 20 to 30 videos across multiple seasons or topics can accumulate those watch hours faster than many other video formats because each video naturally holds attention for its full length.

The second income stream is affiliate marketing. This is where quiz channels have a built-in advantage that most creators overlook. The quiz audience is already emotionally invested in the show or game the quiz is about. That emotional investment translates directly into buyer intent for related products. If your channel is about Grey’s Anatomy, your viewers are the exact people most likely to buy the Grey’s Anatomy box set, limited edition merchandise, or a streaming subscription that carries the show. If your channel is about Fortnite, your viewers are the exact people most likely to buy a gaming chair, a new headset, a controller, or a gaming desk. Amazon Associates, eBay Partner Network, and the streaming platforms all have affiliate programs that pay commissions on these products.

The third income stream is Patreon. Alston’s specific suggestion here is to offer an exclusive weekly or monthly trivia night as a paid Patreon tier, priced at five or ten dollars per month. Your most engaged fans, the ones who are watching every quiz you post and getting competitive about their scores, are exactly the audience for a live trivia event. At $5 per month, you need 400 paying members to earn $2,000 per month from Patreon alone, on top of whatever you earn from AdSense and affiliate commissions. The trivia night content can also be repurposed as quiz videos for your main channel, so the same production effort serves two income streams at once.

Not sure which of these income paths fits your actual situation?

Take the free quiz at finder.platformproof.com and find out which platform matches your skills, schedule, and income goal.

The Affiliate Marketing Layer in Detail

Affiliate marketing for quiz channels works best when you treat your viewers as fans who want more of what they already love, not as targets to pitch. Alston walked through specific examples. A Grey’s Anatomy viewer who just scored 8 out of 10 on your quiz is probably already thinking about rewatching the show. A link to a streaming service that carries it, or to a box set on Amazon, fits that moment naturally. You are not interrupting the experience. You are giving a recommendation that feels like a natural extension of what the viewer just enjoyed.

For gaming quiz channels, the product fit is even more obvious. Someone who just took your Fortnite quiz knows exactly what gaming gear they wish they had. A recommendation for a gaming chair, a controller, or a headset in your video description requires almost no sales copy because the audience already wants those things. The quiz just gave you proof that they are the exact person you thought they were.

Alston also pointed out that websites running quiz content earn display ad revenue in addition to affiliate commissions. The Grey’s Anatomy page he reviewed was showing ads from ESPN Plus, which also has its own affiliate program. So a single page can earn from two directions at the same time: the display ad shown to every visitor, and the affiliate commission earned when a visitor clicks through and subscribes or buys. Building that kind of passive income stack into each quiz page or video description is how the earnings start to compound without requiring more content.

Honest Drawbacks

This strategy has real advantages but it also has limits worth understanding before you invest time in it.

First, YouTube Partner Program income is slow to start. You need 4,000 watch hours and 1,000 subscribers before YouTube will even consider your monetization application. For a brand new channel with no existing audience, that can take three to six months of consistent posting. The affiliate and Patreon income can begin sooner, but the AdSense check will not arrive quickly. Plan for at least 90 days before any meaningful revenue appears.

Second, the quiz keyword opportunity is tied to the popularity of specific shows and games. If a show ends its run or loses its cultural moment, the search traffic for that show’s quizzes will eventually decline. Building a channel entirely around one property creates real risk. Alston’s approach of creating quizzes across multiple shows or genres addresses this, but it does require building a larger content catalog before the income stabilizes.

Third, copyright is a real consideration for quiz content. If you include clips, screenshots, or audio from a show in your videos, you may receive copyright claims even if your intent is educational or editorial. Sticking to original slides with typed-out questions, as Alston recommends, largely avoids this problem because you are not reproducing the actual copyrighted content. The quiz questions themselves are facts about a show, not the show itself.

Fourth, the production format is repetitive. Creating quiz slide after quiz slide can feel monotonous in the early months before the income arrives. Batch recording helps significantly: plan 10 videos, create all the slides in one session, record the audio for all of them in one sitting, then schedule uploads across several weeks. That approach reduces the mental load of showing up every week and removes the friction of starting from scratch each time.

Step-by-Step Launch Plan

Open Ahrefs or Google Trends and type the name of a show, game, or topic you already know well, followed by “quiz.” Note the keyword difficulty and monthly search volume.
Filter for keyword difficulty of 10 or less. Write down five to ten specific quiz topics that have search volume and low competition. Sub-topics like “season one,” “hard questions,” or “character quiz” often have even lower difficulty than the main term.
Open PowerPoint, Google Slides, or Canva and create a simple template: question on screen, four answer options below, a timer pause, then an answer reveal slide. Save this as a reusable master template for every future video.
Write 15 to 20 questions for your first video. Include easy, medium, and hard questions to keep a range of viewers engaged from start to finish.
Record your screen with a voice-over reading each question, pausing for approximately one minute, then revealing the answer. Export as an MP4 video file.
Upload to YouTube with a title that matches the exact keyword phrase you found in step two. Include a video description with links to your affiliate products and, once you have set it up, your Patreon page.
Repeat the process weekly, targeting a different sub-topic or season each time to build a catalog of interlinked quiz videos that drive longer watch sessions for each viewer.
Once you reach 1,000 subscribers, launch a Patreon tier for a monthly live trivia night. Promote it at the end of every video and in all your video descriptions.

Find Your X

Quiz channels are one specific path. But the right path for you depends on your interests, your existing knowledge, and how much time you have each week. If you are not sure whether quiz content, affiliate blogging, or something else entirely is your fastest route to consistent online income, take the free quiz at finder.platformproof.com. It takes about two minutes and points you toward the income path that already fits your life, rather than one you have to rebuild yourself to pursue.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to show my face to run a quiz YouTube channel?

No. The entire format Alston describes works with slides on screen and a voice-over, or even a text-to-speech voice. Multiple examples he showed were channels with under 4,000 subscribers getting thousands of views without any face-cam footage at all. The audience is there for the quiz, not for a personality-driven video.

What equipment do I need to start?

You need a computer, free software like Google Slides or Canva, and a basic microphone or your laptop’s built-in microphone. The production quality bar for this type of content is low because the audience is there for the quiz content itself, not a cinematic experience. Most laptop microphones are adequate for reading quiz questions clearly.

How long does it take to reach the YouTube Partner Program threshold?

That depends on your posting frequency and your niche. With low-competition quiz keywords and consistent weekly uploads, some creators reach 1,000 subscribers in three to six months. Watch hours tend to accumulate faster with quiz content because viewers stay through the full video to hear all the answers, which boosts average view duration and helps YouTube recommend your videos to more people.

Can I do this for a book series or sports team instead of a TV show?

Yes. The framework applies to any topic with an engaged fan base and search traffic. Sports teams, book series, anime franchises, and video game titles all have fans who would take quizzes about their favorite content. Use Ahrefs or Google Trends to confirm that people are actually searching for quizzes in your specific niche before you invest significant time building it out.

How much can you realistically earn from affiliate marketing on a quiz channel?

That depends on the products you are recommending and the commission rates involved. Amazon Associates pays between 1 and 10 percent depending on the product category. A channel recommending gaming gear to a few thousand monthly viewers can earn modest but growing affiliate commissions once the catalog has built up. Affiliate income is not instant, but it is passive once the videos are live and the links are in place. The income from each video continues indefinitely as long as the video keeps getting views.

What if my quiz niche is too small to get views?

If keyword research shows low search volume, that is a signal to either broaden your niche or pick a different show or game. The goal is to find topics where monthly search volume is at least a few hundred to a few thousand searches for specific quiz-related terms. A niche with no search traffic will not generate organic views no matter how good your content is. Ahrefs is the most reliable tool for confirming this, though Google Trends can give you a directional sense for free.

Is Patreon worth setting up if I have a small audience?

Patreon works best once you have a core group of fans who return regularly and care about your channel. Alston’s suggestion is to use it for an exclusive trivia night format once you have built some momentum. Setting it up too early, before you have any consistent audience, typically results in zero paying members. Wait until viewers are commenting, sharing, and asking when the next quiz is coming out before launching a paid tier.

Can I run a quiz blog instead of a YouTube channel?

Yes. Alston showed a Grey’s Anatomy quiz website getting 3,000 page views per month and earning $489 in traffic value monthly from ads alone. A blog approach lets you earn display ad revenue and affiliate commissions without ever recording a video. The same keyword research process applies: find quiz topics with low competition, write the quiz as a blog post with embedded questions, and optimize your title and headings for the exact search term people are already using.

Sources

Ahrefs keyword data shown in the video: “quiz” returns 2.1 million monthly searches and 1 million+ related keywords
Grey’s Anatomy quiz channel (37 subscribers, 13,000 views, 9 months old) verified via YouTube search in the video
Grey’s Anatomy Season 1 quiz channel (3,000 subscribers, 11,000 views) verified via YouTube search in the video
The Office quiz channel (4,000 subscribers, 25,000 views) verified via YouTube search in the video
The Office quiz video (242 subscribers, 100,000 views, 3 years old) verified via YouTube search in the video
Fortnite quiz videos: 1.8 million views (2 years old), 75,000 views (2 years old), 6,700 views (6 months old) verified via YouTube search in the video
Grey’s Anatomy quiz blog page: 3,000 page views/month, $489 traffic value per Ahrefs data shown in the video
YouTube Partner Program requirements: 4,000 watch hours and 1,000 subscribers, per YouTube’s official monetization criteria