More apps are adopting the “watch videos and earn money” model these days. From Lucky Drama to Coin Drama, and now Top Drama, these apps claim you can cash out real money to your bank account just by watching short dramas, something most people already do for free on YouTube or TikTok.
Top Drama recently came to my attention after a reader asked if it was worth trying. So I decided to test it myself: I downloaded the app, watched enough episodes to hit the withdrawal threshold, and tried to cash out.
Here’s my 2cents on whether Top Drama is actually legit or just another app designed to keep you watching ads.
If you’re in a hurry, here’s the short answer:
Top Drama is a scam app designed to farm ad revenue. Even after hitting the payout threshold, you will never get paid. Instead they simply introduce more and more requirements until you eventually give up.
How Top Drama Works
Top Drama by tianjihh is a mobile app for watching short, vertical dramas. If you have used apps like DramaBox or ReelShort, you will know the format. The stories are usually filled with romance, betrayal, rich CEOs, billionaires, revenge, and plenty of thrillers. Some of the titles include The Billionaire’s X-Ray Ex-Wife’s Revenge and My Sister Thought She Stole the Better Husband.
But Top Drama is not just a drama streaming app. There is a Rewards tab right at the bottom of the app, alongside Explore, Shorts, and Favorite. This is where the earning part comes in. You watch episodes, earn money in your wallet, and are told you can withdraw once you reach a certain amount.
At first, everything looks straightforward. Your wallet balance increases as you watch, and a progress bar shows how close you are to the withdrawal target. The app even displays a notification saying that another user, “Jose Lopez,” recently withdrew ₦10,000. It is clearly meant to make the payouts look genuine.
But things get interesting when you actually try to withdraw your money.
My Experience With The Top Drama App
After installing the app, I got straight into the business of the day: watching videos. I hadn’t watched for up to two minutes before a 30-second ad popped up. I was then prompted to watch another ad just to double my reward. This pattern repeated episode after episode, ad after ad.
While on the app, your watch time is tracked in short intervals, with small amounts added to your balance roughly every 15 seconds of video watched. But the amount you earn per interval keeps shrinking the closer you get to the threshold, a trick apps like this deploy to keep you watching longer.
Despite the constant ad interruptions and the slowing payouts, I eventually reached the threshold, which is said to be ₦10,000. However, when I tried to cash out, I was met with a stumbling block. It said, “Watch 23 extra ads“.
Well, I did that and tried to withdraw again, but yet another requirement: “Check in 9 more days“.
I am sure this would go on and on until you eventually get tired and give up.
Stop Now, Top Drama Won’t Pay You
CoinDrama, Top Drama, LuckyDrama, name them. The pattern is becoming hard to ignore. These apps are using people to make money from ads while feeding them fake promises.
They have basically cracked the code. Get people interested with short dramas, show them a growing wallet balance, and keep serving them ads as they watch episode after episode. The more people watch, the more opportunities there are to display ads and make money from them.
Top Drama alone has over 1 million downloads on the Google Play Store. Imagine the amount of ad revenue they could be making when even a fraction of those users spend hours watching episodes and ads. And that’s just one app.
People love stories, so these developers could have simply gone clean and built video-streaming apps that make money from advertising. But I guess they felt they wouldn’t make enough money that way. Promising people easy cash is a much better way to get them to keep watching.
Why Are These Apps Allowed on Google Play?
And you know what’s funny? Some of these developers set their apps to Early Access. This means you cannot leave the usual public reviews, making it harder for new users to see what other people are saying about the app.
What I find even more bewildering is that these apps can still display ads while they are in Early Access. So an app can be unfinished, attract users with promises of making money, show them adverts throughout the experience, and apparently continue doing so without the normal review system being available to users.
I understand why developers use Early Access. They need people to test their apps before a full release. But when an app is already attracting more than a million downloads and making money from advertising, then questions need to be asked of Google about how closely these apps are being monitored.
Top Drama is Not Legit
Avoid Top Drama; it is not legit. And if you are still doing it, you should completely stop now. They are only using you, your time, and your data to make money for themselves when you view their ads. That money you see in your dashboard is not real. You won’t get paid.
If you are interested in their AI-generated videos, you can by all means continue to watch, but don’t do so hoping you will receive any reward in the end because Top Drama is not an earning app.
