We’ve already seen why it pays to test products in-the-wild, but it also pays being one of those in-the-wild testers. Sure, working on an internal QA team draws a salary – but don’t think that just because you aren’t in a testing lab you can’t be raking in the dough. Take a look at these big companies making some major payouts to everyday testers.

Facebook created its own, sleek credit card for its “White Hat Bug Bounty Program.” The program allows Facebook to reward people outside the company for finding major security bugs. From CNet:

Facebook launched its bug bounty program in July, following in the steps of Mozilla and Google. The minimum a researcher can make for reporting a bug that is eventually confirmed is $500, and there is no maximum. Researchers have to follow Facebook’s Responsible Disclosure Policy and not go public with the vulnerability information until the hole has been fixed.

The most Facebook has paid out for one bug report is $5,000, and it has done that several times, according to McGeehan. Payments have been made to 81 researchers, he said.

And every year Google holds special events specifically to gather hackers and set them to work on Google Chrome, with cash rewards. Here’s a summary from engadget:

This year, the company is putting $1 million on the line at CanSecWest. But, before the Mountain View crew can even pack up for the event, it’s got to cut checks for $47,000 to four different researchers. The vulnerability bounty hunters found 14 flaws in Chrome that were patched in a update on March 4th. That big payout included three separate $10,000 bonuses for “sustained, extraordinary” contributions to the browser’s security.