Make Money From Walking
Over my years in the personal finance space, I’ve seen many apps claiming to give you money for essentially nothing. Time and time again, it turns out that the app is misleading or quite frankly, it’s trash. I can even picture my mum saying ‘If it sounds too good to be true, it’s probably because it is’. I’m sure you can relate.
This particular app claims it will ‘pay you to walk’. As you can tell I don’t normally review apps that make claims such as these, for fear of wasting my time. However, in researching Sweatcoin, I was overwhelmed by the positive reviews that come from its user base. This brings me to where we are now, the start of this fully comprehensive and unbiased Sweatcoin review.
What Is Sweatcoin?
As I stated a moment ago, Sweatcoin is an app that pays you money to walk. Created in 2015 by Oleg Fomenko, Sweatcoin’s whole philosophy is to reward people for actively pursuing exercise. The concept attracted many partners and investors, which today is somewhere in the hundreds.
Thanks to the management’s great networking, the company behind the app has managed to secure several rounds of funding over the years. By some estimates, Sweatcoin has raised more than 6 million euros. This has helped accelerate it’s growth to the app that it is today. According to the most recent statistics I could find, Sweatcoin currently has 5 million active users.
How Does Sweatcoin Work?
It works by connecting to the irremovable health app on your Apple or Android phone. This will then track and log all of your steps at any given point throughout the day. Your steps are then converted into what’s known as Sweatcoins, which is essentially like a virtual currency.
It even states on their website that ‘soon Sweatcoins will become a universally accepted form of payment’. It’s quite simple in that, 1 sweatcoin is equal to 1000 steps. After doing some digging to get information on how their algorithm works, I found this:
‘Right now, Sweatcoin’s algorithm verifies about 65% of a user’s total steps on average. We are working to improve this percentage over time’.
They then went on to say:
‘Our algorithm analyses steps collected directly by your phone and checks them against other data points like GPS location, speed and consistency of movement’
It should be noted that the steps recorded by the health app aren’t going to be spot on. The likelihood that some of your steps will be lost somewhere along the line is high. For the steps that are converted into Sweatcoins, they can then be traded in exchange for products found on the app’s ‘marketplace’.
If you were wondering how the app’s creators turn a profit, it’s at the point of exchange.
All products that feature on the store will be affiliated with Sweatcoin. This simply means when you trade in your Sweatcoins for whatever it is that you may want, the company will then receive a commission. This is a simple and efficient way for the company to make money!
I do also have to give props to Sweatcoin for explicitly stating that they do not sell their data to retailers. It’s a great way to build user confidence!
My Experience/Impressions
I always like to be honest and this Sweatcoin review is no exception. So with that being here’s what I thought about the app. When I first downloaded the app onto my IOS device it became clear to me that the hype was somewhat justified.
It has a clean and interactive interface which at least gave me the impression that they had spent a lot of time and money developing the app.
This came as a pleasant surprise because I feel like a lot of apps lack attention to detail, and cutting corners on user experience is common. However, at least for the time that I have been using the app its always been clean and efficient. Now granted, the whole concept itself is fairly straightforward, but you have to give credit to developers when they execute apps well.
Perhaps the biggest positive is this app serves as an incentive to exercise, this can only be a good thing in my books. Even if it means getting people out and about as a result of people’s desire for money/products.
How Much Can You Expect To Earn?
So this is perhaps the most eagerly anticipated part of this sweatcoin review, how much can you make with this app. If it’s not already become obvious I’ll say it now, you’re not going to make a lot of money.
Now like I stated prior, on the sweatcoin market place there are products/services you can buy if you are interested. So over a prolonged period, you may be able to purchase a few nice items.
How To Earn Sweatcoins Faster
Now there are a few factors that can impact the speed and the capacity at which you can get Sweatcoins. You can find a section on the app that details how you can increase the number of steps and the amount you can do each month. The ways are as follows:
- Walk outside- Now under the help section of the app, they state that Sweatcoin’s algorithm is not able to verify movement indoors. This came as a surprise to me as I used mine at work (which is inside) and it has recorded steps just fine.
- Turn off battery saver mode- Sweatcoin insists that their app will not drain your battery life considerably. So with that being said, turn it off as they do state that it can harm the number of steps it records, particularly at the start of your walk.
- Receive a daily bonus for watching an ad– Like most other apps you can receive rewards for watching apps. In this case, if you check back into the app 3 days in a row you receive 7 sweatcoins spread across each day.
- Adding friends- For each friend, you introduce to sweatcoin you will receive 5 Sweatcoins (as long as they sign up)
- Upgrade your ‘title’-You have the chance to directly upgrade the number of steps you can covert into Sweatcoins. Each title has different limits (explained earlier) and all apart from the standard title called ‘mover’ come at a price (in Sweatcoins). You are allowed 1 free month on whatever title you would like.
These points combined will help to accelerate your earning potential so do your best to fulfil them all!
Rewards
There is good and bad news when it comes to the rewards Sweatcoin now offers.
The good news is:
- Rewards are still updated frequently
- They are geared towards staying healthy
- Addition of more cause/charities to donate to
The bad news is:
- Marathon offers, at least for the time being have been removed
- Options have changed but the number of offers hasn’t
Quiz Addition
Perhaps in light of the pandemic, Sweatcoin has realised that they need to give users more ways to earn rewards besides walking. The addition of quizzes is a nice touch. Currently, the app offers a chance to win a $100 Nike gift card if you answer the questions correctly.
Change Of Interface
The most obvious change to me after logging back on, admittedly in while, was the change of interface. Most notably the choice of colours has shifted from blue to pink/purple. Aside from that, there are now pop-ups on the main screen which include things like:
- Daily 2x boost
- The offer of the day
- Promotion of sweatcoin’s referral program
Sweatcoin does offer users the option to revert back to the old colour scheme and layout via settings.
A Summary Of This Sweatcoin Review
To be straight with you, I think Sweatcoin is great. Not only does it incentivise exercise outside, but it also provides you with a wide array of rewards. The removals of some ‘higher ticket’ items shall we say is a bit frustrating, but you can understand Sweatcoins reasoning. I believe the designers have worked very hard to bring this app to the marketplace and I’m glad they did so.
After having this app for just over a year, I can attest to the fact they have updated it to suit the current times. Not to mention the introduction of new features to retain its longer-term users. Let me know what you guys think!