You may have heard that there is an app that pays you to get fit!
In a nutshell, Sweatcoin is an app that turns your steps into a currency - Sweatcoins. They don't seem to have a set value, but the app tells me that I can spend my Sweatcoins on gadgets, good, services and experiences. You get 1 Sweatcoin (SWC) per 1000 steps - although as I understand it, the Sweatcoin company take a 5% commission of the Sweatcoin you earn. Your steps are tracked and verified via an app on your phone and it seems to work best at tracking outdoor steps.
There is a cap on the number of Sweatcoins you can earn per month, but there are different levels of subscription you can have. You pay for the subscription with Sweatcoins you earn and the more you pay, the higher the cap. I am currently on the Shaker setting, costing 4.75 SWC per month. I can earn up to 10 SWC per day and up to 300 SWC per month. I am thinking about trying a higher level as you can have a free trial for 12 days, but am waiting to see if it's worth it in terms of how many Sweatcoins I actually earn. Perhaps this might give me some motivation to go out for a run.
At the moment, the downside is you have to have your phone with you. Wearable devices such as the Fitbit or Garmin watches don't link to Sweatcoin and allow you to convert all your steps. As a result, all the steps I take inside don't count.
I have had it for a few weeks and have earned 44.63 SWC . I can't say there has been much to tempt me in the shop so far and when I did try to buy something it didn't seem to work. I tried to get an offer to buy a craft box, but I don't appear to be able to click on the link provided. When I visited the site the first box is offered as free anyway. This could be something I am doing wrong!
The offers often seem to buy money off or you get some credit if you spend X. For example, for 10 SWC you can have £10 worth of credit when you buy a £50 gift card. There are big items available - for 20,000 SWC you can buy an iPhone X or purchase £1000 PayPal cash, but with a 300 SWC limit per month it will take me a while to reach 20,000 SWC!
As with most people I am a little wary that it appears that I am getting "free money". It seems the income is generated from companies vying to get their products in the store, which has a limited number of products / offers that change every few days. With 1 million downloads in from the Google Play store alone, I guess that's quite a lot of exposure for the products.
There are some useful sites out there such as Sweatcoin Guide that provides a bit more info about Sweatcoins. According to the Sweatcoin Guide, it seems it might be possible that the Sweatcoins might actually worth some real money and / or be exchanged for other crypto currencies.
For now I am going to keep the app going and build up my Sweatcoins and see what happens!
Download the app and try it for yourself.
P.S. just so you know if you follow this link and install the app, I get 5 SWC (at no cost to you). I figure we might as well!
Do you use the Sweatcoin app? How do you find it?
