Friday 20 March 2015

How To Earn Money By Being Healthy

We're well into 2015 now, and how many of you have kept up with that New Years resolution of working out more, eating more healthily and getting more sleep? Anybody?!

It's tough to stay motivated when you're trying to lose weight or simply trying to be a little more healthy. You might be initially spurred on by some weight loss, but is that enough to steer you away from the creme eggs (my current addiction)?



Well how about MONEY as motivation!! That's right - actually getting paid to stick to your goals, to work out and eat more healthily and try to take better care of yourself!

I blogged before about Fitbit and how it has changed my life - see post here. Fitbit is a little wristband that tracks your steps as well as your calorie burn and sleep quality. It also links to other apps which actually PAY YOU to be healthy. I'm really serious here!! I sound like an advert but I can assure you I am not getting paid for this, well other than because I am being healthy of course!

Pact

Pact is an app that will literally pay you to stick to your goals of either tracking your food intake (with MyFitnessPal), eating more vegetables (which you taken photos of and the Pact community verify) or working out a certain number of times per week. If you meet all your goals, you can earn between $1.50-$2 per week. It's an American app, but UK users can still use it and earn money, it'll just be sent to your PayPal in dollars whenever you withdraw it.

I have been using Pact since September 2014 and so far I've earnt $35 dollars of actual real money! It could have been more, but I didn't start using the food logging Pact with MyFitnessPal until December so I may have missed out on a few dollars there. But, $35 in six months, in a year I'll have around $70 dollars, simply for hitting my own personal goals and staying healthy. I have set my goal of "working out" 5x a week - but this is where Fitbit comes in really handy. A workout counts as 10k steps on Fitbit, whereas with apps like Runkeeper, you need to log 30 minutes of exercise within a 1.5 hour window (running, cycling or walking counts). So Fitbit makes it a lot easier by spreading it out over the day. You can also use other apps at the same time - so if you do go for a run or a walk and track it with Runkeeper, that will count too.



So, where does the money come from then? Well, this is the sneaky bit. The negative reinforcement if you will! You make your "pact" to stick to your goals, and you get paid if you do. If you don't? Well, then you gotta pay up!! And a LOT more than you earn! I have committed to paying $5 for every missed workout or food log. So if I don't do either for a whole week, I owe a whopping $50!! So, you can see why I make sure I hit it every week right?? It's really easy though - I used to hit my goals even before I got my Fitbit in December by going for a half hour lunchtime walk every day and tracking it with Runkeeper.

I haven't withdrawn my money yet as I am keeping it in there to build it up and really treat myself to something after a year or so. I may let it build up until the end of 2015 and see how much I have made in 15 months of being healthy!

Bounts

I am relatively new to Bounts, signing up in December when I got my Fitbit, but so far I have earnt £15 in vouchers, again just for being healthy! Bounts also works with activity trackers, like Fitbit, but also MapMyRun, Runkeeper etc. I use it with my Fitbit, and you gain points for doing 7K steps per day, plus extra points for every 20 minutes you're active. You can get a maximum of 45 points per day, and I usually get 35 or 45 depending on my active minutes. Bounts partners with some really big companies, like Amazon, WH Smiths, and Love2Shop, and pays you in vouchers for those shops. You build up your points, and then use them in their online voucher shop. The £5 Amazon vouchers are 1275 points - so if you earn on average 35 points per day, you'd earn enough for a voucher every 36 days. So just over once a month! There are sometimes promotions though, where the vouchers cost less points - I recently got Amazon vouchers for 975 points, so cashed in and got £10 of Amazon vouchers. I have also previously bought a £5 Love2Shop voucher (this was before Amazon got
added!). I have already built up to 375 points after cashing in last week - it's really easy to do if you hit your 7K steps every day!



Bounts is about to change its app and how the points are awarded and also the cost of vouchers in the shop. It sounds like it'll be a really good change but I will no doubt blog about it once it happens and let you know if it's still as easy to earn free money with them!

So there you go, two completely free and easy ways to earn actual real life money just for being healthy. And the extra bonus, you actually really are being healthy - so you're keeping an eye on your food intake and you're doing your daily steps or exercise, and I have actually lost well over 6lb since using these apps and Fitbit, and I've earnt a decent bit of cash (vouchers!) too!!


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