What is StepBet?
StepBet is an app that lets you place a bet that you can complete the X number of steps for X weeks. You win if you can complete the challenge. If you cannot complete the challenge, then you lose your bet.
How does it work?
Each challenge is defined by your weekly goals and the duration of the challenge. Your goals will be generated by the StepBet’s algorithm based on your historical steps.
Upon joining a challenge, you will be prompt on How you want to track your steps. Because I am using an iPhone, I was given these options.
After selecting, StepBet will generate your weekly goals. In this challenge, it means that every week, you have to completed 4 days where you hit 9,722 steps, and 2 days where you hit 11,755 steps. You get a rest day per week. This challenge last for 6 weeks. You decide if you can complete these, before accepting the challenge.
If you miss one day (excluding your rest day), you lose the challenge. This means you lose the money that you place onto the bet.
When you place a bet, this money goes to a pot. You can view how much the bet is, how many players and the total pot of money that are already in the challenge before joining a challenge.
You can fund your bet using Paypal.
Typically for most challenges (unless specified in the description), Week 1 is always a warm-up week. You will not be eliminated from the challenge if you fall short of your goal.
Member vs Non Member
As you can see, the challenges are spilt into Members only and non members challenges. Members and non members can join non members challenges. But only members can join Members Only challenges.
The advantage of joining Members Only challenges is that you get to split the entire pot. StepBet do not take a 15% cut from the pot for Members Only challenges.
For non members challenges, StepBet will deduct 15% off from the pot. However, StepBet has a No Lose Guarantee that you will not lose money if you win a bet. In the event where every player wins the challenges, you will get amount of money you placed on the bet back.
And if you join as a member, you can join up to 3 challenges concurrently. For non members, you can only join 1 challenge at given time.
Membership cost USD$59.99/year.
How do you win money?
Once the challenge starts, you will see how many eligible players there are. Over the course of 6 weeks, you will see the number of eligible players decreasing. These players are being eliminated for falling short of the goal. The lesser the number of players left, the bigger per share for the pot of money.
How much I won after trying StepBet for 6 weeks
In my case, the challenge started with 281 eligible players. At the end of the challenge, only 187 eligible players remain. The pot $11,240 will be shared evenly by 187 players. Since StepBet takes a 15% cut of the pot for non Member challenges, the remaining $9,554 will be split into 187 shares. Each player will get $51.09.
I started this challenge with a $40 bet. So I won $11.09 in 6 weeks. Not life changing amount but still extra money.
Cashing out your Winnings
You can only cashout via Paypal. It says to allow 2-3 days for payout to be processed.
But mine was pretty instant. I received it in my PayPal account within 5mins of the request.
Conclusion
While I don’t think StepBet is meant to be used as a tool to make money, but I think it is a great tool to keep you motivated to move.
Why? Because losing money is twice as painful as winning money. You will be motivated to move, not because you can win more money, but rather not to lose the bet that you put in. At least that is how it felt for me. On days that I don’t meet the goals towards end of the day, I will march on the spot until I get my steps in before I sleep. That’s how committed I am.
I will definitely continue to use the app, probably sign up for membership once I get my winnings is up to USD$60.