FitPotato is an app that tracks and rewards physical activity with FIAT payouts. It is currently only available for iOS. The app reads step count data from the Apple Health app and uses this as its measure to track and reward. I decided to write this review because, when I first discovered the app - apart from some quick reviews on the App Store - I couldn’t find any others (even though it has been around for at least two years or so) on the internet, so I thought it needed one for anyone considering giving it a try.
With FitPotato, you won’t become a millionaire overnight - it only deals in ‘micropayments’ (similar to @actifit). However the great thing about this app is that, once you’re set up, you don’t need to change anything or do anything to earn rewards. Just keep stepping!
To be eligible to receive rewards, one must pay an initial outlay of 5 USD. If you complete the weekly challenge you receive a share of the rewards pool. If you elect to automatically re-enter the challenge each week (this is turned on by default) your balance will be deducted 5 USD every week. However, each week’s share of the prize pool always exceeds 5 USD so you will not need to put any extra in - the reward is paid before the deduction. The weekly payouts you receive each week will eventually (probably after about 10 weeks) cover the cost of the initial ‘investment‘.
The requirement to be eligible for a share in the weekly rewards pool is to complete three days of 6000+ steps. You must make sure that you ‘sync’ your steps before week’s end or you will miss out. If you miss out or fail to achieve the challenge your credit card will be charged 5 USD.
I actually forgot TWICE to sync my activity during a week (I was very disappointed that I didn’t learn my lesson after the first time) so it took longer than expected to break even. True story - I originally typed this review up some time last year but right when I was about to publish the post I realised that I’d been hit with a $5 charge to my credit card because I’d forgotten to open the app at the end of the week to sync my steps, and then again in January the same thing happened.
The amount you receive each week for successfully completing the challenge varies, depending on the percentage of people who are successful. The more people that are successful, the less you can expect to receive.
Pros and cons
I held off writing this review until I had gone through what I would call a full ‘cycle’ - that is, I paid in my initial investment, completed enough weekly challenges to cover my initial investment, withdrew initial investment, and continued to earn from weekly challenges. Now I’ve withdrawn my initial investment, everything I earn from now is a bonus. In spite of its deficiencies, this is a great way to earn some extra beer or coffee money because you don’t need to change what you’re doing at all. After the initial setup there’s really not much you need to do besides making sure you sync your activity before the end of the week.
I reached out to the team recently about a couple of concerns I had with the functionality of the app and they replied back saying they are working on them all. I think that for as long as the team shows that they are actively working on improving the app I will support them. At least they have a working product - how many ICOs (not that this was an ICO - just using them as an example) from 2017 started as a whitepaper have built out their product and now have something that solves a problem and people can actually use?? Hmmm ...
Pros
- It’s obvious - you get paid to do very little!
- Obvious again - it encourages you to get out of the house and move around!
- Easy money - three days a week of 6000 steps.
- If you go plan to go away somewhere remote, you can turn off automatically entering next week’s prize pool so that you won’t be penalised $5. Don’t forget to do this or a lot of your efforts will have been wasted!
- Made in Australia - there is no information about the team or company on the FitPotato website but it’s a ‘.com.au’ domain so there is at least some association with Australia :-)
Cons
- The challenge is not very challenging - 6000 steps 3 times a week to receive the rewards. This was one concern I asked the FitPotato team about. If the challenge was more challenging then less people would achieve it and the reward would be greater.
- Syncing steps - every.single.time you open the app or accidentally refresh the home screen the app ‘syncs’ steps, and it takes a.long.time, and you can’t do anything else while it’s syncing. I would much prefer a manual button so that the responsibility of syncing is with the user.
- Payments - payments are very ‘clunky’. For the initial investment of 5 USD you’re required to pay by credit or debit card. However payouts are via PayPal. If we’re dealing with PayPal for payouts I’d prefer the initial investment also be made via PayPal. Also, there is a 30 cents fee from FitPotato to cover the cost of their third party payment processor.
I will reiterate this again - if they continue to refine the app and make all these improvements in time then that is totally fine! What they have now works. It does what it’s supposed to - reward you for your activity.
A better version of FitPotato?
After experiencing the clunkiness of the payments in FitPotato, immediately I thought of smart contracts and payments in a crypto/blockchain context. Something like that would be great with DAI (or possibly HBD in a Hive context?) locked in a smart contract and released to all ‘stakers’ who complete the weekly challenge. This reminds me a bit of PoolTogether, a ‘no-loss lottery’ dApp on the ethereum blockchain that earns interest on Compound from a DAI pool that comes from users who choose to lock a small amount of DAI in a smart contract (for a month?). At the end of the period a random winner collects the pooled interest while all users’ initial stake of DAI is returned. In this version of FitPotato, everyone who completes the challenge would get their stake back plus their share of the combined total of the ‘stakes’ that failed to complete the challenge. This ‘staked’ money could be accruing interest over the course of the week to increase returns.
Have you tried any other activity tracking apps (besides @actifit) that legitimately pay?
EDIT: just came back here to add ... in case you’re wondering, I’m not affiliated with FitPotato at all and I am receiving no form of payments from them for writing this review. My rationale for writing it is at the start of the review :-)