The Achievement App Review – How to Earn More Money in 2018
Being outdoors participating in many different activities is one of my favorite things in life. This is one of the biggest benefits of living in Colorado, I can be active outdoors year-round. I have all of the gear. The running shoes, the fitness watch, the bike, the skis, the backpacking gear, and so on. I am set when it comes to playing outside. Today, together, we explore how to earn more money in 2018 with the Achievement App. We will look at the in’s and out’s of the application to decide if it is right for you.
Side note: I absolutely love my fitness watch from Garmin. It is a little pricey but allows me to track ALL of these activities when most do not. Plus, I can still wear it to business meetings after switching to the metal band. Alright, sales pitch over now back to your regularly scheduled program.
The issue I have is the lack of motivation to get up in the morning to work out. I think a lot of people would agree with me. No matter the time of day, it is tough to get that motivation. If this was not the case there would be too many David Hasselhoffs and Pamela Andersons running down the beach in slow motion. Well, how do we get help for more motivation? Enter the Achievement App.
What is it?
The Achievement App allows you to earn money from your fitness adventures. This includes walking, running, biking, hiking, and so on! Every activity you record the application rewards you with points depending on how intense and long it was. The people over at the Achievement App have even thrown in some curve balls as to how you can earn points. These include logging your foods on MyFitnessPal or tweeting healthy thoughts on Twitter. My favorite one though, they will reward you for sleeping!
In total there are 27 apps (Their website says 40+ but I only count 27 in the Apps pages) you can sync your Achievement app to in order to earn more points. These are not obscure apps either, they include very popular and well-developed applications so most people can get connected. These applications include the UnderArmour Fitness suite, Garmin Connect, Jawbone, Fitbit, Apple Health, Foursquare, Twitter, and so much more!
Why do they do this?
You must be asking, “Why are they doing this?” Achievement has partnered with several health research companies who in turn make the rewards possible. With every 10,000 points, you earn they will pay you $10. According to their website, “There’s no limit to how much you can earn.” So to simply put it, they are paying you for your data so they may sell it to research companies.
Some people might find it scary that researchers are going to be looking at your data and it is a lot of data! I completely understand your hesitation. The Achievement App does not disclose a lot of information about this part of the process. It would be nice if they answered a series of questions such as…Who is doing buying this data for research? What are they researching? Is there any personal information they look at such as names? I couldn’t find any answers to these questions within their Terms of Service agreement. Let me know if you do find anything. Achievement does have 1,000,000 users but I would suspect that they could have more if they answered the above questions.
My Thoughts
I love the application they have designed. It is clean, simple, and efficient. Syncing up other applications to it for tracking is a very easy process. Within a couple minutes, I had my Garmin, Twitter, and MyFitnessPal accounts all linked up. They do not have a dedicated Android application yet but the web application is so well designed I did not even notice.
Update (8/15/2017): Achievement has come out when an Android application since I first wrote this review. Check it out here.
Unfortunately, this is where the positive feedback ends.
My main issue is it takes A LONG time to earn 10,000 points. I can go for a for a long bike ride and earn only 51 points. On average I walk 7,000 steps which get me about 20 points. That is only 0.2% of the total goal!
Another issue for me is the inconsistency of the point rewarding. I can go for a mile long warm-up run and earn eight points. After the run, I complete a 53-minute long Insanity session and earn only six points. Now we know Insanity is A LOT more intense than a mile long run so it should be worth more points. At first, I thought maybe it was the lack of data compared to the run. So I started wearing my heart rate monitor to provide more data but nothing changed. This lack of consistency is really discouraging especially after an intense workout.
Yet, Another Update (8/15/2017): I feel like this still is true. I am seeing weird point distrubutions for similar activities.
Conclusion
All in all, I think the Achievement App is an interesting way on how to earn more money in 2018. If you are very active you might earn enough to take your wife out to lunch (I do not think you will earn enough for dinner). For me, seeing the points creep up at first was very motivating but then I realized how slow it was going that extra boost of motivation started to disappear.
To put it in a monetary perspective. According to Achievement’s website, they have paid out over a half million dollars so far! That is a lot of money! Let’s do some math before you get too excited about that number though. As mentioned earlier, the Achievement App has a million users, that means an average user has only earned fifty cents. That is it.
Overall, I think they have more work to do to make this application a viable way on how to earn more money in 2018. They need make this application more consistent with how it awards points.
Also, I believe they need to make the point earning a tad bit quicker. Maybe that aspect is just me but I joined Achievement back in December 2016. Over the past three months, I haven’t even hit 2,000 points yet!
Final Update (8/15/2017): I have had a very busy summer between hikes, bike rides, daily walks, and so on. I am still only 3,391 points! Even though this is frustrating, the next paragraph is still true.
I do have to remember, I do not have to do anything that I do not normally do to earn these points. It is truly passive income with Achievement collecting data from data that I already collect myself. Now I am getting paid for that data, even though that dollar sign is very small.
How to Earn More Money in 2018
Now you know a little more about way #73 to earn more money with the Achievement App. Head over to our Ways to Make Money list to check out other ways how to earn more money in 2018! We will continue to try out and review these ways throughout the year for you. If we are missing something on the list and you want to have us review it shoot us an email or tweet (@WalletSquirrel)!
Cheers!
-Adam
Dude, great article! Do you have to open the Achievement Website (since they don’t have an app) before you run or work out? Or do you just work out and your phone recognize that your internal pedometer is moving? I might use this on my walks to work every morning.
-Andrew
Great question! Achievement syncs up with your fitness, social media, or any other apps you connect Achievement too. For example, I use the Garmin Connect app that syncs up with my watch. Once my workout is logged on my watch, it then syncs with the Garmin Connect app, which then syncs with the Achievement app. It sounds complicated but the only thing I have to do is hit the Start/Stop button on the watch. Everything else is done in the background and automatically. So yes, Achievement would automatically log your steps as long as you can sync your step pedometer app with your Achievement account.
– Adam
If they have paid out over half a million dollars and have a million users, that’s $0.50ish on average. not $2.00ish. Or was there a typo in either of those figures? A quarter million users, maybe?
Nope, that was just a combination of a late night of writing and poor math on my end. Good catch Mike.
– Adam
This is interesting! Is it just available in the US do you know?
Sure is Francesca. I’m located in Colorado and have been using it. The company is actually based out of San Francisco.
– Adam
This is a very interesting option. I question the means of sourcing data, it seems this would cause security issues. I only swim and as such don’t have typical health monitors. It would be interesting to see iterations of this that are not so locked into the jawbone related tech, but then again I guess that may devalue the data obtained.
Regardless, I love the site!
Oh well, guess I’ll be ripped after this one! This is one of the apps where you get to earn some buck doing the things you love! The only concern is the amount of data they gather and share. I hope they don’t share anything personal.
I agree William! I do worry about the data they gather. Especially since they are not upfront about it.
Can someone outside the US participate?
Sadly, no! They say they are working to expand out of the US but have not done it yet.
I have enjoyed this article. Very true, its slow going to earn those points. Im just wondering what exactly does anyone think they could/are doing with our info? You got me thinking…
So, are there varying amounts of points awarded for different exercise activities? I’m not seeing it – Friday I went for a 20-mile bike ride & earned six points. Then I stretched for 30 minutes & earned another six points. A two-mile walk on Saturday earned six more points, and a 66-mile (5+ hour) bike ride on Sunday earned another whopping six points. Burned 5,000 calories on Sunday’s ride, but only earned six points. Doesn’t seem like much of an incentive since I could have stretched while watching TV and earned the same amount…
Hey Jason! I completely understand your frustration. I have found the same results when using the application as well. Just now, I wrote an email to a contact of mine at the company to see what they say (not sure why I didn’t do this earlier). I’ll get back to you as soon as I hear back.
Thanks,
Adam
I actually got an explanation from Tech Support – there are verified exercises that earn up to 80 points, and unverified exercises (that you can “claim” to do & enter yourself) that only earn six points. Since my exercise app (Endomondo) isn’t fully supported & I have to link to it through MyFitnessPal to log my workouts, my 66-mile bike ride was considered “unverified.” It’s just a matter of using an app directly supported by Achievement – for me, it’s Samsung Health, and I’m able to earn varying points based on workout intensity & duration. I’m also earni g for daily weigh-ins, logging my food & water I take, and even healthy posts on Twitter. So, while it still takes a long time to earn cash with Achievement, it’s not as bad as it first appeared!
And I forgot to add that sometimes there are special offers you’ll be eligible for with Achievement. I tested an app for three days, filled out a usability survey of the app, & earned $20 already. You gotta keep an eye on their special offers that you may be eligible for!
Thank you Jason. I will keep an eye out for the special offers.
I also heard back from my contact and she said the same thing about how points are gathered. I plan on updating the article soon with this new information. She also updated their support page with the information as well.
– Adam
The privacy agreement grants them access to your contacts, your Facebook and Twitter. They sell data to third parties. I wish it was as innocent as “research” but they are just paying you small amounts of money for your data.
This app doesn’t work right , I average almost 20000 steps a day the most of has ever given me was 9k , I have it connected to my fitbit app and everything else on my phone works perfect except this app , if they actually got all my information right I would of got almost 30 dollars by now I’m not even at at 5000 points yet and I’ve bin using this for almost 3 months
I have been using this site. I agree that the pace of earning is slow – I just calcualted that to reach my $10 by year end I need an average of 31 points per day so doable…. but still 3 more months to earn $10? My fitbit tracks sleep and heart rate so I get 6 points for each of those per day in addition to my steps which is nice.
I also have my Fitbit hooked up to Walgreens Balance Rewards — you get 20 points for each day you track walking, as well as 20 points per day for tracking sleep and can get more for other health related things. Occasionally they offer different bonuses, and you also get a 500 point bonus when you link your first device. (5000 points = $5 reward, 10,000 points = $10 reward). I cashed in a $5 reward earlier this year and am about 3 days from earning a $10 reward. I do occasionally shop at Walgreens so points from purchases factor in here too but the majority are just via Fitbit.
Lastly, Dick’s Sporting Goods has a “Move” option on their store rewards card (must have the app) – 3 points per day that you walk 10,000+ steps. 300 points = $10, so if you walk that daily, that is about a $10 reward every 3 months.
None of these will make you rich, but free money for something I am doing anyway is always a win in my book 🙂