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AchieveMint Will Pay You to Get Healthier

by on August 05, 2013
in Health and Home, News, Health & Fitness, Exercise Monitors, Blog :: 4 comments

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AchieveMintI’ve been into health and fitness for about a decade now. Going to the gym and eating right is just a natural part of my life now, but starting those types of good habits wasn’t easy – especially for a former fat kid such as myself.

In the years since I’ve gotten in shape, a smartphone revolution has taken place. You can now download any number of fitness apps to track your running, give you access to virtual personal trainers and monitor your diet. To encourage you to use these apps together to optimize your results, San Francisco-based startup AchieveMint rewards your healthy efforts with cold hard cash. No, really.

AchieveMint is a web-based program that asks you to create an account to link your daily app use to. Once you sign up, it tracks your use of fitness applications you’ve already got on your phone, such as Runkeeper and Fitbit. Any time you do something healthy – say, jogging down Main Street or going for a mall walk – you’re rewarded with points. Once your account reaches 25,000 points, AchieveMint sends you a check for $25.

Points are slow to accumulate, but that’s OK. Fitness is a long-term goal; a habit that you need to embrace to see results. And that’s true whether you’re hoping to see progress on the scales, in the weight room or in your bank account. You can speed up the process by linking your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts – AchieveMint awards you up to five points for sharing “healthy information.”

The app is fairly liberal with what it considers healthy, but that’s by design. As AchieveMint says, “good health isn’t just about exercise and diet.” Check into a health food store on FourSquare, and you’ll be rewarded with points. Even Liking an article about good eating, health or fitness on Facebook gets you closer to your 25,000 point goal.

The biggest downside to AchieveMint is that you need to sign over your privacy to them. After all, the company needs to make up for all those $25 checks somehow, and they do that by aggregating your fitness data and selling it to interested parties. In Achievement's Terms, the company clearly states in regard to Third Parties, Sponsors and Business Partners, "Neither your PII (personally identifiable information), nor individual Demographic Information, nor Performance Information (fitness goals and progress toward those goals) will be shared with such sponsors and promotion partners." Of course, this is something that Facebook, Twitter and even your phone company do on a regular basis — at least with AchieveMint, you get a cut of the action.


Discussion loading

Fitness is a buzzword

From Sandra Martin on August 06, 2013 :: 3:10 am

Exercise to stay fit should be the mantra! Without exercise it is really difficult to maintain one’s figure. Because of lack of time it is really difficult to maintain a regular excising schedule but i never feel the need to do body building.  I like doing simple things like walking up the stairs instead of taking the lift to help keep fit. I keep track of them using Motivade. www.motivade.com

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Loved the Concept, but....

From David Burgess on October 07, 2014 :: 11:10 am

Love the concept.

Problem is that I redeemed 50,000 points on June 12, 2014. It is now October 7, 2014 and I have yet to hear anything about my reward.

Here’s the actual text from my downloaded data:

“2014-06-12 02:36:30 UTC,AchieveMint - Rewards,redeem_reward,*,1.0,-50000.0,Redeemed $50 Reward”

I’ve sent private messages on Twitter and received answers like, “Hi David. Sorry that this has taken so long. I am getting in touch with the rewards provider to check on your reward.” That was in August.

Since then, I’ve noticed that I’m getting fewer and fewer points every day for the activities I do. Seems like someone is getting tired of me contacting them and asking where my reward is.

My points are back up to 43,015 since June, but I’m pretty sure that I won’t be paid for these points either.

I’m fine with you selling my data to pay for the rewards or whatever you’re doing here, but at least be honest in your mission. If you’re not going to pay out, then make sure that you don’t tell people that’s what you do.

All of a sudden I’m feeling the urge to do a review on my blog and share it on my social media accounts.

Reply

Achievemint

From Sara Miller on July 11, 2017 :: 5:24 pm

Hi,

I recently came across your blog post and was interested in knowing if you have remained an Achievemint member? I am on the marketing team at Achievemint, and seeing as this was written in 2013, I’m interested in your thoughts on how Achievemint has changed over the years.

Best,
Sara M.

Reply

Achievemint

From David Burgess on July 11, 2017 :: 5:32 pm

Hi!

It’s definitely gotten better. I finally received my second payout, but it seems as though the point system has changed dramatically, which I get to some degree.

Presently none of the trackers I’m using have an integration that I’m aware of, but I think that it may be, in part, to the tracker instead of Acheivemint.

Reply

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