StepBet for the Health, Not the Money

    Like a lot of people, I put on a few pounds during the pandemic. A while back, one of my acquaintances online raved about Dietbet helping her lose weight and earn money at the same time. Being a little less well-off and more out of shape than before, I considered Dietbet briefly, but ultimately decided against it. The problem I have is less about not eating well and more about not moving enough.

    That brought me to Stepbet, a similar thing run by the same company. The idea is that you make a $40 bet that you can step as much as they want you to (usually 10% to 20% more than your usual before) within the game time. Each game is usually 6 weeks long and has weekly goals. The game I went in for required two power days and four active days per week. Both of these totals are calculated based on your regular step count, with active days being roughly 10 to 15% more stepping than you usually do and power days another 20% on top of that. It's not that much work if you divide it up properly, but it's not easy to make up if you forget about it for a couple of days. I found, for my daily life, it wasn't really hard to make the active goals and the amount of running around I do and some of my less regular classes gave me power days even when I wasn't really counting on it.

The little i in the top right corner tells me how many people are still in the game and what the pot is. A little simple math and:


That's my original $40 plus $7.50. Not exactly breaking the bank here.

    As I came to the end of the 6th week, I checked through the total which you can do on the game page and the app to see how much money I should be looking forward to. The company takes 15% of the fees from the winnings before they are distributed to the players who made their goals during the six weeks. If you don't make your goals that week, you're out and your $40 goes toward everybody else who did make their goals. The exception to this is the warm up week, usually the first week of the game, during which no one is eliminated and anyone who finds it too taxing can ask for a refund.

    Stepbet is a lot easier than Dietbet, and that's probably why it's a lot less lucrative overall. According to people in my game, the $7 net gain per winner is more lucrative than usual. To put this in perspective, my friend who was going on about Dietbet said that she had made hundreds of dollars off of a few bets.

    After this week is up, I'm giving myself a break from Stepbet because I also need to get a lot of other things done in my life, but I'm considering coming back and doing it again a little later in the year, when I don't have as much cleaning and organizing waiting for me.

    If you're going to do this kind of a thing, getting a good tracker is an important first step. Stepbet also accepts Google Fit information from phones, but I also know from my experience with PokemonGo that my phone does not understand when I'm walking around my house. My Fitbit on the other hand gets when I'm walking around my house or even just flailing my arms a lot.

    If you're really taking it seriously, you can pay a yearly fee of fifty dollars and become a member, for which your 15% fee after winning is waved and you can enter up to three games at the same time, using your steps for all of them simultaneously. This might be a better way to go if you have the money to spare, but it isn't going to make you rich quickly if at all.