Online discussion boards or forums are frequently found on websites and blogs because they encourage reader participation and increase site traffic. Many online forums are set up as hobby sites centered on a particular subject matter and generate no increased revenue for their owner. However, it is also possible to sell products via an online forum. In fact, given a sufficient number of members, you can even market your online forum as a product in itself and make money strictly through paid memberships.
How to Start an Online Forum
Thanks to various software platforms, it’s not too hard to start a discussion board. If you own a WordPress-based blog or website, you can choose from many plugins (e.g., WP Forum Server) and install the one that best suits your needs.
There are also online forum vendors, including Yuku and Proboards, which offer free hosted forums that are ready-to-go. What’s nice about forum service vendors is that you don’t have to have a website or blog in order to start your own forum. You also get a little bit of free publicity from the vendor site and a spot in their forum directory. Should you eventually wish to link your website to your online forum, that option is also available (for a small yearly fee).
How to Manage a Discussion Board
It goes without saying that an online discussion board will need upkeep and periodic maintenance. Most online discussion boards are managed by one or several moderators who answer threads (i.e., topics), start discussions, handle inflammatory and/or inappropriate posts, etc. Additional software programs may be installed to scan for inappropriate language and/or uploads- especially if some of the members are known to be under 18 years of age.
Generally speaking, discussion boards run and police themselves. Most Web users have been on discussion boards in the past (some as far back as the newsgroup era) and know better than to “feed the trolls” or to personally attack other members. In most cases, members also know better than to post spam or promotional content- though you can never tell for sure. This is why moderators must use due diligence and not let discussion boards descend into complete anarchy.
How to make some money from an online forum
There are many different ways to monetize an online forum, from posting banner ads and in-text links to doing a product sponsorship complete with individual threads devoted to that sponsored product. There are also affiliate and CPA (cost-per-action) programs that pay forum owners per ad click or product sale.
In short, if you have an audience, there are advertisers and advertising networks that will gladly pay you for product placement. Online forum vendors are also not shy about generating extra money from their services, as noted by the recent partnering of Proboards with VigLink.
Banner ads and sponsored links may be fine when an online forum is just getting started; however, the older and more sophisticated sites don’t clutter up their spaces with overt advertising. Instead, these forums partner with companies and individuals whose products they can fully endorse, provide training for, and even expand.
Consider, for example, a discussion board on niche website development that strategically partners with and even offers product discounts through a hosting provider. Promoting the hosting provider makes sense when you consider the focus of this discussion board. Instead of coming off as spammy, such a promotion results in members being grateful for the information.
How to make big money from an online forum
Promoting the products of others is certainly a viable method for generating extra cash through an online forum, but that’s not where the big bucks are. To really harness the monetary potential of an online forum, you have to make your own products. Don’t think you have a product or two in you?
Think again.
Managing an online forum puts you in daily contact with a number of individuals, each of whom comes with his or her own wealth of knowledge and experience in your chosen topic. Over time, you and these subject matter experts learn from each other and become smarter as a whole. As a result, you probably have a thing or two to teach to newbie members just getting started in your forum. Why not offer paid classes and/or workshops to teach what you’ve learned? Or, if you don’t want to bother with teaching, create and sell ebooks, software programs, digital tools, etc.?
Alternately, consider the nature of the forum itself and what it offers. If you’ve already have amassed a good number of tutorials, classes, videos and podcasts on your site, this information can also be “sold” via paid memberships. Many top-notch forum communities, such as Copyblogger’s Authority, are private (subscription-based). Hey, good information ain’t free.
You can go even bigger than just building products and maybe start a company (or two) from your forum community and the ideas it generates. One great example is SitePoint; its forum resulted in the spin-off of two companies, 99designs and Flippa.
The Power of the Forum
Establishing and nurturing a community of members improves your website traffic and number of repeat visits- but that’s only the beginning. Online forums provide you with valuable market insight into the topics your members are interested in, what products they’re likely to buy, and even if they’d be willing to help you out with some initiative like a high-profile interview or product launch. Having such information makes for some potent monetization possibilities.
You may be looking to live a healthier lifestyle or looking to fit into your old clothes; whatever your reason for losing weight, we can all agree that it’s a difficult journey, and sometimes we all need a little extra push to motivate us.
Money can be a great motivator for doing something very challenging, and app creators have caught on to this, developing apps that pay participants for losing weight.
Enter Social Dieting
“Exercise” and “diet” are two weight loss words that don’t inspire or motivate a lot of people.
From a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that followed more than 48,000 participants from 1999 to 2016, the percentage of people who tried to lose weight reached 42.2%, but the participants’ average weight and BMI increased as well (Source).
According to Colorado State University Extension, around 50 million Americans go on a diet every year, but only 5% actually manage to keep the weight off.
Changing cultural norms are contributing to both the increase in obesity and BMI and the difficulty of losing weight and keeping it off.
Increasing restaurant portions and sedentary behavior are now more common, and crossing through to obesity causes metabolic abnormalities that make it hard to lose weight.
But what if you could turn weight loss into a game and get a chance to win a pot of gold at the finish line? Would you join to lose the pounds?
This is why social dieting apps like DietBet and Healthy Wage are becoming increasingly popular.
What is social dieting?
It’s where dieting is a group-focused activity rather than a solitary one.
You lose weight with other people, such as your family members, friends, or just random folks online.
Through a combination of community support and some peer pressure, you end up more committed to losing weight within a set period of time.
Oh, and then there’s the money. You bet a certain amount of your own cash, say $100, and if you achieve a defined weight loss goal, you make back your initial investment and then some.
There are usually no stipulations about how you lose weight.
However, most of these weight-loss betting sites do host forums and other member communities where participants support each other in their weight loss goals.
Here’s what Sue had to say about her weight loss bet on Healthy Wage:
I was skeptical at first, but after thoroughly researching it, there just didn’t seem to be a downside. If I stayed on track, I’d win; it was that simple. The 10% weight loss over six months was both achievable and healthy. And who better to bet on than myself – right?
I had no intention of losing my initial $150 bet, so I jumped in with both feet and never looked back. On August first, I had surpassed my goal of 26.9 lbs. and lost 78 lbs. By August third, I had a $300 deposit in my PayPal account.
Since her Healthy Wage challenge, Sue has continued losing weight and, at this point in time, is down at least 124 lbs compared to when she initially started on her weight loss goal.
Erin Wright participated in two Healthy Wage challenges and said the following,
I started the 10% 6 month challenge and the 1 year BMI challenge on the same day. The 10% challenge was a $100 payout and the BMI challenge was a $300 payout. I think I lost 36 lbs the first 6 months and won $200. At the end of the year I had lost 69 lbs., with my BMI below 25, and won $1,000, for a net win of $800.
Diet Bet is another get paid to lose weight site where participants form betting pools.
The amount of money that can be made depends on the number of people in the pool; the bigger the pool, the bigger the pot of money that can be won.
However, if the challenge is an easy one and there are several winners in the pool, there’s less money to be won.
Amy Oztan of Amy Ever After tried DietBet for several weight-loss bets. Here’s what she had to say about the program:
For the second and third DietBet I (and about 20 participants) put up $50. If I remember correctly, most of us on the second bet met our goals, so we each got our money back plus about twelve dollars and change. I did not win the third DietBet – I think I had to lose about 7.5 pounds, and I actually lost about five. The $50 was not enough of a risk to really matter on its own.
A better motivator was saving face with my friends. I knew everyone doing those DietBets, and I wanted to be accountable to them. However, I don’t think that *just* the friend angle would have done it either. It was both the money and saving face. Putting your money where your mouth is, I guess.
How do you find a legitimate way to get paid to lose weight?
Given the testimonials I collected, it seemed to me that these weight-loss betting sites seem legitimate. To better understand how to know if a weight-loss betting site is legitimate, I talked with Anna T. of Real Ways to Earn Money Online.
She had this to say:
To determine whether or not a site is legit, you should carefully research its reputation. Most of the time when people have been ripped off, they are going to make some noise about it online. It’s a good idea to type in the company name followed by the word “scam” on Google or another search engine to see what results populate.
If you discover that the site has an overall positive online presence and that it’s been discussed favorably on reputable online magazine sites, blogs, or forums, that’s a good indicator that it’s not a scam.
I would also suggest doing a Whois search on the domain to try and find out who’s behind the site and when it was created. If you can find out who is behind the site, you can research that person through Google in the same manner that you researched the site itself.
What about staying honest?
It would be easy for anyone to say that he or she weighs 300 lbs. now and then “lose” a quick 150 lbs. in the space of 6 months (it just melted right off!).
To maintain honesty, the aforementioned weight-loss betting programs do require that you are officially weighed when you start and end your program.
Official weights can be recorded in a doctor’s clinic, a gym, or your own home. DietBet, for example, has members take before and after photos of themselves standing on a scale in front of a full-length mirror.
16 Sites and Apps That Pay You to Lose Weight
I’ve rounded up 16 different websites and apps that all offer you the chance to get paid to lose weight.
Join one or join them all. Either way, put forth the effort to live a more healthy lifestyle and you can be rewarded while doing so!
Plus several bonus ways to earn money as you lose weight.
Launched in 2009, HealthyWage began hosting weight loss challenges in the corporate world and government. Soon after, the program became available to everyone online.
HealthyWage follows a cool concept – you put in at least $20 per month and bet against yourself to lose weight.
Once the challenge ends and you lost your goal weight, you earn over 200% of your invested bets. You can even play around with HealthyWage’s calculator to check how much you could win for 10 to 200 pounds of weight loss within a span of 6 to 18 months.
Aside from individual bets, you can also participate in up to ten different challenges. You can form a team of five and compete with other teams to win higher prizes, or you can participate in individual or team step challenges, where you need to hit a certain number of steps per day to win prizes.
What’s awesome about HealthyWage?
There are a lot of success stories. It’s been featured in many shows, including Good Morning America, The Washington Post, Woman’s Day, Today Show, and more.
DietBet members also rely on financial incentives for motivation.
Consider it a massive community of “The Biggest Loser” contestants competing online. The coolest thing about DietBet is that members can create their own games and keep them private among family and friends, who can join in on the fun. DietBet will just do the tracking and data stuff for you.
On DietBet, members get to choose which games they wish to join (depending on the pot, lengsth of the challenges, number of participants, and more).
Every participant then wages a bet, begins the competition, weighs in regularly, and completes the game.
At the end of the game, DietBet keeps 10% to 25% of the pot raised, then whoever lost 4% of their body weight from the initial weigh-in to final weigh-in gets to split the pot.
Note that if a pot reaches $25,000 and about 200 of all 250 participants lose 4% by the end of the game, everyone who wins only gets to take home $90 to $110 each (depending on how much cut DietBet gets out of the pot).
Not much of a gym person? DietBet also has its own “step challenge” to encourage walking, so if you’re interested, head over to its sister site StepBet.
FatBet isn’t the most visually appealing website around, but it serves its purpose well.
Anyone can start a FatBet, set weight loss goals, set wager, fill out the dates, and ask people they know to join the challenge. From there, everyone who participates can track their personal progress. Once the FatBet ends, participants who reach their goals win, and those who don’t pay the wager.
The platform of FatBet is straightforward.
Every FatBet only shows progress charts of participants, details of the FatBet wager, and their very own community board where bragging and smack talk among family and friends often occurs.
Stickk isn’t just about losing weight—it encourages people to take up healthy habits such as quitting smoking, exercising regularly, maintaining weight, preparing for a race, or other custom commitments.
Anyone can create their goals, set the stakes, assign a referee, and sign the contract.
If you don’t meet the goal within the time period you set, the money you placed could go to a recipient of your choice. Some people even assign an enemy as their recipient as extra motivation to beat the challenge.
If you meet your goal, there are no other prizes, except for the fact that you won and you’ll keep your money. The smallest wager, or what Stickk calls “the price of failure,” you could set is at $5.
Evidation (formerly Achievement) is an app-based program that lets you connect over 20 fitness trackers and apps, such as Fitbit, Samsung Health, Apple Health, MyFitnessPal, and more.
You don’t exactly get paid to lose weight on this platform, but you do get paid for doing physical activities, such as walking, exercising, or working out at a gym. Health-related activities, such as dieting and sleeping for a certain number of hours are also paid.
Members are able to earn points from completing healthy activities you’re already doing.
You can also participate in studies and surveys, which get you extra points as well. It may not seem like a lot, but the points do add up and eventually, you can exchange 10,000 points for $10.
Sweatcoin pays you in a cryptocurrency called Sweatcoin every time you walk. You can then spend your Sweatcoins on products that encourage your overall well-being, such as athletic wear, paid fitness apps, and fitness trackers.
Sweatcoin claims to help its users become 20% more active, even months after they’ve enrolled.
Score points every time you do an AARP Rewards activity that’s fitness-related, such as taking health quizzes, taking a certain number of steps a day, and syncing your fitness tracker with the AARP Rewards app.
You can trade in the points you earn for sweepstakes entries, gift cards, and charity donations.
If you’re an AARP member, you’ll earn points 50% faster.
If you’re not yet on SwagBucks, you’re missing out on every reward you could’ve earned from searching the web, playing games online, watching videos, taking surveys, signing up to programs, shopping from big retailers like Walmart or Amazon, and more.
If you’re trying to lose weight, you should check out SwagBucks fitness videos collection and earn rewards from following one of the workout videos available there.
Under Armour has its own mobile fitness tracking app called MapMyFitness, which allows its users to track their workouts, support each other through its huge network of users, and reach their goals through the app’s adaptive training plans.
In 2022, Under Armour presents its You VS the Year 2022 challenge via the MapMyFitness app.
The goal is to walk or run a total of 1,022 km in 2022, specifically between January 1st, 2022, and January 1st, 2023. Participants are entered in raffles to win Under Armour gift cards for certain milestones, so the more distance you cover, the more prizes you’re eligible to win.
With Fitbotic, you can keep count of your exercise reps, enjoy real-time tracking of your results, and even get to earn rewards – all from your smartphone.
Just like most of the apps here, Firbotic is designed to train users to commit to small, but continuous habits every day.
Whenever you complete a fitness goal or hit your goals for the week, you get to level up from bronze to gold.
When your points reach $50, you can withdraw as cash, or use it as vouchers for purchasing anything you wish in the Fitbotic Store.
Out of all the ways to get paid to lose weight, the Optimity app is probably the most comprehensive one when it comes to information about nutrition, fitness, habit-forming, and wellness in general.
Optimity, which was formerly called Carrots Rewards, let you join surveys in exchange for rewards, challenges that let you win rewards, and completing other healthier tasks listed within the app.
Canada-based PlayFitt is actually open to anyone who wants to make money losing weight. The all-inclusive fitness app was designed to motivate people to get healthy by paying them to work out.
When you complete PlayFitt workouts like squats, pushups, and sit-ups, you earn rewards.
Hold your phone while doing the sets of workouts and PlayFitt will be able to track your movements, too!
You need to commit at least four weeks for a challenge. Plus you need to bring your family or friends into the fun, since the challenge will only work within a group.
Once your group is all set, Competish will pair your group with another group weekly. You’ll compete to see who loses the most weight (as a group) each week.
The downside is you can only create your own groups (or be invited by a friend/family member) to join Competish challenges. You also have to pay a minimum $25 entry fee, which is higher than other apps on this list.
The good news though is that Competish is legit. Many people actually win prizes weekly and at the end of each challenge.
You won’t really be paid to lose weight with the Charity Miles app, but if you do complete your challenges, you can pick a charity and donate your hard-earned rewards over to that charity.
You can earn with traditional exercises:
25 cents per mile – for a run or walk
10 cents per mile – for biking
You can complete the challenges either individually or with a team (ask your family and friends to join you too!)
Charity Miles lets you pick from over 40 charities.
Find Jobs That Pay You to Lose Weight
If you’re comfortable with working out and fitness in general, why not find a job in the fitness industry and earn money doing what you already love?
Here are some jobs or side gigs you can start doing that will allow you to earn some side cash or even a steady income while losing weight.
You just need good communication skills (so you can talk to the dog parents), organizational skills (so you can schedule your time and clients properly), and a genuine love for dogs.
There are sites like Rover, Wag!, PetBacker, Care.com, PetSitter.com, and Swifto that can match you with potential clients. You can earn from $17.50 per walk for the $20 to $30 fee you make from these sites. Yes, they get a cut of your earnings.
If you’ve created your list of clients, you can go freelance and build your dog-walking business outside of the pet sites. This will help you maximize your earnings.
19. Personal Trainer
This is probably the most obvious choice of occupation for those who want to work in the fitness industry.
Going through your own weight loss journey provides you with a unique perspective on what losing weight really involves, as well as the needs of someone looking to lose weight.
The more in-demand your specialty is, the more money you can earn, but fitness also follows trends. You might find it best to diversify; that is, try to learn yoga, Pilates, HIIT, Crossfit, and other workout techniques.
And thanks to technology and the internet, you can even do this in the comfort of your own home. You can either schedule live sessions with clients or pre-record workouts and sell them as courses.
19. Bike Messenger
This one may be a bit unusual and will depend on the city or town you live whether you can even do this.
But if cycling is your workout of choice and biking several miles a day as fast as you can sounds appealing, perhaps working as a bike messenger is a good fit for you.
Try to practice biking in all types of traffic, weather conditions, and terrain while navigating the streets.
Once you’re comfortable navigating the streets, you can try to find bike messenger or bike courier companies in your area to apply.
Payment is normally by commission, depending on the distance, urgency, size/weight of the package, weather conditions, and other factors.
2 Other Ways To Get Paid To Lose Weight
The above apps and jobs aren’t your only options to make money from working out and leading a healthy lifestyle.
Here are a couple more ways to get paid to lose weight.
20. Start a Group Challenge with your family and friends
The simplest way to earn while losing weight is to start a group challenge with your family, friends, colleagues, or social media friends.
This is pretty straightforward: form a group of at least 5 members, throw in at least $20 each, and whoever loses the most weight within a certain number of days will win the entire pot.
It’s diet betting without using an app.
Of course, proof of weight, ground rules, timeline, and payment methods and terms will have to be determined by the group in consensus.
Doing this with people whom you know and trust should make it easier for you to be committed to achieving your goals, as well as motivating each other.
Also, if everyone you know is leading a healthy lifestyle, it becomes easier for all of you to lead a healthy lifestyle, even after the wagers have ended.
21. Get Paid To Walk
If dieting and exercise are big struggles for you and you’d like to start small, try going for short walks instead just to jumpstart your energy.
Then, read our list of ways to get paid while taking a walk and choose one or a few so that even when you’re inexperienced and only just starting, you can start making money.
So, can you really get paid to lose weight?
You can’t replace your day job with these sites and resources, but it’s still fun to get rewarded from your hard work – in literal cash!
Getting paid to lose weight may sound too good to be true, but hopefully, I’ve convinced you otherwise with this list.
I know losing weight can be a difficult process. These financial incentives can increase your motivation to stick to your goals for a certain amount of time.
But eventually, the motivation from the financial incentive will wear off. If you truly want to keep the weight off, you’ll have to constantly work at it and develop healthy eating, exercise, and lifestyle habits.
