Diet for Dollar Don'ts: Red Flags for Pound Shedding Profit-Seekers

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www.HealthyWage.com

Aug 13, 2012, 07:00 ET

NEW YORK, Aug. 13 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- With multiple highly credible studies underscoring the effectiveness of employing financial incentives to motivate weight loss, the marketplace has followed suit with various companies now offering the opportunity to "diet for dollars." But, how can health-seekers discern if a Web site offering to pay for lost pounds is legit?

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David Roddenberry, co-founder of the industry-leading health incentive company www.HealthyWage.com, offers this list of red flags that can indicate if a weight loss company offering monetary rewards may not be on the up and up:

1) Lack of weight verifications. If you are winning money or other prizes for losing weight expect your weight loss to be verified by a third party. If there is no such verification or audit process from a credible third party, rest assured there are problems with this program.

2) Requires you to purchase a third party product. Red flags should raise if the company requires you to purchase food, pills, clothing, or other products in order to earn your money for losing weight.

3) Inaccessible service or support. If you can't reach someone quickly via telephone or email to answer questions about the program you should be cautious and perhaps investigate the company further to ensure they are an established business.

4) Nonexistent social media following. Verify the company has a presence on Facebook or Twitter. Ask a question via Facebook to fans of the company's page and see what other program members say. Look to see if your own Facebook friends are friends of the company and, better, if they have actually won money for losing weight.

5) Few or complete absence of search results. Since getting paid to lose weight is almost too good to be true, you should expect to find a notable number of press articles or other mentions about the program when searching on Google or other search engines. If there are less than 50,000 hits for the name of the company or its Web site you should keep looking around for a more established purveyor.

6) No coverage in popular media. If a company has been covered in major national magazines and top-tier metro newspapers you can feel comfortable that the program is legitimate.