Scratch a lottery ticket, watch a 3-second ad, get 1 won: a one-person company reaches #1 in Korea's health chart

Hills Inc., a small Korean company with only 1 insured employees, built a "walk-to-earn" app called 오늘도 in Korea, 今日もMoneywalk in Japan, and Heyday in English. From 2 November it has held a steady place at #1 in Korea's Google Play free health & fitness chart, peaking at #11 overall. It has no new mechanic. It wins on three things: it turns the two things rivals' users hate (30-second ads, daily caps) into selling points; it caught the name search traffic when leading rival MoneyWalk renamed itself; and it ran concentrated paid acquisition alongside an early-November major update. Here's how it makes money and why it's hard to follow.

A "1 won" review

In 2026 Sep 24, a Korean user left a five-star review on Google Play that reads like a joke:

만보기 복권을 10장 정도 받았다. 긁어 본다. 3초도 안되는 짧은 광고가 지나갔다. 뭔가 훅 지나가는 것이 시원시원한게 느낌 좋았다. 그리고 광고 보상으로 1원을 받았다. 1원... 그렇다 1원이다.

(I walked and collected 10 lottery tickets, scratched one, a short ad under 3 seconds whooshed by, very satisfying. Then I got 1 won. 1 won... yes, 1 won.)

This review captures the whole app: users care that ads are short, not that the payout is big; every ticket scratch is an ad impression; and the points given out are so small they barely count. The business runs on how many ads users watch, and points are just bait.

What it is

A points app Koreans call 앱테크 and Japanese call ポイ活: earn points by walking, completing tasks, and watching ads, then redeem for convenience store and online shopping gift cards. Heyday has a lot of ways to earn points (verified by Japanese guide site tokuria.jp 11-01):

• Walk to earn lottery tickets; scratching one requires watching an ad, the author's ads are "skippable after about 5 seconds";
• Set a wake-up time, check in within an hour of it, and redeem up to 2,000 points on weekends;
• Log water intake three times a day, with ads doubling points;
• Tap the gold bag, open fortune cookies, with attempts restoring every hour;
• brain-teaser games like crosswords and find-the-object;
• walk to a nearby park to check in.

The store page is blunt: "Tired of reward apps that make you watch 30-second ads… or walk 10,000 steps just to earn a few points?" Two selling points follow: No 30-second ads, no daily earning limit.

How much does it pay? The tokuria author finished everything in one day for 252 points, and at the Japan store rate of 10,000 points for 500 yen, that's about 378 yen a month, roughly on par with other point apps. Skip the brain games and you get half. The Korea store now trades 10,000 points for a 5,000 won gift card (Play reviews, 11-03).

Why now: the name opened up

One of the top step-to-earn apps in Korea is MoneyWalk (머니워크) from Gravity Labs. It launched in 2023, and the company's careers page cites 31B won in total funding. Around early September 2026, MoneyWalk was renamed AHEALTH and repositioned as a "health data platform" (per tokuria).

At about the same time, Hills renamed its own app "오늘도 머니워크 - 돈 버는 건강 습관, 만보기" (Today Too MoneyWalk: Earn Money with Healthy Habits, Pedometer). Some App Store regions still cache that name. The Japan iOS listing is still "今日もMoneywalk(マネーウォーク)稼げる万歩計", and the APKPure path is heyday-moneywalk-get-paid.

You can see the effect in the reviews. On Sep 2, someone wrote "오늘도 머니워크 업데이트 해서 어플 들어갔는데 튕겨요" (updated MoneyWalk again today, but it crashes as soon as I open it), and on Sep 5, someone else wrote "머니워크 화이팅" (go MoneyWalk!). Plenty of people installed it thinking it was MoneyWalk. Japan's tokuria even ran a whole section warning readers: "MoneyWalk" and "今日もMoneyWalk" are two apps from two different companies, so don't mix them up.

By late October, the Korean Play title had dropped "머니워크" and kept only "오늘도". When it was removed, and whether a trademark complaint was involved, can't be seen from outside.

Where users come from: name hijacking, paid ads, invite codes

Name hijacking is the strongest evidence, covered above.

Paid acquisition. Reviews include "광고보고 한번해보자는 마음으로 앱깔았어요" (Saw the ad and figured I'd give it a try, 11-01) and "홍보영상처럼 짧은광고만은 아닌것 같습니다" (Doesn't seem to be just the short ads shown in the promo video, 10-22). The first line of the tokuria post is "HeyDayってCMで見かけたけど、どんなアプリ?" (I saw HeyDay in a CM, what kind of app is it?). It also says the ad used the name HeyDay, the store listed it as 今日もMoneyWalk, and the home-screen icon read "今日も". Where the ads ran and how much was spent aren't in any public ad library. Whether Japan's "CM" means TV or online video ads is unverified.

The timeline fits concentrated spending (Google Play installs and chart positions):

In November 1, 3.0.0 was posted and 2 was posted on 3.1.1, and that same week the overall chart climbed from 181 to 11, adding about 27k installs in a week. The chart position itself brought organic downloads; one review says "추천없이 스토어에서 다운받음" (No recommendation, I just found it in the store).

Invite codes. In Korea, both sides get 500 points. The Japan invite link gives 1,000 points. Long guides are on dasfl.com (11-05) for Korea and tokuria.jp (11-01) for Japan, and points influencers on Instagram are posting codes. Almost nobody discusses it on TikTok or X, so it didn't grow through content.

Most volume is on Android: 1,473 ratings on Play, rated 3.9. iOS has only 273 reviews in the Korea store and 58 in Japan (11-06).

Where the money comes from, and how it quietly gets pulled back

No in-app purchases, so it doesn't chart on Top Grossing. Revenue comes entirely from rewarded videos and interstitial ads: scratch-off lottery tickets, treasure boxes, double-your-reward. Every action is an ad. The features are split this finely so people open the app more times a day.

Generous first, then tighten up: that's the old playbook for this kind of app, and Heyday is following it too.

• The early selling point was points and gift card redemptions 1:1.10-25 One-star review: "1:1이었는데 업데이트되더니 이젠 거의 두배를 줘야 교환이 되는걸로 바뀌었네요……역시 모든 앱테크 앱들의 전철을 밟는군요" (It used to be 1:1, but after the update you need nearly double the points to redeem... it's following the same path as every 앱테크 app).
• Withdrawal thresholds keep climbing: "You need 20000 points before you can cash out? How many months is that gonna take" (10-30), "Cashing out 5K Naver points takes 5 ten-thousand points" (10-22).
• The "short ads" are getting longer: "광고가 점점길어지네" (The ads keep getting longer, 10-25). Another says tapping the close button on an ad sometimes jumps to a different app (10-23).
• "No cap" has also been trimmed. tokuria says the step lottery only counts the first 5,000 steps each day. The author walked 12k steps and got only 12 tickets, so the rules may have changed recently.

The purpose of these moves is clear: points are a cost, paid acquisition is a cost, and ad revenue has to cover both. Whether it can is not visible from outside, and the one-star reviews are complaining about exactly these points.

Who it's competing with

Korea's step-to-earn app market is a red ocean. One blog listed 35 of them at once.

The people behind it are worth noting. Jung In-joong (정인중) has a LinkedIn background as former engineering lead at Delightroom, the developer of the alarm app Alarmy, and also did engineering work at YPLABS and CLASS101. The company separately made an eSIM website and a community app for MapleStory. An engineer who understands ad monetization carried the product, release cadence, and user acquisition largely on his own.

If it were you

C: Worth learning from, but copying it isn't worth the effort. This is a crowded red ocean. Heyday's product rules can be copied by anyone, and it's already walking some of them back. What pushed it to #1 was the gap left by MoneyWalk's rename plus a concentrated spending push. The first is one-time, and the second costs money and requires careful math.

Who it suits: teams already monetizing with rewarded video, with experience in ad mediation and paid acquisition, who can work out "one user's ad revenue minus the points issued minus acquisition cost." Especially markets like Korea and Japan, where gift-card redemption is mature and users are used to points apps.

Who it doesn't suit: indie devs who have never run paid ads and want to start from content or organic traffic. Apps like this don't get spontaneously shared on social platforms. Points are real money out the door, so a tightening of the rules brings bad reviews right away. You also have to handle withdrawals, anti-cheating, and the risk of ad-platform account bans.

How to do it: Don't copy "pedometer + points" wholesale. Copy its two tactics. First, put the thing competitors' users hate most straight into the store title and screenshots. Lines like "No 30-second ads" or "No cap" make a difference at a glance in a row of similar apps. Second, watch for gaps left when big brands rename, pivot, or delist. Their old users' needs and search terms are still there, so serve them with a clear selling point, but don't use the other party's name directly. The trademark risk is real. If you move to a new market, Japan's points apps see high acceptance, and Heyday still ranks only around #100 there, so the position hasn't been taken by the Korean team.

How to get users: store search plus paid ads to push up the charts, concentrated over a few days around a major version release, to turn category #1 and overall chart positions into organic installs. Add invite codes that give both sides points, and get points influencers and guide bloggers to publish real-test posts on "how much you can earn in a day."

When to wait: No rush. The market is always there and always crowded. But the "grab the gap" move only works for a few months after a rival renames, and AHEALTH's gap has already been taken by Heyday this time.

Signs you've misread it: ① If in late December Heyday is still in the top 50 of the Korea overall chart and its rating hasn't dropped below 3.5, the short-ad plus many-features retention is better than expected, and this approach is worth carefully carrying into other markets. ② Conversely, if it drops out of the top 10 of the health chart once spending stops, and one-star reviews keep attacking the redemption rate, then the #1 ranking was bought, and ad revenue isn't covering points and acquisition costs. ③ If it also breaks into the top 20 of the Japan health chart, the Korean team's route of bringing the same product to Japan is proven.