An age old question that many people ask is "How much money do Doordash drivers make?" It's an understandable question and probably the most important for anybody that is interested in becoming a Doordash driver. You'd have to be a real piece of work to not inquire about how much you'll be paid to perform a certain job.
Notice that I used the word JOB? A big problem is that most people asking this question think of Doordash as a job. There is nothing wrong with that, but when an individual is making food deliveries for Doordash, they will eventually have to understand that when they work for themselves they are an independent contractor.
Your Doordash earnings reflect what you put into your business
As an independent contractor, the amount of money earned will usually be impacted by how much an individual is putting into their small business. Strategies are also of great importance. You see, I can make Doordash a full time business or a part time business if I choose to. I can even make it my weekend business. If I want, I may earn $1000 per month from my part time weekend Doordash business and be completely satisfied with that.
Another person might do a couple of deliveries to earn $25 per week and be happy with their $100 per month income. As you can see, an individual can earn as much as their efforts bring them because being a Doordash driver is all about being independent and running your own business. Many new drivers come into Doordash thinking of it as a job, and that simply is not the case.
If a person wants to earn as much money as possible with their Doordash business, then they're going to have to be willing to work hard, be strategic and put in long hours. If they're willing to do this, they can make very good money. Of course, there's a limit that a Doordash driver can earn in a week due to us being human, needing sleep, having to feed ourselves and having a little bit of social time. All of this some people need more time for than other, but you get the point. There are only so many hours in a day.
If an individual is not willing to put in a 100 percent effort, that is fine. They will only earn what their efforts bring them. If they are going to choose to sleep 10 hours a day and refuse to work the weekends, by all means they have that choice as they are a small business owner.
This is not a regular job with a boss telling you that you have to be here from this time to this time. Nope! As your own boss you work when and how you want. If an individual only wants to make what is necessary to get by in life, they have the right to do so.
I know that most people reading this are wondering how much they can make as a Doordash driver if they work 40 hours a week. You know, the normal hours that a regular employee racks up at a normal job. Unfortunately, there is no set answer to that. There are so many variables that determine how much a 40 hour per week dasher earns. The dashers location, the dashers knowledge of the region that they work in and strategies that they may use to maximize their profits.
A Dasher's location will impact how much money they earn?
Let's start with the location that a dasher is working. Most dashers around the country will not ever be able to compare their earnings with that of a dasher in let's say San Francisco, CA. Do you have any idea how much the cost of living is in San Francisco? Sure, all of California is expensive,, but even a big expensive city like Los Angeles, CA cannot compare to how expensive it is to live in San Francisco.
Doordash certainly factors in the cost of living. They will not pay Doordash drivers in Oklahoma City, OK the same as dashers in San Diego, CA. or New York City. If a dasher in a small city earned what a dasher in a big city earned they would be doing pretty damn good in life. If a small market dasher was earning $6000 per month and their rent or house payment was only $1000, we'd all agree that they weren't doing too shabby.
For dashers in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, $6000 per month is decent, but it won't get a person too far ahead in life as it would for somebody living in a small country town. No matter what type of work an individual does, their earnings will generally increase when they work in big markets. Doordash drivers, or shall I say all gig drivers, are no exception to this rule.
A dasher's knowledge of the region that they work in will highly influence their earnings
This basically comes down to experience. With experience, a dasher will learn where all the restaurants are at in their region and will rarely need to look at the GPS when they accept a call because they will already know where everything is at. An experienced dasher will be able to pick up the food and deliver the food much quicker than a newbie. An experienced dasher will be fast because they'll know all the back streets in their region and will eventually learn that the GPS is not always right.
Most dashers usually end up working a regular region. Sure, some dashers move around a lot to different regions, but trust me when I say that no dasher can be the master of all regions. To make the most amount of money, it's best to work one region and master it. If a dasher gets bored easily, it may be fine to work a different region once in a while, but sticking to that one region that is mastered will have its financial benefits.
When a dasher is new to a region, they can't compete with a dasher that knows the area like the back of their hand. During a day of work, the experienced dasher will most likely be able to at least double what an unexperienced dasher earns. Yep, if the unexperienced dasher earned $100 for the day, I guarantee you that the experienced dasher earned at least $200; probably more!
Completing multiple calls at the same time also comes easy for the experienced dasher. They will know the best way to navigate. They will also know what calls not to take. Unexperienced dashers many times will try to make double or triple earnings by accepting multiple calls, but since they don't know their region too good, they get screwed over because the customer or restaurants are in different directions. That guarantees that someone's food is going to take forever, and that means an unhappy customer.
Using strategies will have an impact on how much a Doordash driver earns
A simple strategy, if you want to call it that, is to not accept the cheap small paying Doordash calls that offer $2 or $3. Many would call this common sense. These calls are a waste of time and should not be taken. There are dashers that will not even accept $6 or $7 calls. They may only accept Doordash calls that pay $8 or more. Every dasher has their minimum, and this is a great thing to practice if you can.
This strategy will work best in a big city that gets lots of calls. Those in small markets may not get as many calls and will be more tempted to take the lower paying calls instead of sitting around not getting any calls at all. As an experienced dasher that has worked in the big city and small rural towns, I've had a taste of both experiences, and the game is entirely different.
In the big city, it is easy to deny everything because you know many other calls are going to follow. In a small town, that is not always the case and by denying that $6 call, you may find yourself sitting around for a half hour doing nothing. You can set your minimum higher in a big city. In a small town, you will have to set your standards a bit lower. Not too low though! Even in small towns, no dasher should ever be taking those $2 or $3 calls.
You will also learn which restaurants to avoid because they take forever and waste your time. It's certainly no fun when you sit around a merchant for 20 minutes waiting for the customer's food. Sometimes, this can make one call take almost an hour to complete. That is certainly not worth it even if the call paid $10. It's always best to try and aim toward the $20 per hour mark. It doesn't mean you will always do so, but it's good to set high expectations for yourself.
Another strategy that many Doordash drivers have used to earn the maximum amount of money was to multi-app. I will say this, no unexperienced dasher should ever try to multi-app. This is especially true these days as it seems like a lot of apps are trying to discourage this. If using multi-apps at the same time is not done right, there will be many angry customers and some of the apps may even terminate a driver's account because they are taking too long to make their deliveries.
If done correctly though, skies the limit when it comes to earnings. Again, only very experienced food gig delivery drivers should ever do this. Having Doordash, GrubHub, Postmates and Uber Eats all on at the same time will certainly give a gig driver options. This certainly helps them choose only the best paying calls, but it also allows them to do multiple calls for different companies at the same time.
Discipline has to be practiced here though as many drivers have been tempted and made some bad choices by accepting two calls from two different apps that contradicted each other. They ended up having to unassign one of the calls, and that does not look good on their record. Some multi-app gig drivers use a safer strategy. What they do is turn on all of their apps to expand their offers. when they get an offer they like, they accept it and then turn off all their other apps. When they are close to making their delivery, they will turn on all of their apps again. This is certainly a much safer way to multi-app.
The people that make the most money in this food delivery gig business are those that successfully multi-app, but they are always living life on the edge, and I would not recommend for most people to do it. It certainly is possible to make quick money though. Some drivers will earn $30 to $50 per hour, but like I said, for most people it's not worth the risk of getting deactivated.
The type of car that a dasher drivers will also have an impact on their earnings. It's easy for a full time dasher to put on a couple of hundred miles a day dashing, and those miles per gallon certainly do matter. There is a big difference in the amount spent on gasoline for a car that gets 35 MPG and a car that gets 20 MPG. The profits and money made will always be more when a dasher has a vehicle that gets good miles per gallon.
If a dasher wanted to take it to the extreme and really cut down on the gasoline cost, they may want to try getting an electric car. Many electric cars of today will get a person around town all day on a full charge. Don't think electric cars are free. Electricity still cost money, but nowhere as much as gas. If you want to learn a little bit more about my electric car experiences please do so here.
So how much does a Doordash driver earn? You will get 1000 different answers from 1000 different dashers. Remember when I mentioned that I have dashed in the big city and in a small rural town. Well, the money made was much more in the big city. Working long days in the big city was always a guaranteed $200. Usually it would be between $200 and $300 for the day. This was working at least 12 hours.
In the small rural city that I dashed at, I never made $200 in one day. I actually came close one time, but ended the day at $190. Making that much was very rare though. If I worked a long 12 hour shift, I would normally earn between $100 and $150. Yes, my earnings were way less than the big city, but my housing cost was about half of the big city, so all in all even though you are technically making less, the difference isn't noticed much.
I'll end all of this by once again saying, you will earn what your efforts bring you. Work hard long hours, use strategies and you will earn good money. On the flip side of the coin, you can take it easy, sleep 10 hours a day and refuse to work any weekends and you won't make anything close to what you could actually make. As a small business owner, you have a right to do that. no employee could ever say that because those bad habits will get a person fired and they won't have a job anymore. Happy dashing!
No comments:
Post a Comment