Regardless of the gig you’re doing, it’s usually best to formulate a plan to determine which deliveries put the most cash in your pocket. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Most gig platforms have rewards programs for which most drivers think they must qualify in order to get the best offers. Don’t be fooled into believing 90% of the crap they attach to these rewards programs. Gig worker rewards programs are designed to get the orders delivered by suckering drivers into taking orders anyone with common sense would reject.
Figure Out What Works Best For You
Most experienced gig workers have their own rules for determining whether a delivery is worth accepting. The most common methods for assessing deliveries are Earnings Per Mile, Daily Goal, Cherry Picking, and Earnings Per Hour.
Earnings Per Mile – Some gig workers are obsessed with taking only deliveries with high earnings per mile. Some look for deliveries paying as much as $6+ per mile. More realistic drivers aim for $3-$4 per mile. Drivers who focus on earnings per mile are usually driving pickup trucks or large SUVs. They need high earnings per mile to cover the cost of gas to operate vehicles that most of us wouldn’t even think of using for local deliveries. The awesome news is that every delivery these drivers decline means one more delivery for those of us who haven’t different standards.
Daily Goal – Many gig workers set a daily goal and take however many deliveries are required to reach their goal. Make $200, call it a good day, and go home. Multi giggers usually have no problem reaching their daily goal as long as it’s not unrealistic. There’s no sense hoping to make $500 per day if every other driver in your area says they’re lucky to make $200. You won’t be the exception who makes $500 per day. You’ll be disappointed every day because your expectations too high.
Cherry Picking – Most of us experienced gig workers have tried cherry picking for just about every platform. Gigs are too oversaturated with drivers to say for sure that this still works. In social media driver groups we’ve seen posts from gig workers who claim they never take a delivery under $50 or $6 per mile but they don’t usually include screenshots of their earnings to back up their claims.
Cherry picking is worth a shot but not on days when you absolutely need to make money. Let a few deliveries go and see what else pops up. When I first started DoorDash, at the end of each day I’d calculate the average earnings per delivery. During my first week my average was $16.81 per delivery. It seemed decent until I came up with a better plan. Every day I took only deliveries that were higher than the previous day’s average earnings per delivery. At the end of two weeks my earnings per delivery increased from $16.81 to almost $35. Needless to say, I didn’t give a crap about being Top Dasher. Back then you needed a 70% acceptance rate to maintain Top Dasher. I wasn’t taking 70% of the crap just to earn a meaningless title.
Earnings Per Hour – This is the method of calculating earnings per delivery that almost no gig workers take into consideration. It’s not very popular for one simple reason. Some people suck at match. Unless you’re good at doing math on the fly with a timer counting down, then this method will only frustrate you.
To calculate earnings per hour, add the estimated delivery time in minutes to the round trip drive in minutes back to the store or restaurant. Multiply that times how much you’re aiming to earn per hour but calculated in earnings per minute. Might sound complicated but it’s really not. Let’s say DoorDash, Roadie, Spark or whatever gig has the delivery shows that the estimated delivery time is 40 minutes. If you really know your area you realize that the drive from the dropoff location back to your starting point is 20 minutes. That’s 60 minutes total. If you want to average $36 per hour that’s 60 cents per minute. The 60-minute total delivery time (60) x $.60 per minute = $36.00. The delivery meets your goal only if it pays $36 or more. If your goal is more like $24 per hour, then multiply the minutes x $.40. If your goal is $18 per hour then multiply the 60 minutes x $.30.
Earnings per hour is the method most of use Admins use, especially when multi gigging. There will always be down time when you’re waiting to catch the next good delivery. If you use $36/hour as the base for your formula, you’ll end the day close to $30/hour due to the dead time. As a multi gigger the earnings per hour method gives you insight into what’s really going on. There’s a Roadie delivery that averages $28 per hour and it’s still available. That Spark delivery is still available and it averages $31 per hour. Wait! Here’s an Uber Eats delivery going 20 miles and it averages $45 an hour. Accept that sucker now!
Grab Whatever – This is the system most of us believe the drivers of questionable immigration status follow. Just grab the first delivery that pops up, drive like an idiot to the drop-off location, then ignore all speed limits on the way back to grab the next delivery. These drivers have insanely high acceptance rates because they grab everything they’re offered. Based on the law of averages, they’re going to get some decent paying deliveries along with the ones that most of us think are garbage.
We’re not recommending that you grab whatever but some day when you don’t need huge bucks to pay the bills, try taking a few deliveries you’d normally reject. Sometimes it puts you in a better location to grab a decent delivery you might not have seen if you were still in your original spot. Just be aware of those dreaded slingshot deliveries. One delivery takes you to an area where you grab another because the pay was too good to resist. After dropping off that order you can another even better paying delivery that puts you even further from your starting point. Suddenly you realize it’s a two hour drive back to your starting point. Slingshot!
