Gig work has become extremely popular over the last few years especially. I have tried a good chunk of them over the years. I started by driving with Uber Eats because there was practically no wait period to get started and I was waiting to get into Doordash. Uber Eats sucked! It was so bad. I got basically no tips. There was this pin number system where you had to ask people their pin numbers for them to get their food, and some people didn't know their pins. It was terrible. I hated it. After trying Uber Eats several times I gave up and almost didn't even want to try Doordash, but someone I was dating at the time did it and I rode with him one day and it was way more money than Uber and it was a lot easier because all of them were just porch drops and you didn't have to interact with the people. I started Doordashing on my own after that. I also learned from him what orders were worth it and what to decline and all the rules basically. I am not a top dasher because my acceptance rate is too low. I generally don't accept orders less than a dollar a mile or at least close to it. In my neighborhood Doordash isn't great, but I do live super close to a downtown area and you get better tips and money there and they run better promos there as well. The problem is trying to park to run into restaurants or apartments when there is no street parking basically, so if I want to Doordash downtown I take my husband with me so he can circle the block or find nearby parking lots to wait for me in and that kind of thing. When its all said and done from the notes I have so far this year I'm averaging $0.87 a mile for Doordash which is pretty good overall I think when I can write off 67 cents a mile on taxes.
With Amazon Flex I make a higher dollar per mile amount on average. So far this year I have average $0.98a mile through Amazon Flex, which is great money. Amazon has made a huge difference in my life and has helped in some very hard times. The app is fairly user friendly and the routes are pretty simple to figure out and run. Some of the routes do suck. Sometimes they make you drive over 50 miles to deliver the first package but sometimes the package route starts within 5 miles of the facility you pick up from. Its kind of a luck of the draw situation. I also like Amazon because I KNOW what I'm going to make before I go out, with Doordash I never know how much I am going to make or if I'm even going to get an order. I can schedule Amazon shifts out a week or so ahead of time and plan things around them and they're at all different times of day so I can plan them around the rest of my life as well, or even do 2 or 3 of them in a day if I want to. I've only ever done 2 in a day but I know you could definitely fit 3 and honestly maybe even 4 if you wanted to. I will say it took me over a year to get off the wait list for Amazon though.
I have signed up for Walmart Spark and never gotten in and I don't really know why. I have heard good and bad things about Walmart Spark but I can't really speak on it since I have never gotten in. My sister has done Instacart and doesn't really like it. She says the app kills her phone battery too much and with grocery stores being out of items and having to do substitutions that it gets too complicated and I could see that. I have not signed up for Instacart so I can not speak personally again. I want to try actual ridesharing like regular Uber and Lyft, but I haven't signed up yet honestly. So this is my review of typical gig work. Craigslist is always still an option as well. I have found several gigs on Craigslist that were worth it and I would do again given the opportunity. So just keep your head up and eyes looking out. You never know what will be out there.
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