On average, you can make about $20 to $30 an hour. This amount is actually not set in stone but is subject to a number of factors and conditions.
In the intervention of a number of circumstances, you can get more or less than that amount due to a number of factors that come into play.
You can even make as low as $5 an hour. It all depends on how you have played to the conditions of the game.
Strategy is Everything.
Making a good amount of money with DoorDashing is more of a strategic planning game. You have to know when, where and how you can earn best.
You do not have to necessarily work every time or from just anywhere.
Some of the most strategic and highest earners in the DoorDashing business who earn as high as $1000 a week strategies by working in certain high-demand areas where many orders are placed and they maximise strategic peak times for example some can go as far as working for twelve hours on both weekend days when the most orders are made.
The Flexibility of Dashing.
The advantage of DoorDashing is that you can start and stop whenever you want. This gives you opportunity to time your dashing to coincide with times and circumstances when and where you can earn most respectively.
The Forces that can Bring Your Earnings Up or Down.
The amount of money you can make with DoorDash depends on a number of factors.
There's no standard amount, no guarantee and above all, no limit to how much you can make from dashing.
As you play in sync with the following factors and use them to your advantage, you can be sure that you're going to earn handsomely from dashing.
1. The Timing
The weekend is one of the best to dash because food outlets and restaurants receive many orders over the weekend.
During the weekend, most people stay home and opt in to order for a good meal from the restaurant to enjoy with their families probably as they throw a party.
Therefore for a dasher, this is a peak time where you can dash like for four hours straight and on average make over $30 per hour.
During certain social events in an area like football matches and parties, dashing around is a beautiful idea. You could make some good money in deliveries.
2. The Weather Condition.
The ambient weather could also determine how much you earn from dashing. When the weather is bad, most people would prefer to have their food delivered to them.
This is a great time for you to dash because definitely most people will make orders.
3. The Size of the Area You're Delivering in.
The size of the city in which you are dashing is a great determinant of how much you can make per hour.
If the city is large, then you can expect to make more money per hour as you take up more orders.
In busy places like California's cities, you can make minimum $150 on a busy weekend day like Saturday if you work for the whole 8 hours.
On other week days, you can make slightly above $100. A point to note here is that there's no standard amount you can make because many factors determine how much you make through dashing.
4. The Amount of Time You Spend Dashing.
The amount of time you spend dashing definitely determines how much you can get out of it. There's definitely a difference when you dash for four hours and when you dash for eight hours, other factors constant.
When you consider other factors, you will realise that in most cases, how busy the moment is precedes the length of time in order of importance in a sense that there is remarkable difference when you dash for four busy hours with many deliveries compared to when you dash for four hours of minimum activity.
This is a case of effective dashing time versus total dashing time.
5. The Number of Deliveries Made.
The number of deliveries you make correlates positively with the amount of money you receive at the end of your day's working time.
It is a cumulative effect. The more you work, the more you make.
6. Peak Times, More Cash.
During times where many customers are placing orders, DoorDash increases the delivery fee. This could be during the festive season when celebratory mood is high or when food companies are making promotions to encourage more orders.
This is an opportunity for you as a DoorDasher to activate your dashing powers, take up more orders and make more deliveries.
Therefore, be on the lookout for such critical times with high opportunity to make more money with DoorDash.
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The Implication of ‘Delivery Fee'
However, every factor discussed above largely depends on the amount of money ‘tagged’ on the order. How much the delivery fee for the particular order is?
As a DoorDasher, you don't have to complain of orders with a low delivery fee.
Actually you don't have to take them up especially if you're going to have to use a lot of gas just to earn a few dollars. That's not business.
At least Economics 101 does not recommend that. Decline ‘bad' orders and only take up those that are both favourable and profitable to you.
A DoorDasher has the liberty to dash from any city as long as DoorDash operates there.
In case an order with a low delivery fee and a long distance pops up, you can decline it if you feel it will not work for you or you feel that the opportunity cost of taking it is high.
But I Need to Have a Higher Acceptance Rate.
DoorDash has a rating called ‘acceptance rate' on their app. This is a measure of the number of orders that you have accepted out of the last one hundred opportunities you have received.
This means that in order to increase your acceptance rate, you have to accept more orders and reject as few as possible.
An acceptance rate of one hundred percent means that you have accepted all the orders that have popped up to you.
According to DoorDash, acceptance rate is a factor considered before branding you as a Top Dasher.
As a prerequisite, you need to have an acceptance rate of at least 70%.
This is where the dilemma comes in. You ask, should you accept all the orders that are presented to you including the ones that aren't favourable to you?
The answer is a resounding no with whiskers. Many DoorDashers affirm that acceptance rate is something like a scam, or rather an incentive from DoorDash to encourage new dashers to take on dashing opportunities presented to them.
Arguably, as you get more experience in the dashing business, you gain ability to distinguish between orders that are favourable to you and those that are not.
All in all, there's not much significance in ‘acceptance rate.’
Therefore, it is important that you accept, almost entirely, orders with a higher delivery fee so that you can use your gas profitably and not just waste it.
It is more recommended to take up a few high-paying orders per hour than to take up many low-paying orders that will even cause the car to get maintenance issues that will require you to foot repair bills.
Each DoorDasher has their goal; the amount of money they hope to accumulate per unit time. Most strive to make at least $20 per hour.
Less than that, it's quite unprofitable and unsustainable in both the short and long run.
Most dashers will decline orders below $6.
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Change location As Much As Is Required.
Change your location frequently, or better, position yourself in an area that will allow you get the most out of DoorDash.
If you're in a busy and large city, the chances are high that you will make more money from doing deliveries with DoorDash.
A DoorDasher is not a tree. You may need to dash around a number of cities on a particular day because the market in your regular city may be either saturated with dashers or there may not be need for your services there.
Feel free to shift elsewhere rather than waiting in vain.
To be honest, not every area is a good spot for DoorDash. Yes, the service could be operational there but the local population may not be a good target market.
People could be having other delivery preferences or other ways of operation in that you can only make a few deliveries per day.
Change location ASAP (as soon as possible). You cannot expect to make a bountiful catch from a pond with only a handful of fish.
Why You Should Consider ‘Multi-apping'
Owing to the fact that DoorDash is not a monopoly, at least in most areas where it operates, there are other similar apps like Uber Eats and Grubhub.
Sometimes, it so happens that customers are using another app. This is where some DoorDashers choose to diversify and increase their chances by working with a number of other apps.
If you can only work from such an area with little business, then you can consider diversifying whereby you work with around three delivery apps concurrently to increase your chances of getting clients.
You can work with Uber Eats and Grubhub in addition to DoorDash in such a context.
‘Multi-apping', as we may call it, increases your chances of getting orders in an hour rather than just sitting under the heat of day in your car waiting for an order to pop up on DoorDash as you switch tabs to scroll through Twitter.
When you get a good order on a particular app, accept it you as you pause the other apps or decline their orders.
But honestly why would you dash from a dead zone. Is it fun? I hope you replied ‘yes’.
Strategic Positioning
You will concur with me and the majority of people out there that strategic positioning is of ultimate importance if you wish to make a fortune from DoorDashing.
When you position yourself near places like hotels where there's a high chance of someone making an order that you could deliver to them, you stand higher chances than one well-meaning dasher stationed in The Amazon rainforest.
Can you dash from The Amazon rainforest? I don't know either.
You may actually have to drive away for a few minutes from your area of residence or comfort to a particular hotspot where you can make more deliveries.
It is not a must that you have to dash from around you area of residence, not because you need to try to avoid distraction, but to maximise earning.
Colleges are particularly good hotspots. There are high chances that at a particular time a number of college students place orders that you can pick for them and deliver to them.
Study Your Area like a Book
A good working knowledge of your area will earn you brownie points. No, not brownie points, but it will make your earning skyrocket.
Why? Because if you know the modes of operation of the different restaurants and food outlets and you also know the peak hours of maximum activity when people place the most orders, you can strategize by delivering from the fastest restaurants and dashing more during the peak hours.
You will realise that in certain restaurants, dashers are not a priority.
Therefore you should strategize not to work a lot with these. Time is an important factor in a delivery service.
Because you agreed to the order, you are to a large extent bound to deliver at least to the client's expectations.
You do not have to wait at the counter for beyond five minutes until you catch sleep.
The time wasted here could be used in securing and making better-earning orders.
More money can be made in a short time, but with the right strategy.
Is this spot a good idea?
The arrangement of the city is a factor to consider when positioning yourself in a particular spot in readiness to take on orders.
In certain cities, restaurants are clustered in a particular corner. This is where you should position yourself. For obvious reasons it is also better to dash in an area with less stops.
You may not deliver anything if you happen to dash in an area with a multiplicity of stops.
And tips?
As a DoorDasher, you have opportunity to earn extra revenue through tips just like any other delivery driver.
Most clients will often tip you, as a token of appreciation, or just by default. Another reason to believe in humanity.
If you realise that in a certain area, the people tip really well, there's no reason why you would leave them for another area where the norm is ‘deliver and go.’
Of course everywhere you dash you have to deliver and go, but when you work with a well-tipping clients, you go away with heavier pockets and an eternal smile.
DoorDash’s Peak Pay
Did you know that DoorDash pays dashers in bonuses during times of peak activity? When it's really busy, everyone is placing orders, more dashers are needed or else the system is soon collapsing.
And also during times when there are few dashers on the road in the city, Peak Pay serves to encourage more dashers to join the delivery process.
As a dasher, you can exploit this opportunity by studying the DoorDash setting in your area to note the times when Peak Pay is activated.
What are the times when dashers are most needed? You don't want to miss out on golden opportunities such as this.
Under this setting, you earn bonus money on each delivery you make. Each order is tagged with a bonus by DoorDash.
The additional advantage of this is the fact that at such times there are many orders therefore the time you spend dashing will be really profitable and well-spent.
You will be effectively dashing rather than waiting in your car for the next order opportunity as you contemplate whether London Bridge is really falling down.
Is it Peak Pay time now in your area? You should hit the road now. But no, first read on.
The Eating Patterns of the Area Inhabitants.
Your deliveries as a dasher will play in sync with the eating patterns of the people you're serving. Knowing this will put you at the top of your game.
In some areas, people do not cook at night, so that's the best time of dashing there.
That's the time of high demand for your services.
The patterns vary in different areas and one of the best things you can do is study the eating patterns of people in the area you would like to dash in.
This small research is worth it because it can distinguish you from the average-earning dasher who waits for orders during non-eating times.