Door Dash/ Uber Eats income potential? - Commack area (Massapequa: neighborhoods, taxes)
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Thinking of doing Door Dash or Uber Eats for the summer to make some extra money. I'm curious if anyone on here does either or both of these can talk to the income potential in general, or if you find one more active than another? every region seems to be different...I'm in Commack as a point of reference.
Any info would be great. this is just to make some side money, not primary income so i don't expect to retire early, but just curious if it's worth doing at all, and which service is better.
I'm actually semi retired and have been doing DD/UE and Instacart for a few years in Queens/Nassau.
As you say, most zones will vary. While the wealthier areas might have larger payouts they tend to have less activity whereas the hood is always, and I mean always, active...but deliver there at your own risk!!! They are also cheap. So you really need to figure out quickly in your zone the best restaurants/neighborhoods to work. It will take a few weeks.
When I started in 2019, I could make $1,000 easy a week working full time. Lunch from 10am-2p then dinner hours around 430p -830p. But Queens and Nassau are so saturated with foreign drivers that will take $3 orders, customers now know they can get away with not tipping yet have their food delivered still. So I can't speak for the Commack area. I tried working Massapequa one weekend and did very well. But nowadays working the same hours I did in 2019, I'm lucky to make $700.
But I still love it. Driving in my car, listening to music, meeting chicks all day...it's fun. Master the app and then you can be picky with what orders to take and not to take.
Doordash used to be better for me for sure but now they will send you low ball crappy orders if you're acceptance rate is below 50%, which it is for most people. Uber Eats on the other hand doesn't really seem to punish drivers for not accepting crappy orders. So Uber Eats is 75% of my money maker nowadays.
Pro tip: You get to deduct 62cents on every mile you drive so make sure to log them either by just looking at your odometer every day or making a mental note and writing down. For example, I drive about 50 miles a day. So come tax time, your accountant can make the deduction on your gig income. I just provide my accountant with a spreadsheet of how many miles I drove for each day. It's worth the hassle, believe me. You should not pay more than 10% in taxes on DD/Uber eats.
My daughter was doing it for a little bit and stopped. Most people don't tip and the offers were low in the $3-$4 range. Driving 4 or 5 miles one way and 4 or 5 miles back ate up all the gas money and put a lot of wear and tear on the car. She tried different areas of Nassau and surprisingly, the wealthier areas tipped much less or not at all. The blue collar areas tipped the most and the poorer ghetto or hood areas either never tipped at all or tipped only $1 or $2. The price of gas and wear and tear on the car for only a few dollars here and there were not worth it for her. Some days or nights she made decent money and other days she barely made anything at all. The pay was way too inconsistent for her to keep it going so she got a regular paying job and makes more money now with less headaches.
The worse part is when a customer tipped well then the app would stack a few non-tipping orders and she would be subsidizing the non-tippers. You can decline them, but then your acceptance rate goes down and they they can punish you by pausing you for a little while. She then tried to multi app too by having Uber Eats and the DoorDash apps going at the same time on different phones, but still she said her earnings were not consistent.
Whatever you do, don't deliver into the ghetto neighborhoods. Besides them being non tippers, a friend of ours got robbed and held up by gunpoint.
Last edited by dk1111; 05-29-2023 at 03:40 PM..
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