Want to know how to work for DoorDash and make $500 a week?
It’s not hard at all.
You can get paid to deliver things like groceries, clothes, and food from nearby restaurants with delivery apps. There are many companies like Amazon Flex, UberEats, and DoorDash that will pay you to deliver things.
You can definitely make $500 a week by using a few apps at once, but you can also make $500 just by using DoorDash.
DoorDash is one of the most popular side hustle apps because it’s available in 7,000 cities in the U.S., Canada, and Australia.
If you signed up to be one of the company’s drivers, who are called “Dashers,” you’ll want to know how to make more money.
So, that’s the point of today’s post. Here are some tips on how to use DoorDash to make $500 a week.
How to Make Money $500 a Week With DoorDash (Guaranteed)
What’s DoorDash?
DoorDash is an American company that runs a website where you can order food and have it delivered. It works a lot like Uber Eats and Grubhub, where customers place orders with local restaurants and other food places and the app’s gig workers bring the food to them.
DoorDash will pay you to bring people’s food from restaurants and other local places to their homes.
As a DoorDash driver, you decide your own hours, so you can work as much or as little as you want.
DoorDash is the best food delivery service in the US, beating Grubhub and Uber Eats, which are the best in the world.
In 2020, 45 percent of all food delivery orders came from DoorDash, giving it a double-digit lead over everyone else.
DoorDash drivers must be at least 18 years old, have a car, be able to give their driver’s licence number and social security number (only in the US), and agree to a background check.
What does DoorDash pay?
So, how much do you get paid by DoorDash?
Let’s look at how the company pays drivers and how much they make per hour.
Pay Model for DoorDash
Here’s how Dasher’s pay works:
Base pay, raises, and tips add up to total earnings.
I’ll go into a little more detail below:
Base Pay
DoorDash gives you between $2 and $10 as a base pay for each delivery you make. Base Pay is the amount that DoorDash gives you for each order. It can be anywhere from $2 to $10 or more, depending on how long it will take, how far it is, and how important the order is.
Orders that are farther away, take longer, and aren’t as popular with Dashers will have a higher Base pay.
Promotions
Promotions are ways for drivers to get extra pay for orders that meet certain requirements.
Some examples include:
- Peak Pay: Peak Pay may be used when it’s busy. This gives drivers a chance to make more money.
- Challenges are ways for Dashers to get extra money by making a certain number of deliveries in a certain amount of time.
- Guaranteed Earnings: This is a pay incentive for certain Dashers to earn at least a certain amount (not including tips, Challenge payments, and referral payments) within a certain number of days. How many days and how much they get depends on the offer they got via email and SMS.
Tips
Dashers can get tips from their clients. They can leave a tip when they pay for their order or after it has been delivered. One of the best things about jobs where you get tips is that you get to keep all of them on top of your base pay and promotions.
DoorDash pay by the hour
Pay per hour isn’t always clear.
On its website, DoorDash says that most drivers make $25 per hour.
Glassdoor says that the average hourly wage for a DoorDash driver is $16. The pay per hour can be anywhere from $3 to $33. Promotions and tips can help a driver make more money.
This means that it is possible to drive and deliver for the company and make $500 a week.
You could make $2,000 a month if you knew the right tips and tricks to use and did them right.
$2,000 a month from a gig app sounds like a lot, right?
So, just how do you do it?
Well, here are some easy-to-follow tips on how to make $500 with the company in a week…
How to Use DoorDash to Make $500 a Week
Here are a few ways to use the DoorDash app to make $500 a week.
1. Work during the busiest times
Okay, so one of the most important things I can tell you is to work when there are a lot of people around. This usually means at lunch and dinner, when more people are ordering food.
As I said above, Peak Pay incentives are one of the deals that Dashers can get from DoorDash.
These help drivers make more money when they are busy.
Here’s what a Peak Pay incentive looks like:
- Between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. in San Francisco, you can make an extra $2.
2. Change where your dash is
If you usually make deliveries in a quiet area, you might want to switch to a busier part of town. This way, when people order food, you’re more likely to get a delivery, which means you can start making more each week.
One of the best ways to make more money is to do deliveries near popular restaurants and restaurant areas of town, especially around dinner time when there are more deliveries. A lot of restaurants and other places to eat are also a good thing about busy downtown areas.
So, if you’re not making much money where you are, you might want to move.
3. Try to stay in crowded places
Once you’ve found a busy place to work on DoorDash, try to stay there. Over time, you can learn which restaurants are busiest on which days of the week, which restaurants do the most business at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and when the most deliveries are made. All of this info can help you make more money each week.
You should try to stay in places that are busy. So, think about where the orders you are given will take you.
Try not to take orders that take you far away from places where people are. If you don’t, you’ll have to drive back to those busy areas, which takes time, and you might not have any orders to finish while you’re there.
It’s best to take deliveries that stay in busy areas or take you to another busy area. You can always move if you find that there are too many other Dashers in the area and you aren’t getting as many deliveries.
4. Park near restaurants and other places to eat that are popular.
You should try to park near restaurants and stores that people often go to. This can help you get more packages. So, think about what restaurants are popular where you’re Dashing. You could look at sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp to find out which ten restaurants are the best and then park near them.
You can pick up more deliveries if you park near popular restaurants, convenience stores, and other places where people order food. This can also help you get more repeat customers.
Having customers come back to you again and again is a good idea because it can make your job a lot easier. You’ll know where you’re going, so you can usually make the delivery faster. If you know a family tips well and they keep ordering from you, you can use these tips to make more money.
5. Put in more hours at work
If you want to make $500 a week with DoorDash, you’ll have to try to work more hours. If you only drive 10 hours a week, you probably won’t be able to make $500 a week. Suppose you make $25 per hour. Even if you work 10 hours a week, you will only make $250. So, you’ll need to work 20 hours per week.
If you work more hours, you can accept more deliveries, which will help you make more money. If you can’t work more hours, I would suggest increasing the number of deliveries you make per hour, which can also help you make more money.
If you stay in busy areas and park near popular restaurants as suggested above, you’ll be able to make more deliveries per hour. If you want to make more money, you will have to either work more hours or make more deliveries each hour. If you do both, you can make a lot more money.
6. Be picky about which orders you take.
Obviously, you can make more money if you finish more orders. But it’s important to be picky about which orders you take.
Here are some things you should think about:
The order’s destination
You should only take jobs that don’t take you too far away and keep you in a busy part of your town or city. If the order is too far away, it might not be worth it to do it.
The restaurant where you’ll pick up the food is another thing to think about when deciding whether or not to take an order. Some restaurants treat dashers with respect, have the food ready to go, and don’t waste your time. Some are the complete opposite.
So, the best thing to do is to stick to the good restaurants and stay away from the bad ones. After all, if a restaurant always seems to take a long time to get the food ready and you always have to wait, your deliveries from that place will take longer, which means you’ll make fewer deliveries per hour and make less money.
So, when you see an order, check to see which restaurant it’s from and decide if you want to take it. If the restaurant always has orders ready, go with it. If not, you might want to try something else. Of course, this only works if you’ve been to the restaurant before. As you learn more, you’ll know which ones are good and which ones you should skip.
How much you get paid for the order
You should also think about how much the order pays you. After all, you should only take orders that are worth your time. This doesn’t mean that you should always go for the orders that pay the most. No, you should also think about how long it will take to finish the order.
If an order pays a lot but takes a long time to finish, it might be better to choose one that pays less but is easier to finish. After all, you can make more money if you can finish more orders.
Many Dashers, especially those who are just starting out, take every order they see without giving it much thought. Sure, you want to take on a lot of orders to make more money, but it’s important to keep the above things in mind to make sure the orders are worth your time and you get the most money out of them.
7. Do challenges if you can find them in your area.
Dashers can now take part in challenges through DoorDash. This programme is still in the testing phase. Not all Dashers will be able to see Challenges in their area, but DoorDash says it is working to make this available to more people in the coming months.
So, check to see if any Challenges are available near you.
Challenges are ways to get extra money by making a certain number of deliveries in a certain amount of time.
Check the timestamp to see when the Challenge is active in your time zone.
For example, if you make 15 deliveries in a week, you might earn $20. (Monday 12:01 a.m. to Sunday 11:59 p.m. local time).
With Challenges, it’s important to finish the deliveries within the time limit and at any of the starting points listed on the Challenge details page in the Dasher app.
You are automatically signed up for Challenges that are going on in your area and that you qualify for. You don’t have to choose to join the Challenge to take part in it.
Challenges are a great way to make extra cash. Open your Dasher app and choose your starting point to find out if there are any Challenges going on in your area.
At any given time, there will only be one Challenge going on in a given starting point.
You can tap the Challenge to find out more about it. The Challenge info screen will show you everything you need to know about the Challenge, such as the number of deliveries you need to make, the days and times the Challenge is active, the extra amount you can earn for completing the Challenge, and the starting points. All of the places where this Challenge is valid are shown on the list of eligible starting points. Deliveries you make from any of these eligible starting points will count toward the active Challenge.
8. Think of your job as a delivery driver as a business
When you work as a Dasher, you do so as a self-employed person. This basically means that you are running your own small business. So, act like a business and think of each delivery as a business decision.
Think carefully about which orders you accept. Again, think of it as a business decision. You should only take orders that you think will make you money. If an order pays too little, will take too long to finish, or will take you in the wrong direction, don’t take it. You are in charge of your own small business, so act like it. If you do that, you can make sure it pays off to drive for DoorDash.
9. Keep track of how many hours you work and how much money you make.
Okay, so if you want to make more money, one of the best tips I can give you is to just keep track of how many hours you work and how much money you make.
If you worked on Friday, for example, write down how many hours you worked, how many deliveries you made, and how much money you made. Then you can break those numbers down to find out how much money you made per hour. If it’s less than you expected, think about what you can do to make more money.
Think about what we said above. For instance, did you take too many orders that took you away from places where people were? If so, then the next time you make deliveries, try to stay closer to those busy places.
Or maybe your deliveries took longer because some restaurants didn’t have the food ready when you got there? If so, you shouldn’t go back to those restaurants.
Like I said, keep track of how many hours you work and compare that to how much money you make. You want to make sure that the money you make delivering for DoorDash is worth the time you spend doing it.
10. Use multiple apps
Here’s an extra tip you can try. All of the above suggestions were for DoorDash. This is for people who are willing to sign up for more than one app that delivers food.
You don’t just use one app to deliver food. Instead, you use all of the apps in your market at the same time.
So, if DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub are all available in your area, sign up for them all. Then, when you want to make deliveries, turn on all three apps and accept orders from all of them. Try to choose orders that are heading in roughly the same direction. By doing this, you can increase your income by a lot.
You can get more deliveries and make more money by using more delivery apps.
For example, if you get three orders from DoorDash in an hour and one each from Uber Eats and Grubhub, you can make five deliveries in an hour instead of three.
If you make 5 deliveries an hour and get $5 for each one, you’ll make $25 an hour. You could make $35 an hour if you could make seven deliveries in an hour. To figure out how much you can make, figure out how many orders you can finish in an hour and how much you think you can make on average per delivery.
How does DoorDash get paid?
Once you start making money with DoorDash, you’ll want to know when you’ll get paid.
There are three ways to pay for DoorDash services. How often you get paid will depend on how you choose to get paid.
Here are the ways you can pay with DoorDash:
Direct Deposit every week
Dashers get paid every week for all the deliveries they made between Monday and Sunday of the week before. This is done through Weekly Direct Deposit (ending Sunday at midnight).
At that time, payments are sent directly to your bank account. Processing takes two to three days, and the money is usually in your account by Wednesday night.
Dasher Fast Pay
You can use Dasher Fast Pay in the US and in some parts of Canada. With Fast Pay, Dashers don’t have to wait for their weekly direct deposit to get their money. Instead, they can cash out their earnings every day. You will have to pay $1.99 though.
For Fast Pay to work, you need a debit card on file, not a prepaid card.
DasherDirect
DasherDirect is a prepaid debit card that only Dashers can use. After each Dash, deposits are made instantly and for free. With DasherDirect, you can also get 2% cash back on gas anywhere and use more than 20,000 ATMs that don’t charge you a fee. In the Earnings section of the app, you can sign up to start getting free instant payments from DasherDirect. Tap “Earnings,” then “Learn more.”
Pay-on-Delivery
Cash is another way to pay for DoorDash services.
You can choose to start getting cash-based orders. Look for orders that say “Cash on Delivery” and accept them. They work the same way as other orders, but when you drop them off, you’ll get paid in cash.
Once the customer pays you, you get to keep all of the cash, including any cash tips. You get to keep the money you collect, and the order amount will be taken out of your next direct deposit. So, if you want money right away, Cash on Delivery orders might be a good choice.
Some Final Thoughts
With DoorDash, you can make $500 a week. If you make $25 an hour, working 20 hours a week would bring you $500.
There are, of course, a lot of things that will affect your income, like:
- The amount of time you spend at work. When you work, you’ll earn more money.
- how many times you deliver in an hour. If you can make more deliveries in an hour, you’ll make more money per hour.
- Your area of service. Usually, there are more deliveries in busy cities, which means you’ll probably make more money there.
- The number of tips you get. More tips equals more cash for you.
- Whether you use promotions, like Challenges, or not.
- How smart you are about what you order. You can make more money if you stay in the same area and don’t have to drive too far to make your deliveries.
It is possible to make $500 a week with DoorDash. But it’s not easy because it takes time and work. Still, you can make an extra $500 in a week if you use the right strategies and put in the time and effort. This is great. That’s $2,000 per month!