25 Nov – 2 Dec 2019 | Uber £933.90| Bolt £80.47|Cash Tips £2| Total £1014.37
Good week this week where I not only hit target but had my highest earnings to date.
It felt much busier than the previous few weeks and there was a lot less waiting in between jobs. As you can see it was pretty much all Uber this week and barely any Bolt for a couple of reasons.
Firstly, the promotions on Uber have been really strong and they seem to be getting better every week. If as I suspect, it is a ploy by Uber to keep the drivers on their platform to stop them from switching back and forth with the many other apps out there, then it’s working perfectly on me. I’ve been going for the promos daily and hitting them multiple times a day, earning me an additional £158.59 this week. If Bolt had similarly tempting bonuses, I’d be more inclined to use them more but the threat of deactivation for low acceptance rate is off putting.
This brings me on to the second reason why I have been mainly using Uber. Uber, for a driver like me who is picky with what jobs I accept is perfect because I have full autonomy over how I run my business. There are certain jobs I don’t take and certain areas I don’t want to go to, which is perfectly fine with Uber.
Bolt are notorious for deactivating drivers for acceptance rates that would be considered quite high with Uber and even though they have started to show the rider destination on Bolt this week, it is still quite vague.
You can see from the screenshot I took, it say the destination is to Enfield which was perfect because that is exactly where I was heading. It was in fact nowhere near enfield and was actually in Tottenham. Unlike Uber who give you the postcode, Bolt only give you the borough which is really unreliable.
If or when the Uber bonuses die down, it will then make more sense for me to be on the Bolt app more, but for now the Uber promotions are too tempting to not chase.
2 Dec – 9 Dec 2019 | Uber £776.03| Bolt £44.35| Total £820.38
I failed to hit target this week despite being a busy week. Up until Friday afternoon, I was having my best week yet and was on target to hit £1100. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to work on friday night or all day sunday and only managed two trips on saturday night so I finished the week on £820.
The reason I only managed two trips on Saturday night was because my second trip ended up being 70 miles and 1 1/2 hours away to get there and 90 miles to get home. It was torrential rain for 60 miles down the M4 then over 10 miles down remote country lanes and the journey back home was equally hard, fighting to stay awake at 3:30 am.
In hindsight I would have probably not accepted the job as I would have had a much better time working in and around central London and would have probably earned more picking up smaller surge jobs, but it was an experience and it did end up being my highest paying trip yet at £81.18.
The strategy continues to still be staying out of central London and away from all the congestion and nearly all my trips are in and around the north of london. I’m still focused on hitting as many Uber bonuses I can every day and finished on £114 in promotions for the week.
Because of this I am predominantly on the Uber app and only earned £44.35 with Bolt but I will be logging on the Bolt app more next week as you do get paid more for each trip.
9 Dec – 16 Dec 2019 | Uber £663.42| Bolt £154.42| Total £817.84
This week was shaping up to be my best week yet, but as usual recently, other commitments got in the way which meant I wasn’t able to work on Saturday and Sunday.
In total, I was only on the Uber app for 38 hours plus the few trips I took on the Bolt app but still managed to earn £817 for the week.
This week, I switched to nights to take advantage of christmas party season and every night was really busy. Trip requests where continues, demand was really high and surge was strong all night.
Hopefully this continued next week so I can get back on target.
16 Dec – 23 Dec 2019 | Uber £663.47| Bolt £171.15| Total £834.62
This week, I worked the whole week but only for a few hours every day.
As I write this, I’ve noticed that coincidently I was only online on the Uber app for 3 minutes more than last week and earned 5p more. Essentially I worked the same hours and earned the same money but had to do more trips because I only earned £22 in promotions as opposed to £60 last week.
My Bolt earnings where £171 and are going up week by week as I am making an effort to take more trips with bolt. Bolt take 10% less commission than Uber so you earn more per trip, Bolt trips generally seem to be longer trips and when bolt is surging you do get higher multiplier than Uber and I regularly got over 2x fairs this week.
Disappointedly, I was way off my £1000 target again but purely down to me not putting in enough hours and nothing to do with demand.
23 Dec – 30 Dec 2019 | Uber £366.95| Bolt £216.55| Total £583.50
Christmas week and it was deadly quiet as expected. I did manage to log onto the apps every day apart from Christmas day but only for a few hours. The christmas period my whole working life in retail was always stressful with really no time off. This year was the first time I was able to spend quality time with my family, thanks to the flexibility this job provides.
With the children being off school, I did take my foot of the gas for the majority of the month and my earnings have clearly suffered. The kids are back to school next week so it’s time to get back on the grind and everyone is back to work so hopefully normal service resumes and demand picks up.
