1 July – 8 July £521.02 (£22.19 Per Hour)
July started of with a bang as I had my best week yet earning £521 in 23 hours and 47 minutes, averaging just over £22 per hour.
This week, I really took advantage of the destination postcode being shown and I was very picky with the trips I accepted. Generally I prefer to stay in the North of London for a few reasons. Firstly, it is my neck of the woods so I feel like I drive better and provide a better experience for the passenger because I know where I am going. The roads are a lot less congested, so your not stuck in traffic on both ends of the journey. Trips tend to be a longer distance and end up paying more, even though they take the same amount of time as shorter trips crossing the river to the south do. Finally, at the end of my shift, when I’m starting to feel tired, its nice to know that I’m not too far away from home as opposed to being stuck on the other side of London with a 1 hour trip to get back with more often than not, dead miles without a passenger.
Like most things Uber, the guidelines are a bit vague on what they deem an acceptable acceptance rate, so I am conscious of not letting it drop too much. At the moment my uber acceptance rate is hovering about 40% and I don’t want it to drop much further than that.
With that being said, if I get a ping and its a surge job, 9 out of 10 times I am accepting it regardless of where it is going. As you can see below, I had a nice run of 10 consecutive surge jobs which was clearly a contributing factor to my high earnings this week.
Those 10 surge jobs paid me a total of £240.52. If they where flat rate jobs they would have paid me £143.71, nearly £100 less.
My best paying job of the week paid £56.23 and was surprisingly a pool job. In all honesty it was a nightmare of a journey which took 1hr and 21m from north London to the deep South which involved 4 pickups and drop offs with people that didn’t interact with each other. Pool trips can be a big hassle and are usually low paying but on a 1.4x surge, this one was definitely worth it.
8 July – 15 July £437.21 (£23.99 Per Hour)
Following the success of the last week, I was hoping to do use that momentum and make even more this week. Unfortunately, because of a not so busy Friday night and the fact that I took Saturday night off as well, I didn’t quite reach my goal.
Overall all though, I was relatively happy with how the week went with £437.11 in only 18 hours and 22 minutes. This was also my highest hourly rate at pretty much £24 per hour over the whole week which I can attribute to a few factors.
1 – Not picking up non surge jobs when I’m in a heavy surging area. You could find your self in the centre of a 2.2x surge and you will get a ping for a flat rate job. I’m not sure why this happens. The only thing I can think off is that Uber are hoping that you just accept it without paying attention but then that would mean less commission for them, so I guess that doesn’t make sense either. Just wait for what you think is a high enough surge and then accept it. If I’m in a 2.2x surge and I get a 1.6x or a 1.8x, I’m accepting it. I try not to get too greedy as it is always possible that you could miss the boat.
2 – Being able to choose the rides you accept based on the post codes has been a game changer. This has allowed me to not be taken too far away from a busy surging area which is allowing me to pick up more surge jobs. It also allows me to decline jobs that I think are going to lead me into heavy traffic towards and from the destination. It has also reduced the amount of dead miles I used to get at the end of the night as I am no longer finding myself stuck on the other side of London as I try to navigate my way home.
3- The success of this week was also due in part to a lucky last ride of the week on Sunday night as you can see in the Job of The Week. It was a ride from Mayfair to Windsor which took 1 hour and 3 minutes over 29 miles on a 1.9x surge and paid £69.73. My highest paying job yet.
15 July – 22 July £431.94 (£21.51 Per Hour)
This week started off with me driving first thing down to the uber office at docklands to hand in the mobile phone my last passenger left the night before. It was my day off from my full time job, so the plan was to get a good shift in during the day and then my normal few hours in the night. On the way back I picked up a ride which took 32 minute and quite a distance away from home. At this point it was 1:30 pm and I was exhausted so decided to call it a day.The Full days work I had planned, ended being one ride and £15.11 which was disappointing but a lesson learned. Next time a passenger leaves anything in the car I will not be wasting my valuable time taking it to the uber office in London but just posting it directly to the customer.
This week I worked every night expect Friday which I took of to rest. As much as I would have loved to have gone out of Friday as well, I have made a conscious effort of listening to my body and not pushing harder than is safe to do. At the end of the day, this job requires driving strangers around in a 2 tone piece of metal, and if your consecration levels are low because your brain is trying to shut down then we can seriously hurt ourselves, our passengers and innocent by standers. If your feeling exhausted then get a good rest and go out refreshed the next day and if your driving and starting to feel like your loosing focus then turn off the app and go home. Always remember the fundamental rule of this game is safety then the money will follow that.
Every night this week I only worked between 3 and 4 hours and the earnings where generally quite low. Saturday though, I worked around 5 1/2 hours and earned a respectable £158.81.
This week saw very little surge in central London and when you found yourself in the surge, you where not being given surge jobs. After declining what must have been 10 straight flat fare jobs, I realised that I wasn’t going to win this game with Uber so I bit the bullet and started taking every job that came my way.
Uber introduced the promotions last week of bonuses if you accepted 3 consecutive trips at certain times with the first trip starting inside an outlined area of London. I am only theorising here but it seems that since the promotions where introduced, uber are limiting the amount of surge within the times the promotions are valid. As you can see from the image below from Saturday night, there where massive areas of high surge in the surrounding county’s of London, but in central London where the promotion was in effect there was nothing.
I decided to play their game on Thursday night and Saturday night and peruse the promos to see how they would effect earnings and overall I was quite happy.
On Thursday I managed to get the £9 extra for 3 consecutive trips twice so that was an extra £18 and on Saturday I got the £13 promotion twice for an extra £26 on that shift. I was also given £3 extra for the refund on uber pool service fees which was a promo I wasn’t aware off.
Overall for the week, the figures show that the lack of surge and the introduction of the promotions hasn’t effect my earnings. My hourly rate for the week was £21.51 which I am happy with and showed that it is still possible to make good money even without surge. You can even see from the job of the week that I never did any high surge big paying jobs but still managed to keep the earnings consistent.
The bottom line is that if uber are going to move the goal posts then your going to have to move with them. There are actually additional ways to increase your earnings as I show on my weekly summary.
This week I earned the highest amount of toll to date. Toll is the extra £1 you get for every trip that starts, ends or passes through the Congestion Charge zone. I made an extra £19 this week just by taken as many toll trips as possible.
The amount of bonus I received from the promotions was £47 bringing the total amount of extra money earned separate from the fares to £81, which is really good considering I only work just over 20 hours.
I also earned my highest tips this week at £15. This is not high by any means but still free money for doing nothing extra.
22 July – 31 Aug £356.80 (£16.99 Per Hour)
If you wondering why this week has 9 days in it and not 7, its because of a few reasons.
Firstly I wanted to show the figures for the whole month of July from the 1st to the 31st. Secondly the extra 2 days I added where my last days of driving for a month as I’m off on vacation. Thirdly the results for the week where pitiful so I had to add the extra days to make my self feel better about the bad week:)
For the whole month of August I am on vacation to sunny Cyprus with the family so this was my last week of rideshare till September. Because of this, my plan was to give this week a really strong push to earn some extra money knowing that I had a long break on the horizon.
Unfortunately life got in the way which meant I only managed 15 hours and 23 minutes for the week which included missing out on a busy weekend.
As frustrated as I am about how this week went, I am also cognisant of the fact that this game can be a roller coaster and you have to take the rough with the smooth. I have been in sales long enough to know that you will always have good times and not so good times and when your riding that wave, everything you touch turns to gold, and when you fall off you just have to wait till your back on again. In fact, that is life in general. You cant expect everything to go your way and you always have to be prepared for chaos. This week unfortunately was one of those weeks.
Regardless of the lack of hours this week, the hours I did work where still poor. You can see from the hourly rate of £16.99 that I was not being as productive as I normally am which was probably down to a few reasons. Because I was only working on average about 3 hours a night, a massive portion of that was dead miles travelling to central London and back with out a passenger. I also experiment with staying in my local area of north London a couple of nights and although it was busy in the early part of the evening, It did get quiet after 10 pm. Although all the jobs where low paying local trips, they provided a nice consistent flow of work which added up at one point to over £25 hour. The trick is finding the times that you can do that consistently for a few hours before it dies down.
You can see how the job of the week mirrors the uneventful week I had. There where obviously higher paying jobs, but I highlighted this one as it was only a 4 minute trip over 0.62 miles on a 1.3x surge that paid £4.87. If you can manage to get a bunch of these every hour, you will increase your hourly rate drastically.
Despite the bad end to the month I am happy with how it went over all. I only worked 2 1/2 hours more than last month but earned £230 more. This is due to improvement to several factors.
My average hourly rate went up from £20.20 to £21.19. I did 59 toll trips instead of 42 earning me £17 pounds more and I earned £33 in tips compared to £21 last month.
On the basis, this gig seems very basic. You get a ping. You go pick up a passenger and you take them to their destination. Rinse and repeat.
In simple terms, that is actually how it works, but its everything else that goes on that you cant see the separates the men from the boys, the big earners from the bums, the achievers from the complainers.
In the art of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu there is a concept referred to as invisible Jiu Jitsu. Its all the small movements and adjustments that a skilled player does that cant be seen by an untrained eye which separated him from an average player.
I’m going to coin the term invisible driving 🙂
Invisible driving is a combination of all these strategic moves a high earner makes to maximise their time and earn the most money they can.
I’m not a black belt in invisible driving yet but I’m improving my skills every week and slowly working my way up the ranks.
July 2019 Earnings
8 Responses
Epic week mate nice work! 🙂 on average what percentage would you say you’re actually driving to your ‘online hours’
Keep up the great content!
Hi James. Thanks for the comment. My online hours are my actual hours driving. Barring me turning the app off late at night as I’m approaching home they are my real working hours. Perfect example is tonight. I turned the app on from my home in north London and didn’t pick up my first ride till 45 minutes later as I approached central London. I could have driven to central London and then turned the app on but then that would give a false view of what really goes on. I’m trying to be 100% transparent with you guys so you can see exactly what it’s like as a private hire driver.
Thanks for the reply 🙂 what percentage of time would you say you were actually with a passenger compared to your online time? Thanks again
It all depends on how quick you get your first ride and how close to home your last ride is. I had a look at a few days to get an idea and on average, on a 4 hour shift its about 1 hour to 1 1/2 without a passenger. Once you pick up that first rider its like the floodgates open and you don’t stop and that’s where you make up for the dead miles.
Hi, i great site and very informative. It would be nice if you show how many miles you are doing while you are working. Showing all miles including and dead miles (without passenger) in your weekly earning and your expenses like insurance and fuels cost. This would give a better indication of your earnings after cost. Thanks
Hi Sajid, thanks for reading. Yes that is a great idea which ill look into. I think a detailed in-depth post covering all the points you mentioned to give potential drivers a complete breakdown of all costs involved will be very helpful. As the website grows and evolves ill be adding more and more information that could be relevant.
Nice write up for July mate – very much enjoyed reading it! Have you driven much in south London at all? Ie the Bromley area? It’s my neck of the woods so will be my starting point for shifts. I believe Cabbie007 is from that area also and seems to do well 🙂
Keep up the good work!
Thanks for reading james. Hopefully you’ll find something useful that you can use when you start driving. When I started, I would always end up around that area, but now we can see the destination I tend to avoid going south of the river. I’m still trying to figure out the best strategy for me so I might start heading out there more. From what I’ve seen you will be at an advantage starting from where you live as it is a lot busier that it is in north london/Enfield where I live.
Comments are closed.