Lyft Review
"Ride Sharing" is exploding. Lyft claims you can make up to $35 per hour driving your car on your own schedule. It sounds too good to be true, I had to get to the bottom of this. So I went undercover and applied as a Lyft driver. The income claims below are what I actually made as a rideshare driver for Lyft. You should expect the same.
How To Get Started
The application process is pretty simple. You get a message from Lyft to meet with a representative to check your car, license, and registration. I met the rep at a Pep Boys. The mechanics there examined my car, the representative took my picture and photos of my license and insurance.
After document check and vehicle check, the representative took all prospective drivers into a room and went over the rules, and the Lyft app. He passed on a few tips and then dismissed us. Total time was around 45 minutes.
After that you have to wait a few days for Lyft to do a criminal background check on you. If you pass all this, congratulations, you are now in business. Your business is to get people where they need to be. To do that, you use the Lyft app. Just turn on "driver mode" and if you are the nearest person to someone requesting a ride, your app goes off. You have a few seconds to accept or decline. I found out if you decline too much, Lyft holds it against you. So take the rides or turn the app off.
Your Duties
Once you accept a ride, your duties are to pick up your passenger and take them to their destination in a safe and timely manner. That's it (well, be friendly too). No money exchange hands. All payments are made through the app, and Lyft takes 25% of it for themselves. If you go to the airport, you may also need to lift heavy bags into your car.
How Much Can You Make With Lyft?
What I'm about to reveal is my real income stats with Lyft. These numbers come from driving my first 38 hours. I suppose with experience, you can make more, but if you are considering this business, you are probably going to earn the same as me when you start off.
| Hours Worked: | 54 hours |
| Fare Income (after Lyft fee): | $659.07 |
| Tip Income: | $36.00 |
| Bonuses: | $74.95 |
| Total Income: | $770.02 |
| Expenses (car, gas, insurance): | $339.60 |
| Total Earnings: | $440.42 |
| Hourly Income: | $8.16 per hour |
| New Driver Bonus: | +$750.00 |
| Hourly Income: | $22.04 per hour |
The above numbers are based on leasing a vehicle at $250 a month for 1,000 miles (then .15 cents a mile after that per month). I found to work full time, you will drive about 4,000 miles per month which comes out to $700 month for car expense (includes car lease, gas and auto insurance - repairs and maintenance is more). After 3 years, your car will have $144,000 miles on it. Time to get a new lease and repeat. I see no way to get rid of this expense.
As a new driver, Lyft did offer me a $750 new driver bonus if I completed 75 rides in 30 days. I did that and added that one time bonus into the chart above. With that bonus, I earned $22.04 an hour, working when I wanted to work. Sometimes I would be driving to a meeting or shopping and pick some one up who pays for the travel to a place I was going to drive to anyway.
At $22.04 per hour and a access to a car paid for by my customers, that's not bad. Too bad it lasts only one month. If you need $1,000 in the next week, I would suggest you try this. You can get a NEW DRIVER BONUS too when you
click on this link.
One last thing to consider in this Lyft review, I was a beginner. A driver should be able to do better than I did after some experience. Towards the end I did get a ride that took an hour and netted me $45. Do two or three of those a day and it coud help your financial poition immensly. Also, I focused solely on getting the $750 bonus so I took a lot of small $5 rides in order to get 75 rides done quickly. After the first month and the new driver bonus is gone, I would focus on only working near places where people take longer rides (airport, train station, etc) or in the busy areas where the fares are 2x or 3x more than normal. That should boost the hourly income.
If you decide to give ridesharing a try, at least for one month to collect the new driver bonus, make sure to click the banner below to get the bonus now. In some areas the bonus is $500 for 50 rides, even quicker to cash in.
