Here’s How Much I Made Driving for Lyft in 2017

Today, Joe from The Rideshare Guy is going to share a recap of his 2017 earnings with Lyft. Joe mostly drives for Lyft, so he has the experience to show us what kind of income a Lyft-only driver can make. He ended up earning a pretty high hourly rate, so I think it’s worth listening to how he achieved strong earnings numbers.

Take a look at Joe’s video, then read the video transcript below to see all the points he covers.

Why drive mostly for Lyft? The Power Driver Bonus!

I’ve been a Rideshare driver in the Minneapolis in St. Paul market for nearly four years now. For the first two of those years, I actually drove for both Lyft and Uber at the same time. But about a year and a half ago, I decided to dedicate 99% of my time to Lyft. The main reason being they offered the Power Driver Bonus and in-app tipping. And I shortly found out that by dedicating all that time to Lyft, I was actually making more and working less. It was a win-win.

Joe here with The Rideshare Guy and today we’re going to recap my last year of driving with Lyft. And be sure to stick around to the end because we’ll break down the actual numbers and I’ll show you my per hour rate for the year. And so, again, the main reasons I drive almost exclusively for Lyft, are the Power Driver Bonus and in-app tipping. Those account for quite a bit more, it brings my hourly rate up quite a bit more than it would if I were to drive, say, exclusively for Uber.

Uber has a tipping option too, but more Lyft passengers tip

Even though Uber has included the tipping option, I’ve always found that I’ve always found that Lyft passengers are just a little bit more generous and they like to tip. It’s always been included in the app so they’re used to tipping so I feel like they tip a little bit more.

Next, we’ll jump into a spreadsheet, we’ll show you some of my hourly rate, my hourly numbers. We’ll show you my driving pattern throughout the year and we’ll break down how much more I make because of the Power Driver Bonus and tipping.

How to hit the peak hours requirement for Lyft

Here’s a spreadsheet I created to break down the numbers. I broke it down to four parts of the year, which were basically my different driving patterns. I had different driving patterns during each of those periods. Here, we can see January through March, and you can see here in the image, my driving pattern. I basically drive a lot of daytime hours and I get my peak. I’d mix in some Monday evenings and I’d get the majority of my peak hours during Friday evenings. I typically drive from about four to midnight, on Fridays.

You can see the the Power Driver Bonus requirements during that time were 25 peak rides and 55 total rides for a 20% bonus. During that period, I averaged 35 hours a week, I averaged 73 weekly rides and my average hourly rate was $22.60. Out of those 35 hours, about 10 of them weekly, were peak hours. And during this time, as you can see, I concentrated on Friday night to attain most of my peak rides. During this time, Lyft had removed the AM peak hours. I would typically try and get the peak hours from 7 to 9 AM, but those were not available during January through March.

Keep a close eye on shifting Peak Hour requirements

We’ll move on to April through July. At the beginning of April, Lyft decided to include the AM peak hours again so that’s where I focused most of my peak time. They actually removed some peak hours Friday nights. I still drove some Friday night but I wasn’t doing it as heavily as I was January through March. So this is my typical driving pattern. I’ve focused on the AM peak hours and I also included some peak hours on Monday nights still, and some on Friday nights as well. The Power Driver Bonus requirements were still 25 peak rides and 55 total rides during that period. I averaged about 34 hours a week, my average weekly rides were right around 58 and my average hourly rate was $19.72. And during April through July, I average right around 14 peak hours.

We’ll move on to August through October. And since the January-March timeframe, after Lyft added the AM peak hours again, that’s where I concentrate my peak rides during those times. I actually started to drive a little bit less beginning in August through October. I drove heavily on Monday. Sometimes I’d put in 10, 11, 12 hours on Mondays, I’d put in about right around 8 hours on Tuesdays. I did the AM rush Wednesday through Friday and then I would do the Friday afternoon peak. If I still needed to pick up a few peak rides, I would do some Sunday morning driving.

During that time, the Power Driver Bonus requirements changed a little bit. It was no longer 20%, it was $105 bonus. So Lyft was taking a little bit of a commission but still not very much. After I attained the bonus, I … So, in order to attain the PDB it was 30 peak rides now and 55 total. It used to be 25, they changed it to 30 during this time. My average weekly hours were 27. Like I said, I dropped my hours a little bit. My average weekly rides were 56 and my average hourly rate was $21.88.

And now, we’ll go to the last part, November through December. I kept the same driving pattern as August through October. The PDB requirements changed a little bit though so I drove a little bit less. It was 25 peak, 45 total rides for a $70 bonus, as opposed to the 105, which was available August through October. My average weekly hours were 23, my average weekly rides were 47 and my average hourly rate was %22.85. During this time, I still averaged right around 14 peak hours. Basically since April, I’ve been averaging around 14 peak hours.

Joe made $21.20 driving for Lyft in 2017

And we’ll slide over to the summary. For the year, I averaged 31 hours per week, I averaged 60 rides per week, my average hourly rate was $21.20. So, that hourly rate was quite a bit higher because of the Power Driver Bonus and because of tips. So, $3.64 of the $21.20 was due to the Power Driver Bonus, and $1.74 of the $21.20 was due to tipping. My pre Power Driver Bonus and tipping hourly rate would have been $15.81 but with tipping and the Power Driver Bonus, I was making $21.20 per hour. So, we’ll do some quick math. If you do $21.2 minus $15.81, you get 5.39. And if we divide $5.39 by the $15.81, you’ll see that I was making an additional $5.39 because of the Power Driver Bonus and tips, and that was an increase of 34% in hourly rate.

By driving exclusively for Lyft and attaining the Power Driver Bonus consistently, and receiving those in-app tips, I’m able to make substantially more per hour than I was back when I was driving for both Lyft and Uber at the same time. Like I said at the beginning, it was a win-win. I’m working less and making more. It’s also a lot less stressful, just having one app open compared to when I used to have both apps open at the same time. And needing to log out of either, or whenever I received a request. It’s just much more seamless and a better driving experience for me.

Thanks for watching. Drive safe!