How Uber Drivers Can Use Destination Filters to Make More Money

I personally believe destination filters are key to my earnings being 10 to 20% higher than most driver’s. We’re going to look at some key features and some tips and techniques and strategies.

And at the end, I’m going to share with you a Sunday that I recently had in which I used the destination filter very effectively. I was able to make $400 in eight hours, or about $50 per hour. Stick around for that!

What is the destination filter?

First, let’s define what the destination filter is: It’s a feature that lets you set a point, and then you’ll only get rides that move you in the direction of that point.

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Let’s say for example, at the end of the day, you want to go home. And let’s say your home is 30 minutes away. Well, you can set the destination filter for your home, and then you’re only going to get rides that move you closer to your home. So that’s one way to use it, and that’s how I initially began to use it. But let’s look at another key distinction here.

Differences between Lyft and Uber destination filters

With Lyft, you get six uses of the destination filter in a day. That includes when I works and also when it doesn’t work. It times out after about 15 minutes. With Uber you only get two uses, but they both have to be successful. So that means if you try and use the Uber destination filter and you don’t get a ride, it doesn’t count towards your score. So you get two uses when it actually works.

Don’t make this mistake when you set your destination?

The next thing I want to point out is how you set your target point. I think a lot of people make a mistake here in the way that they set their target point. Let’s take a look at this screenshot and I’ll show you exactly what I mean.

So, what you want to do is you want to be sure and set your target point to the furthest possible point in the direction you’re going. A lot of people make the mistake in this example. Let’s say I am south and I’m heading north into San Francisco, and I want to get a ride anywhere within San Francisco. If I set the point for the center of the city, you see, you’ll only get the bottom half of the city. You won’t get all of that top part.

What you’d rather do is set that red point all the way up to the top, and that way you’re going to get the entirety of the city. So that’s a fine point, but it’s an important point when you’re setting your destination point. You want to get all of the areas that you can, because you’re more likely to get a ride that way, faster and with less wait time.

Different tactics for different times of day

I wanted to make a distinction now between times of the days where you want to get short rides and times of the day where you want to get long rides. Of course, during times of rush hour, that’s the best time to get short rides, because there are likely to be more people who are going to be doing the Lyft share to the Uber pool rides, so you can get a lot of rides in a single trip.

And that’s also when traffic is very heavy. You don’t want to be out on the freeways because you’re not going to be going anywhere, and going very slow, we don’t make much money. The time where you want to do long rides is in the middle of the day, and also on the weekends. You can really crush it on the weekends by taking a lot of long rides, doing a lot of driving at 70 miles per hour. That’s where we make the most dollars per hour in our industry.

I’ve done the math, and when we’re sitting in traffic we only make 18 cents per minute. When I’m driving down the freeway at 70 miles an hour, $1.30 per minute. So clearly, when we can get those long rides, we want to do that.

How I used destination filters to boost my earnings

What I’d like to show you now is how I used the destination filter last Sunday to produce some really remarkable results. Let’s go to the screenshot.

What you can see here is I made over $400 and I worked about eight hours. And if you look at the red arrows, you can see so many of these long trips. If you start at the bottom, that’s the earlier in the day. You’ll see at 10 o’clock I got a $64. That was from San Francisco, and I set the destination filter for San Jose Airport, and I got somebody who was going to the airport.

Then after I got to the airport, then I worked my way back up towards San Francisco. And then you’ll see, later in the day at 2:00 I got another long ride, and then another long ride. And those are varying rides all based on the destination filter taking me from one end of the bay to the other.

It’s a pretty potent tool that we have, and it’s not just to be used for getting yourself home at the end of the day. You can use it to make yourself, I estimate, 10 to 20% more on your earnings.

I hope this deep dive into the destination filters gives you a little more confidence, and gives you some ways to think about how you can use the destination filter, not just as a way to get home at the end of the night, but as a way to maximize the dollars-per-hour that you make out there on the road.

Thanks for watching the video. This is Jay Cradeur, I appreciate you checking out the YouTube Channel here, this is Harry’s YouTube channel for the Rideshare Guy. I highly recommend you subscribe. Get on it so you get notified of new videos. Be safe out there!

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