Why I Decided to Drive for Lyft

I've been driving for Uber going on three months.  At first I didn't think it would work out.  I was frustrated by the low fees and unpaid miles.  Things have begun to improve.  One of the strategies I did to make rideshare driving more profitable was signing up for Lyft, Uber's main competitor.

What Are the Differences Between Uber and Lyft?

From a driver's perspective, Lyft cares more about our success:

• If you are logged onto Lyft for 30 hours per week, including 10 of the designated "Peak Hours", and accept 90% of the requests that come your way, you receive a 10% bonus on your weekly earnings.  Work 50 hours and the bonus is bumped up to 20%.  Uber has no such incentive.
• The Lyft app includes a tipping function.  When a ride ends, the customer can easily add a tip to the total fare.  Uber does not offer this, and actively encourages customers to stiff their drivers.
• On minimum fares, Lyft pays more.  This is because Lyft does not include the Safe Driver Fee in the minimum fare calculation - it is added to it.  On a $4 ride, the driver receives $3.20 with Lyft but only $2.40 with Uber.  That $.80 difference starts to add up when I drive on the beach, where minimum fares are standard.

There are some disadvantages to Lyft:

• Fewer people use Lyft.  It is only sustainable for me when used in conjunction with the Uber app.
• The requests that do come in are sometimes really far away.  I've had three requests that were almost a half hour drive to the passenger.  The longest request was 43 minutes away.  This is due to there being fewer drivers using Lyft.

Lyft is a great supplement to Uber income

First off, I was offered a $50 sign-on bonus for joining Lyft.  The only requirement was that I provide 30 rides, which I have already done.  One of the worst things in this industry is downtime between rides, and having two platforms open decreases the time I have to wait for my next request.

The Numbers

In my first week, I only logged onto Lyft over the weekend.  I was logged on for 17 hours and received a net payment of $191.46, which included $22 in tips.  The week of 8/31-9/6 was my first full week on Lyft.  I was logged on for 30 hours and received $292, which inclued $33 in tips and a $28 Power Driver Bonus.  I should note that most of the hours I logged I was not actually driving.  In fact, many of the hours I was sitting at home, running the clock to try to obtain my Power Driver bonus.  I succeeded at that in week 2.  The most difficult part was accepting 90% of my requests, since you are naturally inclined to ignore requests that are too far away.

Summary

Now that I've been driving Lyft for a few weeks, I'm finding a lot to like about it, but only as a supplement to Uber.  If Lyft was more popular with riders, I would choose to only do Lyft since it has a tip function and opportunity to earn bonuses.  I'm learning to ignore far-away requests, even though that means forgoing the bonus I would earn if I accepted 90% of the requests.  Sure, a $30 bonus is nice, but not so enticing if it means I am driving more unpaid miles and time to pick up a passenger.