Damon recently decided to try a little experiment and allow the Lyft app to choose all his rides for him one night.
Since the Lyft app knows Damon is approved to drive both regular Lyft and Lyft Lux, the question was if the app would attempt to maximize his income and earnings.
In all fairness, that is not a feature Lyft advertises for their drivers.
In this video, Damon and I talk about the results of his testing and how things worked out.
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Hey, you’re back with Steve Rhode and Damon Day with the Penny Stupid Project. We’re here with another Lyft story from Damon about his experience and what he’s learned being a Lyft driver and why this is really a good side hustle for you. If you’ve got some extra time and you’re willing to do ride share, you can make a hell of a lot of money.
[00:00:19] And Damon, one of the little experiments and tests that we did was what we are calling Lyft take the wheel, tell us about this test. Well, that’s what we called it at the beginning. At the end it was Jesus, take the wheel, like, Get me the hell outta here. I’m going home. So the goal was I was gonna accept everything that Lyft gave me for a full eight hours.
[00:00:42] Just get in the car, whatever Lyft said to do. Okay. You know, I was gonna be the good little errand boy and I was just gonna go do it. And I made it seven hours and 45 minutes until the last two Doozy rides just, I punched out. I’m like, I ain’t doing it. I know this is for the gram, but I ain’t doing it. I’m out.
[00:01:01] So overall, I, I think it was a good experiment because I know for sure I will never. Fucking do that again. . . We had talked about maybe Lyft has an algorithm that really helps to maximize your revenue and keeps you in a certain area to do the best that you can. And I think what we found out was.
[00:01:22] You can’t just trust the app. You have to exercise some driver intelligence and make good choices. What we tell our kindergartners make good choices. So, but it started out I wanted this to be a feel good story cuz there were so many people online trashing Lyft and trashing Uber and oh, it’s, uh, it just, I felt like everybody was trashing on ’em.
[00:01:41] And I’m looking at like, this is a great way for people, you don’t have to have any special skills other than to be human. And breathing and be able to interact with people and have a car. I mean, it’s mm-hmm. something that anybody can basically do. And so I was like, everybody’s, getting all over ’em about this, that, and the other thing.
[00:01:56] And I was like, like, no, let’s do a feel good story about how great Lyft actually is. And to be fair, I shouldn’t say it totally sucked because I did as far as let’s do the numbers. When Lyft was in control, I did 15 rides and I finished the night with $186, but I can’t count that for Lyft because I did two Lux rides after I punched out just to save the night.
[00:02:18] So I made, here it is I made $145, over. 15 rides, which is not great. I always make more than that when I’m actually controlling. So 15 rides, 146 bucks. Here’s the kicker I did 220 miles. They had me all over the Phoenix Valley, like all over the place. Not in any of the good areas though. It was all over. And I wanted to say, well, will the algorithm recognize that I’m being a team player? Right? Yeah. Will it recognize that I’m just accepting everything and just start stacking ride after, ride after ride.
[00:02:48] And really get me going? And for the most part it did that. It kept me busy all night. I never sat there. But it put me in areas that I would prefer. Let’s call ’em rough. We’re talking drug users on the corner, like it’s, you know, not even trying to hide it. You get there and you’re like, The pickup is like right around this fucking corner.
[00:03:06] Are you serious? And, well, here’s, here’s a funny thing is that you have me on the phone and I was, I felt like your safety line, because as you get closer to the bad area of the pickup, you’d be like, You will not believe what I just saw. . Yeah, and I’m, I’m rolling in my wife’s Cadillac too, so it’s like, sticking out like a sore thumb in some of these neighborhoods.
[00:03:27] But, you know, it’s for the gram. I’m trying to be a team player here. I’m like, okay, I gotta gut this thing. And so, I mean, all in all, it was something I would not wanna do again, but it wasn’t something that, it was like I didn’t make any money or they weren’t keeping me busy, but I have a luxury car, a Lux car where it would qualify me for higher level rides.
[00:03:44] Mm-hmm. , not one time did it give me a Lux ride, not once. And it never put me in an area where I was likely to get a Lux ride. So I feel like instead of the algorithm saying, Oh, this guy’s being a team player, let’s take care of him, I think the algorithm was. Look at this idiot . He’s accepting everything.
[00:04:01] Let’s start giving him all the shit that nobody else is gonna go get. Oh, you want to go 40 miles out this way and get some crack head and bring him back? Now granted, I didn’t have any crack heads. That was just a joke. Um, but there could have been, Cause I pulled up and I did pick up somebody that was talking to a homeless.
[00:04:18] Well, I would consider probably on drugs. Um, although that person I think was just bothering my ride because she was in, in this area. Wait, wait, wasn’t that the. Well, she was very nice. She was very nice. Okay. Nice girl. Um, was not dressed like that at all, but I took her from a bad area into a better area.
[00:04:38] So we were just chatting, you know, she’s a younger girl and I get my fatherly financial advice kind of going, I think you had that idea.
[00:04:44] I should do like, financial advice cab, like cash cab or something like that. Right, right. You know, we’re we’re, I mean, we’re gonna be sitting together for 30 minutes. Why not see if I can add some value to their life? So I do that a lot, especially when I have younger people in the car. I talk about what they do and.
[00:04:58] Earn a living. And a lot of times I talk to ’em about, Hey, I’m doing this experiment, I’m driving for Lyft. Mm-hmm and I made a thousand bucks or 1100 bucks that first week. And I’ve got several people that I think well at least said they wanted to be Lyft drivers after getting out of my financial advice cab
[00:05:12] So anyway, she was very nice and we were chatting and she had just moved here like, I dunno, 10 years ago from California, whatever. And somehow it came up and I was like, Oh, well what do you do? And she. Oh, I’m an independent contractor and oh, this my naive brain, you know? Um, just like not even clicking with me.
[00:05:30] And I’m like, Oh, okay. So like, well, what exactly do you do? Mm-hmm. . And she goes, um, things. And I go, Oh, got it. Okay. And then I, you know, abandon that line of questioning but so what at the, your advice, if everyone, anyone wants to, Lyft, take the wheel or Jesus, take the wheel, your advice. So, Well, here’s the thing.
[00:05:54] I did that my first week, for the most part, but your first week, you’re very naive and you’re trying to learn your city anyway, so it’s actually kind of good, When you’re first getting started, it’s not something you’re gonna wanna do if you already know your city and you’re getting your own strategies.
[00:06:07] But that first week, you don’t know where the rider’s going anyway. So you don’t really have much of a choice when you’re picking your rides that first week. But once you hit gold, which is where I was a gold level when I did this experiment, so I knew the shit that I was gonna be getting into when I accepted the ride, which I think made it worse ?
[00:06:25] Cuz now I’m like, Oh, I know where I’m going. So I would probably suggest not to do that unless it’s your first week or two and don’t look at what you do your first week and then project that, especially if you don’t have a great week, cuz you’re gonna just get better and better.
[00:06:40] You’re gonna learn tips, you’re gonna learn tricks. Right. Exactly. Yeah, I know what this means to me. You subscribe. Come on right here, hit the button. We got like 80 subscribers. That’s doing good. Subscribe, follow, Click the bell. Don’t be out of the loop. Yeah so as bad as it was, and it was good until it got midnight and it had me in some shady areas, and there was the last two, I just canceled the ride I got there and I’ve told both those stories on different videos, so I’m not gonna tell the story here, but stuff wasn’t feeling right to me and some stuff was going down and I was like, Uhuh, I’m out.
[00:07:13] I canceled it. So finally I punched out seven hours, 45 minutes. You gotta give me credit. Yeah, I drove my ass as fast as I could back to Scottsdale and got two Lux rides to finish the night at $186 because I grabbed two quick luxury rides when I got back to the area that I should have been in the whole night.
[00:07:33] So it made me an extra quick 40, 50 bucks. And then I went home and I think I talked to you like 3:00 AM cuz you’re three hours ahead of me, . And I’m like, I’m never, I’m never gonna do that again. I had a terrible night’s sleep cuz I was just following you the whole time I’d wake up and look at the phone, make sure you weren’t at a hospital or a police station.
[00:07:51] You’re like, Where the hell is he at now? Is that the desert? ? Is this Breaking Bad? He’s in the middle of the desert and he’s been stopped for 20 minutes. What’s do. You say that, but the problem is they Google maps and the Lyft map has not kept up with satellite pictures. So sometimes it does look like you’re in the middle of the freaking desert.
[00:08:11] Yeah. And I’m just like, Oh, please God. You’re like, This is gonna be a good video to edit.
[00:08:20] All right, so if you want more Lyft tips, you want more updates, you want more success tips on how to make money as a side hustle, ride share driver. Be sure to stay tuned to the channel. Subscribe, follow, ring the bell, get notified, and, we’ll be back with more tips. Yes, because I have learned a lot.
[00:08:38] So now you know what not to do. Now we’ll start doing some videos, sharing with you some strategies that you can do to maximize your revenue per day, and then also to maximize your revenue per hour. All right, See ya, Peace.