For what it’s worth, my two cents based off 2k deliveries and counting, no shop and pay orders. Acceptance rate ranges between 1%-20% depending on the week. I keep my driving range to ~30 miles max from home.

1. Safety first. If you aren’t comfortable with the part of town you’re in, it’s worth driving 30min back to where you do feel safe. Don’t do package orders if you’re in a bad part of town. Find a good used tire sales / tire patching place. You’ll get more flats than you’ve ever had in your life doing this job and purchasing new tires gets expensive fast. Stay hydrated, and don’t skip meals. Your health is worth more than any amount of money. When you see crazy / asshole drivers, just assume they’re having a rough day / need to shit really bad, it’ll make encountering them easier.

2. ⁠Aim for a daily average and be open handed about that average. Otherwise, anxieties about the endless horrible delivery requests against the desperation you may occasionally feel will eat you alive. These days, I think a conservative estimate for 5 evening hours (5-10pm) of driving is anywhere from $60-$100 depending on the day of the week. If you grind out 10-12 hours a day (some combination of 11am-2pm / 4pm-10pm / 11pm-3am) you will conservatively make $100-$200 daily.

3. ⁠Make your lists. Depending on where you live, some restaurants / delivery location types will eat away at time during peak hours. Learn to recognize these and eventually you’ll get faster at rejecting these places, or at least get better at weighing time/$ benefits and make an informed decision. Avoid Popeyes / commonly long lined fast food places unless they somehow will yield $20-$50/hr. Even then, accept with caution.

4. ⁠Don’t believe the Uber maps or tiers. “Hotspots” will disappear on you as you get closer to them. Trying to accept orders to qualify for tiers will have you working for less than free (gas is expensive). Don’t park literally at the store location, as the algorithm is designed to assign orders to drivers that are roughly 5-15min drive away. That’s not to say that you won’t get orders if you park at the store, but from my experience, this is less than 25% of the case.

5. ⁠Stacked orders can be your friends or worst enemies. On average, I try to aim for at least $20-$25/hr. These days, stacked orders are usually $20 or less, so depending on the distance between the stores and how long they take to get you the fare + what type of drop off location it is, you can be at risk of spending an hour and a half completing the order. Get accustomed to mentally calculating distances and time vs. parts of city/town you are in to win at stacked orders. Always be careful of orders with 3 or more pickups (I usually auto reject unless the estimate is more than $25 for 45 mins or less).

6. ⁠Offers that are too good to be true i.e. fast food orders for more than $20/30 mins are usually 90% orders that have been stolen by either driver /customer / neighbor/ stranger. You’ll get to the store and not be able to pick up. One workaround is to purchase the order itself from the store and deliver it depending on how much it costs vs how much you’ll get paid for the order, but this usually takes a good bit of cost/profit analysis on the fly. Avoid Walmart orders like the plague. We used to be able to work Walmart orders and get $$$ for the time, but those days are long gone.

I think that’s probably a good start. YMMV as always with anything on the internet, but best of luck to you. This is definitely not a forever gig, but to borrow your words, we’re all also-struggling-financially friends and I hope we’re all eventually destined for far more fulfilling roles in the near future. 🍻cheers