My Side Hustle Experiment: How to make an extra $600 a month with DoorDash and InstaCart

DoorDash:

One thing I didn’t know going in is that DoorDash actually gives you two pay options:

• Per delivery (you get a flat fee plus tips for each order), or
• Per hour (a guaranteed hourly rate plus tips)

I started out trying the per delivery method and spent about 2 hours delivering but only made $25 ($11.22/hour). After that I mostly did per hour and that did increase my per hour rate to closer to $15/hour. That said, tips can really move the needle. I found that some people do not tip at all, some people tip $1-2 and some people are very generous and may tip $5+. There are also people who get really good at delivering multiple orders at a time (called stacked orders) and can get several done in an hour. These people are probably better off doing the per hour option, but I never got that good and the availability of stacked orders seems to vary based on your location.

A challenge that I had with DoorDash was that you really can’t control where you will need to take the delivery. The option would pop up telling you what restaurant to pick the food up from and the estimated miles/time the delivery would take, but it will not tell you the address or location until after you pick up the food. I know this is for the privacy of the people ordering the food and do not think that should change, but I do think it is important to note that safety can sometimes be a factor. Luckily, I almost always went out with a buddy. But there were definitely a few times I would have felt uncomfortable delivering in certain locations alone, especially at night. My “helpful” friend calling me to tell me I was going to get murdered for $5 may have also contributed to that feeling!

Okay, so here’s what you all really want to know: how much did I make? For DoorDash, I spent a total of 30.5 hours and made a total of $490 (average of $16.14/hour). The total mileage for these trips was 614 miles which would have taken around 30 gallons and does decrease the profit (although I may get a tax benefit to offset some of it).  

InstaCart

The good thing about InstaCart compared to DoorDash is that you can pick and choose what orders or “batches” you accept. There will be a list of available batches that will be divvied out first-come-first serve. There are some orders that are only available or may be offered first to individuals who have completed a certain number of deliveries and have higher ratings on the app.

With all that being said, I found InstaCart to be a bit more tedious and harder to get the higher dollars per hour. DoorDash really only requires you to walk into a store, pick up a bag of food, and deliver it while InstaCart requires you to walk through the store and search for items, ask associates for assistance if items can’t be found, and communicate with customers about substitutions. For me, this felt like the additional mental and physical energy should translate into more money per hour, but it did not in my experience. However, I do believe the wear and tear on your car would be less over time compared to DoorDash since you are spending a greater deal of your time in the store compared to on the road. Overall I spent around 11 hours delivering with InstaCart for a total of $145 (an average of $14.46 per hour. The total mileage for these trips was 89 miles (around 4.5 gallons for my car).

Tips: For my limited experience with InstaCart, the tips were make or break. There were two specific customers who really helped my average. One tipped me around $15 and another tipped $22! If not for those two generous people, my average would be way less than below.

Is It Worth It?

That depends. If you’re working toward getting out of debt, building an emergency fund, or saving for something specific — a side hustle like this can absolutely help.

No, it won’t make you rich overnight. But it can give you some breathing room. For me, the $600 total I made on side hustles went a long way towards paying for my cat’s broken leg. But above and beyond that, now I know that I can make an extra $600+ a month for 10 hours of work per week. That really isn’t bad!

If you’re thinking about trying it, my advice is: Give it a test run. Set a time limit, track your earnings, and see how it fits into your life. Just like with budgeting, sometimes the biggest hurdle is simply getting started.