How to Implement a Customer Referral Program That Drives Sales

As a business owner, you have to keep coming come up with creative ways to attract new customers. But as you know, this type of marketing can be expensive.

It’s much more cost-effective to market to your existing customers than to find new ones. Acquiring a new customer is six to seven times more expensive than retaining a current customer.

Sure, you may be very profitable right now without putting too much emphasis on acquisition. However, that business model isn’t sustainable forever.

You can’t grow at an exponential rate without expanding your customer base. Sooner or later, you’ll need to run marketing campaigns to attract new customers.

That’s why you need to implement customer acquisition strategies that won’t break the bank.

A customer referral program is one of my favorite ways to do this. Your campaigns will leverage your existing customers to bring in new business.

Take a look at the most significant driving factors of retail revenue:

As you can see, retention and acquisition ranked first and second on the list. Combining both of these into one marketing campaign will be very beneficial for your business.

If you can properly implement a customer referral program, you’ll get new customers without having to do much work. All you have to do is set up the program. The rest will take care of itself.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not as easy as it sounds.

The key here is coming up with the right referral program that gets your current customers excited enough to participate.

Whether you’re creating your first customer referral program or trying to improve your existing one, this guide will help you. I’ll tell you everything you need to know about referral programs that drive sales.

Prioritize the customer experience

Before you start worrying about the logistics of your referral program, you need to make sure your existing customers are properly taken care of.

After all, this strategy won’t work if your customers are unhappy. Research shows that 89% of businesses named customer experience as a key factor for customer retention and loyalty.

In fact, customers care more about the customer service than the quality of whatever they are purchasing.

Research indicates 86% of consumers are willing to pay more money for an enhanced customer experience.

This type of service starts at the top of the organization and works its way down. As the owner, you need to set the tone and make sure all your employees know how important customer service is to your success.

Unhappy customers are bad for business. Only 1 out of 26 dissatisfied customers will complain. What about the other 25? They’ll leave without saying a word.

According to research, 68% of customers say they left a company because they believe the brand didn’t care about them. Don’t let this happen to you. Let your customers know how much you care.

Happy customers are much more valuable. In fact, more than 80% of customers say they are willing to make referrals.

Unfortunately, only a smaller percentage actually do.

That’s why your referral program will need to provide some extra incentives, but we’ll talk about that in greater detail shortly.

Offer referral incentives

If customers are happy, you’ll get some organic referrals even without implementing a program.

But for the most part, you can’t rely on such referrals alone when it comes to driving sales and getting new customers. It’s not scalable.

Give your customers a reason to refer their friends and family. Discounts and other monetary benefits will be the most actionable.

Put yourself in your customers’ shoes for a minute. Think about some of your favorite brands. Are you going to spend a ton of time trying to bring them new customers? If it comes up in a conversation, you might make a recommendation. But I assume you’re probably not actively going out of your way to do this.

However, I’m willing to bet that if the company offered you a credit, discount, or reward for these efforts, it would probably change your approach.

On the flip side, let’s say someone refers you to a new company. Sure, you may be likely to try them out. But an incentive would definitely boost your motivation to do that.

The best customer referral programs offer incentives to both current as well as new customers.

Here’s an example of this strategy implemented by MeUndies:

It’s a simple concept.

When one of their customers refers a friend, the new customer will get 20% off their purchase. Once that purchase is made, the original customer gets a $20 gift card.

That adds up fast. The customers know they’ll get a $100 credit if they can convince just five people to make a purchase. This gives them a reason to spread the word.

Make sure your incentives are worth it to both parties. The amount needs to be relative to your prices.

With the MeUndies example, most of their products fall within that $20 range, so it’s a great amount. But if the reward was only $5, it may not be worth their customers’ time.

However, that doesn’t mean $5 won’t work for another business. Check out this referral incentive offered by Bird:

If you haven’t heard of Bird, they are a new brand with an innovative spin on ride sharing. They have electric scooters placed all over different cities.

Customers use their mobile app to unlock the scooters. At a rate of just $1 to unlock a scooter and an additional $0.15 per minute, the $5 reward translates to nearly 30 minutes of free riding time.

While $5 may not be a big incentive for other referral programs, it is for this one.

That’s what you need to come up with. Take a look at your products or services, and decide what would be a good offer.

You don’t want to offer something too high that’s going to lose you money, but it also can’t be so low that it doesn’t motivate customers.

Find that sweet spot in between, and set your incentives at that amount.

Focus on a fast ROI

Just like with any other marketing campaign, you want to make sure your referral program makes sense from a financial standpoint.

If you’re spending money without getting a return on your investment, you obviously won’t be profitable. But the great thing about referral programs is that unlike traditional acquisition campaigns, they cost much less.

This connects to my previous point about finding an incentive that will encourage sales without depriving you of your profits.

When you’re unsure how to do things, it’s always a good idea to follow the lead of those who succeeded before you. Take a look at Uber.

That’s one of their initial referral promotions. It was a standard “give $20, get $20 concept.”

Let’s do some simple math here. If the current customer and new customer each get $20, the cost per acquisition is $40 based on this campaign.

I know what you’re thinking: $40 per acquisition sounds high. You might not think your business can afford something like this.

But if you do your research ahead of time, you’ll be able to get a quick ROI if you know your margins.

In a short period of time, Uber turned into an international giant. Customer referrals were the driving force behind their expansion strategy. I came across a recent study that analyzed how they were able to accomplish this:

Keep these numbers in mind. If Uber kept 25% of what the average customer spent in a month, that would mean they would break even in less than two months if their acquisition costs were $40.

Once that $40 is repaid, everything else is profits.

The $20 for $20 offer is no longer available in every city or region.

Once they were able to control a large portion of the market share and prove their concept, they lowered the incentive. However, the new customers were already hooked.

You can apply the same approach to your referral program. Start off with high incentives to spread the word fast, but make sure you get a return on your investment.

After that, you can always make adjustments that translate to higher profits for your business.

Set yourself up for growth

Think about how you were able to get your existing customers to refer their friends.

You leveraged their customer loyalty and offered an incentive. Now, you have to apply that concept to these new customers.

Don’t waste any time. This is your chance to secure them for the long haul as well. Sure, they made a purchase because of a recommendation.

We know 92% of consumers trust a recommendation if it comes from someone they know. Your new customers already have a positive impression of your brand.

Now you have to convince them to stay. Once they make that first purchase because of the incentive you offered, what’s next?

Use your email marketing strategy to create an actionable drip campaign, and encourage these customers to buy again in the future.

Make sure they understand they can benefit from the referral program. This should be much easier for you because referred customers are more willing and likely to refer more new customers.

Furthermore, the profit margins from referred customers are roughly 25% higher than from non-referred customers.

Your customer referral program can set you up for exponential growth. Think about how successful you would be if each new customer referred just one new customer.

And then imagine all of those new customers also referred a friend. Can you see how quickly this could turn into a sales-driving formula for your company?

Keep an eye on quality control

This whole concept started with prioritizing the customer experience. Don’t ruin that.

For example, let’s say a customer refers a friend, but due to some glitch in your system, they don’t receive their incentive. That’s a big problem for you.

Now they went from a happy customer, who wants to refer their friends, to a dissatisfied customer, who thinks you’re trying to take advantage of them. Instead of getting an additional customer, you may have lost one.

It’s important you thoroughly check all the technology associated with your referrals. How will you send the incentives?

Text. Email. Social media. Promo code. Make sure each distribution method works.

Here’s something else to consider. You have to keep an eye out for customers who may be trying to rip you off. Just like with anything else, there will always be people looking to take advantage of the system.

You spent the time and crunched the numbers to come up with the perfect incentives for your customer referral program. In order for you to profit, those margins can’t be tampered with.

Customers might create multiple accounts and refer themselves to get the incentive on both accounts.

If this happens, you’ll end up losing money without getting a new customer. Make sure you have some safety nets in place to catch and/or prevent this type of occurrence.

Conclusion

Your business needs new customers.

With high average acquisition costs, you need to focus on cost-effective marketing campaigns. Leveraging your current customers is the best way to do this.

First, you need to focus on providing excellent customer service. Next, you’ll have to come up with an incentive that encourages the current customer and prospective customer to make a purchase.

Set yourself up for exponential growth and a quick return on your investment.

Keep an eye on the quality. You need to make sure your program works from a technical perspective and that nobody takes advantage of any loopholes.

If you implement this strategy, you’ll see an increase in sales from both current as well as new customers.

What kind of referral incentives are you offering to drive sales?

Source Quick Sprout https://ift.tt/2KQ1WLE

How to Make Ordinary Experiences Amazing Again

I recently came across a fascinating article by Ed O’Brien, a professor at the University of Chicago, and Robert Smith, a professor at The Ohio State University, entitled Unconventional Consumption Methods and Enjoying Things Consumed: Recapturing the “First-Time” Experience, which appeared in a very recent issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

I’ll let the article’s abstract explain the basics:

People commonly lament the inability to re-experience familiar things as they were first experienced. Four experiments suggest that consuming familiar things in new ways can disrupt adaptation and revitalize enjoyment. Participants better enjoyed the same familiar food (Experiment 1), drink (Experiment 2), and video (Experiments 3a-3b) simply when re-experiencing the entity via unusual means (e.g., eating popcorn using chopsticks vs. hands). This occurs because unconventional methods invite an immersive “first-time” perspective on the consumption object: boosts in enjoyment were mediated by revitalized immersion into the consumption experience and were moderated by time such that they were strongest when using unconventional methods for the first time (Experiments 1-2); likewise, unconventional methods that actively disrupted immersion did not elicit the boost, despite being novel (Experiments 3a-3b). Before abandoning once-enjoyable entities, knowing to consume old things in new ways (vs. attaining new things altogether) might temporarily restore enjoyment and postpone wasteful replacement.

In each of these three experiments, an ordinary activity was modified in some significant way in order to make that ordinary activity appear novel.

The first experiment centered around eating popcorn – a pretty normal activity. However, the experimenters noticed that people’s enjoyment of eating popcorn increased drastically when they were eating it with chopsticks.

The second experiment? People drank ordinary water. However, their enjoyment was boosted greatly when they drank said water out of a novel container like a martini glass.

The third experiment? People watched a video of a motorcycle ride. However, those that watched the video while making “hand goggles” (meaning they cupped their hands and pretended that they were goggles or binoculars and watched the videos through them) noted that they enjoyed the video more.

What’s the core lesson here? Ordinary activities become fresh again (at least for a little bit) if done with a novel twist.

This is why restaurants will do things like serve ordinary beverages in unusual glasses, like a Mason jar with a handle – it makes the ordinary drink seem novel and special and heightens the experience. This is why so many restaurants try to come up with novel (but still palatable) food pairings. This is why movie companies rely on simple twists on ordinary movie plots over and over and over again.

It’s because all of those things take an ordinary thing – a plain beverage, an ordinary food, a typical movie – and twists them just enough to make them seem novel and new and fresh again, and you’ll pay good money for that experience.

The thing is, you can actively use that approach in your day to day life to make ordinary low cost things seem novel and refreshing. It’s really not that hard and, in fact, it’s something I do all the time.

For example, you might try a new seasoning blend on your ordinary scrambled eggs or on your ordinary hamburger or your ordinary grilled fish. The cost addition is trivial, but you’ve altered the flavors enough that the simple homemade meal tastes fresh and new. For example, rather than having an ordinary hamburger with ordinary seasonings, try making an Ollieburger, which tastes decidedly different due to the different spices used. It’s an ordinary burger, but with just a few spices and ingredients, it’s very different and fresh and novel again.

You can try simply altering the drinks you have at the dinner table. If you pour yourself a glass of water to have with dinner, add a few ice cubes and a slice of lemon (or lime or orange or grapefruit) to it and it somehow feels different. Drink it out of a Mason jar and it feels even more different.

Go on a different route than normal when you walk your dog. Just see what you find to the left rather than to the right. What do you find when you go that way? Keep your eyes open and suddenly the experience is interesting rather than routine.

You’re getting the idea. Here are some more.

Drive a different commute to and from work, just to see some different things along the way.

Put a different topping on your ice cream.

Try a completely different set of exercises at the gym.

Read a book on a subject you’ve never read about before, or in a genre you’re unfamiliar with, or by an author whose work you’ve never read before.

Buy different versions of the staple foods you buy at the store – a different kind of bread or a different kind of condiment.

Laugh.

Modify your morning routine in some significant way, such as drinking your coffee outside or taking a cold shower.

Do something different after work than what you normally do. Go to a park and go on a nature walk instead of just going home and crashing in front of a computer or the television.

Make your experience into a ritual by doing things with a bit of extra pomp and circumstance, like setting out nice place settings for an ordinary meal. (That’s actually the point of this paper, which outlines how rituals can make ordinary things much more enjoyable.)

Ask your spouse to surprise you with some of these variants, and surprise your spouse sometimes with some of these variants.

This list can go on forever and ever, of course, but the principle behind it is super simple: if your ordinary life seems boring, try simple variations on the ordinary things.

It’s worth noting that this is rather different than splurging. The goal here isn’t to buy yourself a treat, but to simply add some variety to the (ideally) very low cost ordinary daily routine that you have for yourself, so that you don’t fall into a sense of going through the motions over and over and over again and find yourself bored with your life.

The reality is that the road to financial success is slow and a big part of that path is minimizing the cost of your ordinary daily life. That can really lock you into a pretty ordinary and repetitive daily routine, which can become quite boring and constraining over time. Simply figuring out ways to add variations and new elements to that daily routine can add the kind of variety that we all want out of life without causing financial difficulties.

So, if you find yourself on the road to financial independence but you’re finding the day to day grind of it quite boring, look for ways to add variety to that day to day routine without adding cost and start mixing things up. Furthermore, ask your partner and your close friends and family to do the same, in ways which will sometimes surprise you.

You’ll find that adding these kinds of little variants to the ordinary routine of a financially stable life can make things quite a bit more enjoyable without making things far more expensive.

Good luck!

The post How to Make Ordinary Experiences Amazing Again appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Source The Simple Dollar https://ift.tt/2N74dz3

Five Products I’m Happy to Splurge On, Guilt-Free

I am proud to call myself a wary consumer. I do my best to combat manipulative marketing, I recognize the value of repairing and maintaining my things, and I focus on long-term goals rather than short-term gratification.

That being said, there are certain products I buy without guilt, even when I know an alternative can be had for less. That’s because I have honed in on what matters to me. Everyone will have their own version of this list, and that’s great. We shouldn’t feel guilty about small (and sometimes large!) splurges that lead to a dramatically increased quality of life.

With Amazon’s big “Prime Day” sale coming up, I decided to profile my favorite products, all of which can be found on Amazon, and some of which can hopefully be had at a discount next Monday.

Razors

Safety razors are all the rage in the personal finance community, and for good reason. They represent the cheapest way to shave, they produce less waste than disposable razors, and many people get a closer shave by using them.

I tried for over a year to master the art of shaving with a safety razor. I found it tedious and painful. Then, one day, against all my frugal instincts, I splurged on some fancy (to me) multi-blade Gillette razors. My next shave was glorious. It was like I’d unlocked a super power. Everything was effortless and easy.

Ever since that moment, I’ve been spending $50 to $60 a year on new blades. When using a safety razor, I could get a year’s worth of blades for less than five bucks. It’s a steep price to pay, but for me, the new blades are worth every penny. If you’ve been struggling to master the safety razor and you’re sticking it out for cost reasons, I recommend coming over to the dark side.

Headphones

I commute to Manhattan for work, and I don’t know how I would do it without headphones. It is so nice to get lost in my music while riding a squeaky subway or navigating the impossibly crowded, noisy streets.

When I moved here, I quickly realized that if I really wanted to get some peace and quiet, my $10 earbuds were not going to cut it. I had to blast those at dangerously high decibels in order to hear them over the din of NYC. I have sensitive ears and I didn’t want to get tinnitus, which is when you hear a ringing in your ears.

This is not a minor issue. About 50 million Americans have some sort of tinnitus! I look at the care of my ears in much the same way I think about my dental health, in that relatively minor efforts now (like brushing twice a day) will go a long way toward securing a healthy future. Thus, I invested in a nice pair of noise cancelling headphones from Bose.

They are very expensive, but I think they’ve been worth it. Hands down, the best aspect of the headphones is the noise cancelling function, which allows me to listen to my music at a reasonable volume amidst the chaos of the city. The icing on the cake is that music sounds rich and textured, the earpads feel like clouds, and the battery lasts for a very long time.

I use them about an hour a day. Even if they only last me four years, that will be about 1,500 hours of listening time. That’s enough time spent with one product for me to be willing to invest in something of the highest quality.

Kitchen Knives

As an avid home chef, I find my $120 Wusthof chef’s knife to be indispensable. If you’re chopping onions and peppers with a dull knife, you have no idea what you are missing.

When using quality knives, prep work in the kitchen is infinitely easier. I’m actually more likely to consume healthy foods than before I had this knife, as I’m less hesitant to prepare dishes that require me to chop vegetables. Yes, my past self was lazy. But that doesn’t change the fact that an upgraded knife made a big difference. It is durable and easily sharpened, so I should be set for a long time.

When you make eating at home a pleasure, you’ll be much less likely to spend money eating out, an activity that costs the average American over $3,000 per year.

Coffee

As much as I wish I was like my father-in-law, who can chug instant Folgers all day and be perfectly satisfied, I really like to drink nice coffee. It’s something I do every day, and it would feel like a big sacrifice if I were to try to save as much money as possible on my habit.

I do limit my costs by mostly brewing my own coffee at home, but I’ll drink stuff that costs eight to 10 bucks a pound, such as Peet’s, when I could easily find coffee at Costco for four bucks a pound or less. I estimate that this costs me an additional $300 to $400 per year.

I consider this a worthy expense, though — especially because I drink my coffee black. If I used cream and sugar, this wouldn’t be as big a deal. You can mask a lot of the poor qualities of bad beans with additives. So, if I ever go the cream route, I know I can scale back on my coffee spending.

Bath Towels

This one might seem like an odd choice, but hear me out. Most of us use a bath towel every single day of our lives. Do you want to be rubbing yourself dry with something that’s rough, slow to dry, and prone to holding in smells?

For me, high-quality camping towels solve all of those problems. They’re soft, quick drying, and can pass the smell test for a lot longer than a cheap cotton towel. They aren’t prohibitively expensive, running me about $16 for a large towel, but they are significantly more than a generic one I could get at Walmart for four bucks. Heck, there was a couple-year stretch where I exclusively used old towels that I’d “borrowed” from my parents. So, while it’s not a necessity to spend money on a towel that perfectly suits my needs, it sure is nice.

Summing Up

I wouldn’t recommend these splurges to people who are in debt, or have yet to save an adequate emergency fund. But, for those who have those basics covered, there’s nothing wrong with spending a fair amount of money for quality things that make you happy. And if you can find something on sale during Amazon’s Prime Day, all the better.

Related Articles

• 10 Things I Refuse to Do to Save Money
• Knowing When to Splurge – and When You’ll Regret It
• The ‘Buy It for Life’ Compendium, Vol. 2

The post Five Products I’m Happy to Splurge On, Guilt-Free appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

Source The Simple Dollar https://ift.tt/2m7Eef7

This Cowgirl Shaman Earns $90/Hour Reading the Minds of Horses

Nearly three decades ago, Terri Jay was leading a horse therapy program at an elementary school in her home state of Nevada.

As she helped a little boy with cerebral palsy into the saddle, she heard him say: “Ouch, there’s a cramp in my hip.”

After she adjusted him, she heard him ask: “You can hear me?”

Not thinking much of it, she replied affirmatively before leading him around the field. They chatted about homework, friends and the school play. When it was over, one of the volunteers pointed out that Jay’s conversation had been one-sided — the boy was completely non-verbal.

“It didn’t dawn on me at the time that he wasn’t talking out loud,” Jay says.  

Deeply confused, Jay went to the boy’s classroom, where she says he’d typed up “horse lady can hear me” on his communication device. His teacher was in disbelief, according to Jay, as was she.

“I was just in shock,” she says. “I’d never had anything like this happen to me before.”

From Skeptic to Believer

Though Jay didn’t understand how, she knew she’d heard that boy speak.

“My first thought was it’s a bunch of BS,” she says. “I’m very down-to-earth and pragmatic; to think about hearing thoughts was way out of my realm of possibility.”

But she figured if she could hear a non-verbal child, she could also hear horses — and make her equine therapy program safer.

At the time, Jay was married to a horse trainer who often dealt with problem horses. As she practiced listening to their thoughts, she discovered most of them had pain issues — and was able to make a big difference in their lives, as well as their owners’ lives.  

“It just sort of all segued together,” she says.

Psychic Jobs: The Business of a Real-Life Horse Whisperer

Word of Jay’s ability spread throughout the horse community, and people began asking her to help them figure out what was wrong with their horses.

Her growing business reached new heights when she built a website, and was then again buoyed by the release of “The Horse Whisperer” book and movie in 1995 and 1998.

Further technological advances — like accepting payments through Paypal, marketing through Facebook and attracting visitors through search engines — allowed her to offer her services throughout the country and even overseas.

She now works full time, or as she says, “seven days a week and holidays.” Most of her readings are one-on-one, over the phone; she usually does three in the morning and three in the afternoon.

Jay charges $50 for a 30-minute session and $90 for an hour. Customers rarely ask for refunds, and when they do, Jay says the clients often apologize later because they realize she’d been right.

She’s also expanded her services over the years.

When a horse client mentioned that her daughter had recently passed away, Jay asked the client if she’d like to speak to her.

Jay revealed that the client had been looking through her daughter’s jewelry for a bracelet the day before — and was correct.

“So that’s when I found out I was a medium,” she says.

Today, 40% of her income comes from work as a horse psychic, and 30% comes from work as a medium.

The rest comes from her books, online training and other services, which include:

• Finding lost pets by telling owners what their pets are seeing, smelling and hearing
  
• Determining the location of gold by feeling for its energy on the map
  
• Remotely inspecting homes for people buying a house site unseen
  
• Communicating with non-verbal people who are in comas or have severe autism or dementia

How Jay’s Readings Work

To understand how she does what she does, Jay recommends a movie called “What the Bleep Do We Know?!” about quantum physics. She says its release was “a big turning point” in her life.

“It helped me a lot because I realized there’s no woo-woo to this stuff,” she says. “It’s just physics — I’m just a big cell phone tower that picks up on vibrations that people are missing.

“That [movie] made me feel so much better because I’m a down-to-earth cowgirl and things have to be grounded and rooted for me to accept them.”

When she communicates with another animal or person, Jay says she doesn’t receive words or sentences. Rather, she receives “pulses of information”; whatever tastes, sights, sounds and feelings the other person or animal is experiencing.  

“Any time you’re talking to a dog or cat or horse, it’s almost like the first thing you get are smells,” she says. “You have to have no preconceived notions.”

As an example, Jay says a client asked if her dead mother-in-law had seen what they’d done for her. Jay responded the family had planted a tree in her honor. The daughter-in-law asked what it looked like, and Jay said it had tiny pink flowers.

“And then of course I hear dead silence,” she says. “Because I was right.”

The Highs and Lows of Life As a Cowgirl Shaman

Jay admits her work can be draining, and has learned over the years she can’t do too many readings in a day.

“You do things with visualization and intention to protect yourself and stay plugged in,” she says. “You also need a lot of protein; it’s like you burn extra protein when you do this work.”

Because “everything has a vibration and frequency,” Jay is constantly being “bombarded” with information. She can’t listen to music, and also says shopping is difficult.

“I’m on all the time,” she says. “I don’t have an off switch.”

But, even though it’s tiring, she loves her work and finds it extremely rewarding.

“When people are grieving and they get a reading, they’re not the same when they’re done,” she says. “You’re helping people feel better. It truly is healing work.”

Do You Believe It?

Jay says she’s not a magician — just someone who’s learned to tune in better.

“I believe anybody can do this, I really do,” she says. “It’s picking up things without conscious thought.”

We’re all born with 10 senses, Jay explains: the five traditional ones, plus intuition, clairvoyance, clairsentience, clairaudience and claircognizance.

To develop her skills, she read books like “Kinship With All Life” and “Talking With Horses” — but says the most important factors were healing herself and finding happiness.

“You’ve got to get out of your own way,” she says. “Learn to feel instead of think.”

As for the skeptics, she gets it.

“I’m even still skeptical if that makes any sense,” she says. “But I always say I can’t make this [stuff] up — it ends up being too specific.

“It’s not my job to convince people. My job is to relay information; what they choose to do with it is up to them. I joke and say I’m just a messenger.”

Susan Shain is a freelance writer and digital nomad. She covers travel, food and personal finance (basically, how to save money so you can travel more and eat more). Visit her blog at susanshain.com, or say hi on Twitter @susan_shain.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.

source The Penny Hoarder https://ift.tt/2uhVylo

Want to Deliver With Uber Eats? Here’s Everything You Need to Know

The gig economy includes a little bit of everything — from Uber and Lyft partners to TaskRabbiters to Airbnb hosts. And it makes up a chunk of our overall economy.

About 7.8% of Americans (roughly 19.4 million of us), have earned money through the gig economy, according to a Penny Hoarder analysis of the 2017 Federal Reserve Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking.

Approximately 4 million of these gig workers have made money driving with Uber and Lyft.

One money-making option that you might not hear about as much? Uber Eats.

Perks include choosing your own hours and not having to drive intoxicated patrons around town — just some (hopefully) good-smellin’ takeout.

A Beginner’s Guide to Delivering Food Through Uber Eats

If you’re interested in delivering with Uber Eats, here’s what you need to know before hopping on board:

How Does Uber Eats Work?

Delivering food through Uber Eats is similar to giving rides through Uber. But rather than picking up and delivering people to a destination, you’ll deliver food. It’s different from a traditional food delivery service, because no one has to hand you money — that’s all handled within the app.

If you deliver food through Uber Eats, you’ll open the app and enable delivery requests. Requests are pinged to drivers who are closest to the restaurant, so you’ll want to position yourself strategically.

Typically, you’ll have up to 30 seconds to decide if you want to accept a delivery. If you opt in, you’ll get more information about the task, including the pick-up and drop-off locations and any special instructions. If you have questions for the customer — did you really want 30 packets of ketchup? — you can contact them through the app.

Depending on your city and the hungry customer’s preference, you’ll deliver the food curbside, meaning the customer comes to you, or you’ll walk in and deliver it to them at their door.

Uber Eats Requirements — Do You Qualify?

It’s time to determine whether you and your mode of transportation qualify for an Uber Eats delivery partner. Depending on where you live (check your location’s specific requirements), you could deliver via car, scooter or bike. Also note the vehicle and age requirements vary by city.

Car Delivery Requirements

• You must be at least 19 years old.
• You need to drive a two- or four-door car made after 1998.
• You must possess a valid driver’s license and insurance.
• You need to have at least one year of driving experience in the U.S.

Scooter Delivery Requirements

• You must be at least 19 years old.
• You must have a valid driver’s license and scooter registration.
• Any make and model of a two-wheel scooter is allowed.
• It must have a 50cc motor or less and cannot travel faster than 30 mph.

Bike Delivery Requirements

• You must be at least 18 years old.
• You need a government-issued ID.

How Much Can You Make Delivering Through Uber Eats?

How much you make through Uber Eats totally depends on how many orders you choose to accept.

You’ll earn a pick-up fee, a drop-off fee and then get paid per mile. Uber takes a cut of the overall payout. If the customer adds a tip (also through the app), you’ll pocket the entire sum.

Like Uber, Uber Eats also uses surge pricing, depending on demand, which could mean more money for you.

Also like Uber, Uber Eats offers an Instant Pay feature, which means you can get paid up to five times a day when you register your debit card.

Feeling Hungry for Extra Cash? Here’s How to Sign up

If you want to give Uber Eats a try and see how much you could make, signing up doesn’t take too long. You’ll sign up to deliver with Uber Eats online, just like you’d sign up for Uber.

In fact, if you’re already an Uber rideshare partner, there’s no need to sign up again. You’ll have the option to make Uber Eats deliveries within your app — just opt in for both driving and deliveries under your trip preferences.

Carson Kohler (carson@thepennyhoarder.com) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder.

This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.

source The Penny Hoarder https://ift.tt/2LaAapD