Gig Work Isn’t Dead… You’re Just Doing It Wrong

Added: 2026-04-29

[00:00:06]Good evening everyone. Jeff here. Today is April 9th and I am recording my Easter Sunday event to further try to get people to understand that even in trying times with fuel through the roof, no end in sight, companies trying to take every penny they can from us. In my opinion, Uber and Lyft are criminal entities. But I figure if I put out enough of these, you guys can understand that there are still ways to win in spite of that. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not an accountant. I'm not an economist. I'm a person who is sharing successes that I've had in the hopes that you can take something from these videos and put it into what you do and try to make profits. So, Saturday of last week, the day before Easter, this came to me on Uber. Now, I have put out two previous videos showing offers like these. The first one was a $50 one. The second one was a hundred. This one, unbelievably, is $150 extra for just 10 rides. Absence probably really does make the heart grow fonder because I do not use Uber nearly as much as I used to four or five or 6 years ago. But I still turn the app on once in a while. And this is the same exact offer I've gotten three times in the last three months because after the offer, I'll turn the app back off and I'll check it once in a while for reserve rides. But I just there is so much I don't like about Uber more so than fits into my business model better.

[00:01:36]So here goes. So you can see this pretty simple. This was Saturday night um you know five or 6 days ago. So this seemed pretty easy. So Easter, I had plans with the family in the afternoon and evening.

[00:01:48]So my goal was to knock out 10 rides and do Spark, which is another one of my gigs, which had some incredible incentives. And for the record, I think by far Spark is the best delivery app out there for multiple reasons, a couple of which I will try to cover in this video. So here's my day. Again, I decided to show you guys mileage this way because these are the a lot of the feedback questions I get. Yeah, you don't tell us your mileage. You don't show us the time. We don't know how much you make per hour. We don't know how much you make per mile. So, this was the first four rides to get the first leg of the bonus and four spark orders. For this, I drove 116.4 miles. 44.6 6 MPG, 54 was electric, the rest was the gas engine, and there's the time. So, here's the summary of the first four rides.

[00:02:43]This includes the first $50, which you get paid right after the first four rides are complete. So, I made $113. If you take off 50, I made $63 in four rides. This was the mileage and time for the other six rides. You'll see the summary at the end. So now you have every mile I drove from the time I left my house to the time I got home. This is the total after 10 trips including the $150. I made $334.74 just doing Uber for the 10 trips and then my app gets turned off until the next offer comes 3 weeks from now hopefully. This is a summary of Spark and here is the first reason that I think Spark is by far the best. There's three screenshots you're going to see.

[00:03:29]This is the price that I got paid for the trips from Walmart. So, the first one was two stops, $14. The second one was two stops, $8. Third was the same.

[00:03:39]And the fourth was three stops, $15.

[00:03:42]Now, I don't do a lot of Uber Eats anymore, but I don't think Uber pays more than $250 or $3 for a delivery. The rest is tips. So, I will again, I will sum up these numbers at the end. Here's the second screen. This was the bonus incentive for Sunday morning between 5:45 a.m. and 8:15. You got $7 extra per trip. I was able to bang out four trips.

[00:04:07]These are the tips, which all by the way were confirmed. There is very little tip baiting on Spark. And by the way, this is the Daytona area, a very small market that doesn't even have Lift Black, Uber Premiere, or Uber Black. Keep that in mind for all of you who say, "Yeah, well, it doesn't work in a small market.

[00:04:25]Doesn't work in my market." This was the Daytona area. Very, very small. And here's the total for the day. I brought in $441.14 in revenue. I drove doortodoor $254.24 miles. My expenses are 39.7 a mile. You see my expenses of $100.93.

[00:04:45]My income, which is after I take out the expenses, was 34021.

[00:04:51]That comes out to $134 per mile after expenses and $3823 per hour after expenses. I did 10 Uber rides, all Uber X. I did four Spark orders, and I was online for 8.9 hours.

[00:05:05]Let's say 9 hours. So, if my first order was 6:00 a.m., I was done by 3:00 in the afternoon and then spent the next 5 to6 hours enjoying Easter dinner at my in-laws. My IRS mileage deduction for today was $184.30 and that's based off $72.5 per mile in 2026. So, that goes against my taxable income for this day of $34021.

[00:05:30]Guys, there are no secrets. I have seven or eight gig apps. I'm not on all of them all of the time. Thus, you tend to get better offers. And there are ways, again, this is my business. This is what I've chose to do in my retirement. I work when I want, how I want, for who I want. These were no private rides today.

[00:05:49]These were simple, taking advantage of what you're given by these companies.

[00:05:54]Again, I would never recommend anyone drive Uber, but when they put that kind of bonus in front of you, how do you not try to attain it? This was a nine-hour day and I made $34021.

[00:06:07]Love me, hate me, I'm gonna tell you my opinions without without trying to sell something that isn't true. The facts are in front of you.

[00:06:17]Keep those negative comments coming because they spur me on. They I reply to everyone if you read the comments on my prior videos and I especially reply to the negative people out there. Not that I know everything because I sorely don't. But I know about business and I know how to be successful and retire at 53. And you guys might not believe this, but I don't even call what I do today work because I'm at peace in my car. I make my own rules. I stop whenever I want. I make time for my family. And I laugh all the way to the bank. Big market, small market, any market. You can do it or you can complain. I say some negative things in my videos about Uber, about Lyft, about Spark, about Wings and EMT, but I use them to form my business and my business model.

[00:07:06]Hopefully, some of you take something from this and incorporate it into what you want to do in gig life because you can succeed in spite of all the odds against you. But it is in your hands.

[00:07:19]Nobody else. No government entity is going to save you. Uber and Lyft aren't going to save you. you're going to save you. Thank you. Have a wonderful day and I look forward to more very negative comments. And by the way, the three or four people who do respond positively, that's four times more people than my goal is to reach with every video. If I can help one or two people during every video, I've done my job. Thanks again to Chris and Sergio as always for giving me this platform. I'll talk to you all