How a few drivers are turning Uber’s lagging driver training into a cottage industry
Ride-hailing companies are famous for skimping on driver training. For Uber drivers, training amounts to a 13-minute video on how to use the app. Lyft drivers, meanwhile, receive “mentorship” from another driver.
A few enterprising drivers saw the lack of training as a business opportunity, and are now selling tutorials on how to make it driving for Uber and Lyft. The drivers tell Fusion that they’re making far more doling out advice than they made actually driving.
Harry Campbell is probably the Kingpin of the Uber advice market. On his website, TheRideshareGuy.com, Campbell offers up podcasts, blog posts and links to resources like mechanics and car accessories. Since launching a year ago, his site has grown to attract 100,000 unique visitors a month. Four months ago, Campbell, realized that the site was lucrative enough to quit his full-time job as an engineer.
Campbell, who lives in Orange County, started driving for both Uber and Lyft a few hours a week a year ago. His wife was in medical school and he found himself with a lot of free time. Driving around and chatting with strangers sounded like fun.
“When I logged into a local driver Facebook group, I quickly realized a lot of these drivers had a lot of questions,” Campbell told Fusion. “I was pretty surprised.”
Campbell started a website offering his own tips and tricks to other drivers. And the traffic just kept growing.
On the site, Campbell covers basics like how to sign up to drive, and more specific tips for maximizing business, like how to chit-chat with passengers or whether picking up long-distance rides is really worth it.
“What a lot of people don’t realize is you’re actually running your own business as a driver,” he said. “If you want to just get people from point A to point B, you can do that. But there is a whole lot more you can do if you’re up for it.”
“I make this joke that because Uber and Lyft are so bad at customer service, it makes my site do even better.”
Campbell makes most of his money from people who use his referral codes to sign up to be a driver, or to get an Uber or Lyft account. The fees range from $25 to as much as $750. (All Uber and Lyft drivers are given referral codes so that they can get bonuses for every person they recruit for the service.) Campbell posts his codes on the site; by his estimate, 90 percent of the people who use his codes are people with whom he’s never had direct contact.