Make Money Driving Your Car With These 6 Methods

These days everyone is looking for additional ways to earn extra money. Luckily though there are tons of opportunities especially if you own a car. So in this article, we’ll go over a few methods on how you can make money driving your car.

If you love to drive then earning money for driving your car can quickly turn from a side gig to a main source of income. It all depends on your financial goals and how far you want to go to reach them.

How to Make Money Driving Your Car

There are many ways to earn money with your car, such as becoming a driver for one of the many ridesharing apps out there or delivering food and goods to people.

You can even wrap your car in advertising and get paid to drive around with your car looking like a billboard, now that’s some easy money and comes with less wear and tear than the other methods.

So here are some of the most popular ways to earn real money with a car.

1. Drive Other People

Pretty much anyone has heard or used some of these ridesharing apps until now, right?

If not well, here’s a short summary: there are companies out there that pay you to drive your car and give people rides from one point to another.

Once you finish a journey you will instantly get paid via the app.

Yes, it’s as easy as it sounds, and pretty much anyone that has a valid driving license and has a car can do it.

Top Ridesharing Apps

Uber

Uber is probably the most well-known ridesharing app in the world, and it certainly is the most popular one in the U.S. To start making money driving your car for Uber, your car must not be older than 15 years, and you must have a good driving record and pass a background check.

Lyft

Lyft is pretty similar to Uber, and it’s the second most popular ridesharing app after Uber in the United States. However, in other parts of the world where Uber is banned, Lyft is number one.

The requirements to join Lyft and make money driving your car are very similar to Uber, but they might be different depending on the state or country you’re in.

Other ridesharing apps:

Curb and Wingz are a few other choices if for some reason you don’t want to sign up with Uber or Lyft.

Local Ridesharing Apps:

In many countries around the world, Uber and Lyft are banned, however, there are many local alternatives such as BlaBla Car, Cabify in Spain, LeCab in France, MyTaxi in Germany, etc.

You could even sign up and use multiple ridesharing apps and get paid to drive your car from either Uber or Lyft or any other alternative that you can find. This way, your waiting times between trips could get smaller and in turn, you get to make even more money driving your car.

Ridesharing Driver Requirements & Qualifications

Many ridesharing app companies such as Uber and Lyft have qualifications that you need to pass in order to start driving your car to make money using their apps.

Some of these include:

• Passing a criminal background check
• Driving records
• Have the minimum required age to drive with a license that’s at least one year old
• Cover your own car expenses such as gas, maintenance, and insurance
• Your car must be a 4-door vehicle with 4 external door handles.

These driving qualifications for ridesharing apps will vary depending on the state and country you’re in, and also the ridesharing app that you choose to work with that will pay you for driving your car.

2. Get Paid to Deliver Food

If you don’t like being a driver for other people, you could get paid to deliver food with your car. There are apps that are similar to the ridesharing ones that you can use to earn money driving your car and delivering food to people.

All you have to do is sign up with a food delivery app, wait till you get an order from a customer, go to the food place that the customer order their food from, pick it up and deliver it to their address, and you will get paid after every delivery that you do with your car, and you can even get tips.

Popular Food Delivery Apps

Uber Eats

Similar to their ridesharing app, Uber also has a food delivery option called Uber Eats. The requirements to join Uber eats are similar to the ones for their ridesharing app.

Postmates

Postmates is great because you can also deliver other items not only food.

So if you don’t like strangers in your car and you also don’t want to have food smell embedded into your car seats, then you can earn money driving your car delivering other non-food items with Postmates. Examples: Groceries, clothes, electronics, etc.

DoorDash

DoorDash is also a pretty popular food delivery app, where you can earn money driving your car by delivering food from restaurants, fast food places, and coffee shops to customers.

What’s great about DoorDash is that if you don’t have a car, you can also use a motorcycle, scooter, or even a normal bike.

Grubhub

You must be over 19 years old to deliver food via Grubhub. They also do criminal background checks on all the people that are interested in becoming a driver for them.

People are busy these days, so they don’t have time that much time available to go buy their own food.

This is a perfect opportunity for every side hustler out there to start capitalizing on other’s busy schedules and earn money with their cars.

3. Deliver Goods

There are also many other goods that you can deliver and make money with your car if you don’t want to deliver food.

Delivery Services

Instacart

Instacart is mainly a grocery delivery service, so the requirements are still the same as the other delivery apps but you must also be able to lift 30 pounds.

Shipt

Another grocery delivery service, Shipt drivers will have to go out and shop for groceries according to the order that they have received and then deliver it to the customer to their specified address.

Postmates

You can also deliver other goods with Postmates and not only food. You can also earn cash while driving your own car and shopping and delivering electronic items, pet supplies, household items, alcohol, and more.

Amazon Flex

With Amazon’s flex, you can earn anywhere between $18 to $25 per hour and get to create your own schedule. The job is pretty straight forward, Amazon will pay you for driving your car and deliver their parcels to people.

This is how Amazon Prime is able to deliver so many packages with same-day delivery, and chances are that you’ve probably got a few Amazon parcels delivered to your door by Amazon Flex drivers.

You can get started with Amazon Flex by downloading their app, and after you sign up you will have to specify the hours and days that you are willing to deliver parcels.

The downside is that Amazon Flex only hires drivers to deliver local parcels in 50 major cities.

4. Wrap Your Car with Ads

Do you want to turn your car into a moving billboard and get paid to drive your car but without having to deal with any of the delivery stuff?

If the answer is yes, then here are two popular companies that will pay you to drive your car with ads on them:

Carvertise

This company will match you with brands that are looking to advertise in the area where you regularly drive.

You must pass some qualifications first such as having a newer car (not older than 10 years), have a clean driving record, and drive at least 25 miles per day.

You should expect to earn $100 per month with Carvertise and possibly, even more, depending on the advertiser, the area you’re in, special promotions, and how much you’re driving.

Wrapify

Wrapify is another company that will allow you to earn cash with your car by placing ads from different brands on it.

It has similar driver requirements as Carvertise, but you do have the chance to earn more money with your car by opting to fully wrap your car.

With Wrapify you could potentially earn up to $450 per month if you decide to fully wrap your car.

However, you should be on the look-out for scams and companies that don’t pay you to wrap your car with ads. It got so bad that even FTC had to put out a warning for drivers to be careful when dealing with companies that offer to pay you lots of money to wrap ads on your car.

So if the offer sounds too good to be true, it’s probably a scam.

Wrapify and Carvertise are legit businesses with thousands of happy drivers and reviews, so no need to be worried about that.

5. Rent Out Your Car

Sure, this is not really a way to make money driving your car, but you will get paid to let other people drive it instead.

The big advantage with renting out your car to make money is that you don’t have to drive yourself any more than usual.

However you will get to put on more mileage on your car, so that means you will get to pay more in maintenance and repair fees, especially if you rent it out a lot.

So if you live in a city with awesome public transportation or maybe you just have an extra car that’s not being used too much, you should probably think about renting it out and make money with your car without even driving it.

Renting out your car will not make you rich but it can be a nice side hustle that will bring you a few hundred dollars each month.

Top short-term car rental companies:

Turo

This is probably the most popular short-term car rental company on this list. To make money renting out your car with Turo, you need to have a newer vehicle that’s not older than 12 years.

The amount of money you will make by renting out your car with Turo is calculated automatically by their platform, based on your car’s type, the amount of time you’re willing to rent it out for, and the local demand for short-term rental cars.

Sure you could also set up your own price, and they even have a calculator so that you can better decide the price for renting your car out.

Overall expect to earn between 65% and 85% of the trip price, depending on the vehicle protection and rental insurance policies set up by the drivers.

Getaround

Another short-term car rental company with a twist. While the earnings are a bit lower than Turo’s (on average 60% of the rental price), you will get a bonus of $50 in monthly driving credit. So you can basically rent the car yourself and give yourself an additional $50 a month.

HyreCar

This one is a bit different than the other two rental companies that we mentioned above. With HyreCar you rent out your car to ridesharing drivers.

Basically, people that want to earn money driving for Uber or Lyft but don’t have a car. This way, they get to earn money while driving a car that’s not even theirs. A great hustle if you ask me.

6. Help People Move

You can also earn money driving your car by helping people move their stuff from point A to point B.

Sure there’s some manual labor involved, but if you don’t mind that, then here’s a great platform to join so that you can get started:

TaskRabbit

There are many jobs (also known as tasks) that people can do on TaskRabbit, and hauling stuff is one of their most popular jobs. So many people buy new furniture and need to throw away the old one into a dump or they move to a new place and now have to move everything they own there.

So they go on a site like TaskRabbit and look for people with cars or trucks to come and pick up their things and move them somewhere else.

The good thing about Taskrabbit is that you can set up your own schedule and you can pick the jobs you want to take based on your rates.

Keep in mind though that 15% of the money you make will go to TaskRabbit, and you have to pay for your own fuel.

Driving Your Car To Make Money: Conclusion

As you figure out if this is worth it to you, make sure you factor in wear and tear as well as depreciation on your vehicle. Don’t drive yourself into poverty.

So there you have it, 6 ways to earn money with your car. Pick one that makes the most sense to you, but also keep in mind the wear and tear of the vehicle for each of the methods above.

Some of them like for example ridesharing will put a lot of extra miles on your car and that means an increased cost in maintenance and repairs but also depreciation.