I Signed Up for Uber Eats to Get a Free $200 Cash Bonus: Here’s What Happened

I signed up for Uber Eats to get a $200 cash bonus. There was a promotion, through Swagbucks, to get $200 free to sign up as a new Uber Eats driver and make just one delivery. (That promotion is still going live. Find details in article on how to sign up.)

My family orders in Uber Eats all the time, and I’m a bit of a hustler, so I dove in. Why not? It’s $200 to drive a few miles and drop off one bag of food. I can do that.

It sounded like an easier way to make extra money than some of my other sidelines. I sell my kids’ old clothes. I flip thrift store finds. And I belong to a dozen shopping apps and reward sites like InboxDollars, Upromise, Rakuten, and Ibotta. For my day job, I even work in content marketing for Swagbucks – the motherlode of cash back consumer rewards.

What It’s Like to Make an Uber Eats Delivery

If you want to know more about the logistics to drive for Uber Eats and get the $200, scroll down. Otherwise here’s the Uber Eats driver experience.

It’s less embarrassing than it sounds.

It sounds snotty because it is snotty: I was embarrassed to be a delivery driver with Uber. It sounded like a down-on-your-luck sort of gig that other people did. More specifically, a gig that I paid other people to do. For me. What if someone I knew saw me and thought I was in dire straits?

I preferred boujee gigs I could do at home from my phone, like re-selling Stuart Weitzman shoes on Poshmark or taking surveys about cruise packages.

But here’s the deal. I pick up food orders for myself all of the time, so why not just drop one off? There are millions of gig economy hustlers. Odds are slim I’ll run into someone I know, and if I do, who cares? You can wear your regular street clothes anyway. There’s no special UberEats shirt to don.

Making $200 for the delivery of one bag of food is a much better payoff than selling designer heels for a $30 markup. And besides, you can be a food delivery driver in a dirty, old car. Your vehicle doesn’t have to be new or clean. It just has to do the job. Like my dirty, old Forester covered in cracker crumbs and melted crayons.

It’s easier than it sounds.

For some reason, I was intimidated at the idea. What if I did something wrong? I just pick up someone’s food at a restaurant and then bring it to their door? No training? No check-in? How do they know I’m not just stealing someone’s lunch?

I can assure you that no one bats an eye.

I picked up and delivered one order for a Chad N. from Noodles & Co. There were other people inside the restaurant picking up orders too, and I had no clue who the food delivery drivers were apart from the regular customers getting their own food.

It’s humbling.

It was eye-opening and humbling to find out what it was like to be on the other end of an Uber Eats delivery.

Firstly, I had no idea how much Chad N. was tipping me. It said I was to pick up his bowl of pasta at Noodles & Co, and then drop it off at an address down the road. It showed my potential earning potential of $4 with tip included. Did that mean Chad N. was tipping me $4 or a nickel? I had no idea what percent he was offering.

(Sadly, Uber Eats doesn’t let you know whose meal needs spitting in.)

Then, Google Maps brought me to a residential home on a frontage road when in fact the correct address for my Chad N. was at the local news station Kare 11.

I brought my order to the back door off of the parking lot. An employee said he would fetch Chad N. for me while I waited outside. I won’t say that employee was surly. But I did feel that our dialogue was not the even exchange of equals. I was addressed the way you might talk to a clueless (possibly mentally ill homeless) person who just shows up and wants to wander around a TV news station.

With icy roads, poor GPS navigation, and having to hunt down Chad N., the whole experience of delivering one bowl of pasta took 44 minutes.

It’s Worth it to Get the Free $200.

The experience of making one UberEats delivery is worth it to get the free $200. And I kind of think that anyone who orders Uber Eats, or any other gig economy delivery service, should try it.

If I were to make another Uber Eats delivery, I would change things up. I would take a more lucrative (pricier) order and deliver in the evenings, not at noon when it’s just commuters who want a sad bowl of noodles for one at their desk.

Also, I might look up the address from my laptop before heading out the door. Until you physically collect the bag of food, you only know the intersection. But it’s worth taking the time to identify some landmarks in advance. (Like the nearest legal spot to make a U-turn.)

How to Work for Uber Eats and Get a Free $200 Bonus

Here’s what you need to do to sign up for Uber Eats and get the free $200.

#1 | Sign Up for Uber Eats from Swagbucks

This part was pretty straightforward. You need to sign up, through Swagbucks, to work for Uber Eats.

• I signed up for Uber Eats from Swagbucks.com so I could get the bonus.
• Create a free Swagbucks account if you don’t have one – that takes fewer than 30 seconds.
• Then visit the Uber Eats driver offer. Just search “UberEats” in the Search bar.
• Select Get 20000 SB and it will take you to the UberEats signup page. Your visit from Swagbucks is automatically tracked. Your visit will get credited to your Swagbucks account so you can get the signup bonus.

20,000 SB is equal to $200. SB is Swagbucks’ virtual reward currency. It’s 100 SB to $1. You can cash out your SB for PayPal, a check in the mail, or gift cards to Amazon, Target, or other popular stores.

#2 | Answer the Screening Questions to be an Uber Eats Driver

Then I went through the signup questions on Uber Eats to be a driver. The fine print on Uber Eats said it could take up to 7 days to pass a background check, but I was approved in under an hour.

• I provided my name, birthdate, address, and social security number. I also had to fill out a W-9, a tax form associated with contractor employees. It was quick and painless.
• You’ll also need to provide banking information so Uber Eats can deposit your earnings.
• Submit a photo of your driver’s license. (Just take a pic with your phone.)
• Then I had to provide proof of my driver’s insurance.

I think that the final step is where a lot of people get stuck because no one actually knows where their auto insurance card is. Calling the insurance company sounds like a pain. So does logging in – especially if you don’t remember your password. But push through. Even if you’ve forgotten your site password, it takes fewer than 5 minutes to reset it and request a digital copy of your card.

Admittedly, I asked (nagged) my husband for a copy of our Geico card. He produced an expired card 2 days later, and I then had to reach out to Geico online. So a good tip is to make sure you have your valid driver’s license and current car insurance card handy when you start the signup process.

#3 | Download the Uber Eats App on Your Smartphone

Download the “Uber – Driver: Drive & Deliver” app to your phone and login. You’ll need to provide the password that you used to set up your account online.

Also, each time you log in you’ll need to snap a photo of yourself to verify your identity.

#4 | Set Your Status to GO

You’ll be offline (and not available for deliveries) when you log into the Uber Eats food delivery app. If you want to pick up deliveries, set your status to GO.

#5 | Make a Food Delivery

Now you can sit back and wait for delivery requests to come through. You can tap on a potential delivery to accept it.

Uber Eats Delivery Information You’re Shown Upfront

• Your potential earnings (including tip) for making the delivery.
• How far (miles) you’ll need to drive to pick up the order from the restaurant and then bring it to the eater’s address.
• Name and address of the restaurant.
• Intersection where the eater lives.

You won’t know whether or not it’s an apartment building or single family home, or even a business or a residence. After you accept the order, you’ll be shown the customer’s name. Then drive to the restaurant and pick up the order. There’s likely a special place for delivery app orders.

After You Get the Food Order from the Restaurant

• The UberEats app will show you the customer’s full address.
• You’ll see any special request notes from the customer, like don’t ring the doorbell.
• Drive to the address and drop off the food.
• Log into the app and tap the popup to say that the delivery is complete.

That’s it. Depending on weather, traffic, and distance, it could take you anywhere from 25 minutes to an hour to make a delivery.

You can only pick up 1 food delivery at a time, though. Let’s say 3 different orders come in – all on the same block and for the same restaurant. Uber Eats will let you select 1 order to deliver.

I myself picked up the first, local order that came my way. It was an order for a Chad N. from Noodles & Company – only a few miles away. It said my earning potential was $4, but for a short delivery and a large $200 bonus for making just one drop-off, I took it.

#6 Get Your $200 Bonus from Swagbucks

You have to wait 7-10 days after making your first delivery to get the $200 reward.

• Within a couple of days, you’ll see the Uber Eats signup and delivery in your account activity. Go to your account settings and select Activity. You’ll see a list of all activities you’ve completed on Swagbucks.
• Select Visited. This will show you the activities you’ve began but not completed.
• After about 5 days, you’ll see “Uber Eats Driver Delivery Person” listed at the top of your dashboard. It will be listed as a Pending Activity. There will also be a line entry noting the date of your first delivery.

I made my first delivery around noon on December 31st. I was credited the $200 on January 7th. And I cashed those funds the same day. I selected a Target gift card for my reward, and have spent those funds on new sheets, a velvet comforter, and an expansion set of Magna Tiles for my kids.

I made $6 total from Uber Eats. I didn’t try to cash out my earnings that same day. But you can cash out up to 5 times a day if you have a balance of at least $1. Since I didn’t cash out, my earnings got automatically deposited after 7 days.

Final Thoughts on Driving for Uber Eats

If it’s a local order, it’s definitely worth making one UberEats delivery to get the $200 bonus from Swagbucks. Getting paid $200 for an hour of my time, in total, is like making $416,000 a year.

But I only made one delivery. I have a very small picture of what it’s like delivering with Uber Eats.

And I don’t know what it’s like to rely on Uber Eats as a more regular source of income. You’d have to log into the UberEats app several times a day and pick up a lot more delivery requests to make any serious money at it.

I definitely didn’t dislike the experience, but I think I’ll stick being an Uber Eats eater, not driver. Unless, of course, they offer me another sweet promo for making my second Uber Eats delivery.

Note: The $200 sign-up promotion has expired since the date of the article’s original publication. Other Uber Eats driver bonuses are available on the Uber Eats website.