Sign Up Process
It was fairly simple and straight forward on the website. I signed up with Bird scooters. They provide the first three chargers for free. If you would like more than three you would have to purchase them yourself. I also provided my banking information for direct deposit of my earnings. I do wish I had a separate account for my earnings; I’ll get into that in just a second. After signing up the charges took about 3-5 business days to get to me and it was go time!
Charging
I have a Jeep Grand Cherokee so loading three scooters was not a hard task most days. I’m sure you will be able to fit them in a sedan but there might be a little struggle. My first-night charging was a bit frustrating when I got home it took me a few minutes to find where the plugin on the scooter was after that it was a breeze. I would grab scooters at night because you are not able to release them until 7 am the next morning. The Bird app has a GPS programmed in it where it shows where the birds that need charging are. When you release a Bird use the GPS to find what they call nest to placed them in. The scooters would range from $3-7 per scooter. The average price I usually landed was $5 per scooter.
Pros
The signup process is fairly simple and to the point. The chargers got to me in a reasonable time and I was able to start making money right away. The deposits always came the day after the scooter was successfully released into the nest. It was cool to have constant deposits hit my account. Living in the DC Metro area scooters are plentiful for charging. Finding them for the most part was pretty easy.
Cons
The app can sometimes send you on a dummy mission. Meaning it will have a scooter listed in a location you arrive there and it’s nowhere to be found. That is soooooo annoying and wasted gas. I had a few rough nights where the scooters were not so easy to find. Trying to grab one in route did not work sometimes because it was not scheduled to be charged.
I like that the money came to my account the next day after release. I did not like that it’s connected to the account for bills and everyday expenses. What would happen is that the money would come in and I would spend it on things I did not need like Starbucks coffee, buying lunch when I should have packed and other stupid stuff. I soon came to realize I need to create a separate account specifically for my side hustles so this extra income will be used for the purpose I originally set, which is paying off debt.
Yay or Nay?
Once my car is up and running I will go back to charging scooters. When I do the math if I consistently charged scooters 5 days a week averaging $5 a charge I’m looking at bringing in about an extra $300 a month. I did not see a significant increase in my electric bill. I plan on doing a follow-up post once I get back to it. There have also been some things added where you can make even more money. I’ll be sure to compare my electric bill before and after to give a more accurate update.
Well, I hope this information was helpful and you learned a possible new way to make extra cash. Continue to reach your financial goals, I’m rooting for your win sis! Until next time dream, believe and achieve.
