Make Good Money Shopping and Delivering Groceries Through Instacart: An Instacart Shopper Review

 The pandemic has hit both my husband and my work really hard. My husband had been driving for Lyft and Uber (read about it here), which was not safe to do during a pandemic, and my work in after school theatre programs had been (understandably) virtually non-existent. We had relied on the expanded unemployment to get us through the first bit of the pandemic, but that has ended now. My hours are still very limited but I like to remain open to be able to do whatever is needed at my work and since the virus is still very much spreading, my husband didn't want to go back to rideshare driving. So we thought we would try out working for delivery companies. Most of the food pick up places didn't need any more drivers but Instacart, shopping for and delivering groceries, was available and today I tried it out for the first time and really enjoyed it!

I'm sure most of you know or understand the concept of Instacart: customers send in their order and those orders are sent out to available shoppers/drivers to pick up the items and deliver to the customer. It only took a few seconds after I logged in to get my first order. It was a little bit of a drive but seemed a nice pay. All in all from accepting the order to delivering the order, it took an hour and 20 minutes but it was $22 profit. Pretty much immediately after delivering that one, another one came up. This was much closer and I was able to complete it more quickly (I learned a lot during the first shopping experience, more on that later). That one was $18 and I finished in about half an hour. Pretty good! 

Then it was a little slow. Some orders came in but either didn't seem worth it or another shopper snagged it up before me. Then I was quick to try and take the next one, though that may have been a bit of a mistake. It was only for $8 and it was pretty far away, though closer to where I live. 

I only was on for 2 hrs and 48 minutes and made $46. Not bad! That averages over $15/hr* (see update at bottom). I definitely learned things that I think will help improve that amount.

Pros:

• Flexible hours. You decide when you want to work and when you want to stop.
• Pretty good pay and you don't get pulled far away from your area like driving for rideshare
• You get exercise! Driving all day is bad on your body but with this, you're mostly walking around which is really nice.
• App is super easy to use and very helpful in making sure you get all the right items.

Cons:

• Sometimes you don't have long to decide to accept an order so you might take one that's not really worth it
• It can be difficult to deliver to people in apartments and/or busy streets with no parking

Tips:

• Don't use self checkout unless it's only a few items. It's a huge hassle with a lot of items and isn't worth a shorter line
• You don't need to ask the customer about replacements. The app will help you through that.
• Make sure you look at the distance before accepting. Driving far away for a small amount is not worth it.

Note: You can sometimes have multiple orders in what they call a "batch". These are different customers' orders at the same store. I haven't had one of these yet, so I'm not sure how well that goes.

I highly recommend this as a side gig or even a main gig. It was a lot of fun, almost like a scavenger hunt to find the right items! Sign up with my link here or use code CLANA99F3C at sign up. Have fun shopping! 

Update: I highly recommend doing Shipt in addition to Instacart. Read about driving for Shipt here. Read a list of pros and cons of each here. I also found out that if you live in California, there is now a guaranteed earnings for anyone working these types of platforms (Uber, Lyft, Instacart, Shipt, Door Dash, Grub Hub, etc). So there were some adjustments to my pay for this and I ended up making $71.62 which ends up being closer to $24 an hour! Read more about the California rules and how to use it to your advantage here.

Get $20 for Signing Up With Stash

A while back, I wrote about getting a free stock for singing up with Robinhood (see the post here). But there's another simple investor app that will also give you stock for signing up and it is called Stash. Stash will give you $20 worth of stock or $20 to invest in other ways.

Here's what you need to do:

1. Click on this Stash Invest $20 Referral Bonus Link.
2. Sign up for your new Stash Invest account and complete registration.
3. Connect your bank account and fund at least $5 to your new Stash Invest account (either invest or bank account).
4. The $20 bonus will be credited to your new Stash Invest account within 3 business days.

Please note, the bonus funds cannot be withdrawn from your Stash Invest account for a period of 90 days from the date received. Stash also does have a monthly fee to have an account. The first month is waived but after that, there will be a fee. Because of this, I don't think keeping a Stash account is the best because there are other free apps that do exactly what they do. So, when signing up, choose the cheapest account and then after 3 months, close it and it still will have been profitable.

To close your Stash account, here's what you need to do:

1. Log into your account via the Stash website. 
2. In the upper-right corner you’ll see your name. Click on this link and you’ll get a new page with a vertical menu on the left-hand side.
3. About mid-way through the list of selections is a Subscription link. Click on this and you’ll get another page with details on your current subscription. 
4. In the Your plan menu there is a Manage link. Click on this link and scroll to the bottom of the new page. 
5. You’ll see a Close my Stash for good link. Click on this and you’ll be able to cancel your subscription.