Are you looking for a DoorDash strategy to make more money delivering food to people’s doors? You might have heard of a strategy that recently got a lot of media attention. It’s called the Decline Now strategy. Since last year this strategy has gained a lot of attention, as it has become a movement of sorts. There are critics of it and those who embrace it. Anyways it became a movement kind of, and news outlets covered it. So what is DoorDash Decline Now Strategy?
This article explains how it works as a strategy to make more money. And discuss its limitations.
Courier Hacker’s TLDR:
- What is the #DeclineNow DoorDash Strategy? Many Dashers agree to decline low-paying orders and wait for high-paying ones. And also, use third-party android apps to raise efficiency and exploit DoorDash’s codebase to see hidden tips.
- How does it make Dashers more money? Rejecting low-paying DoorDash orders causes the DoorDash pay algorithm to increase their base pay when offered to the next driver. You’re helping the next driver out. Seeing hidden tips allows Dashers to make better dollar-per-mile decisions.
- Limitations of Decline Now Strategy: Need mass Dasher collaboration, dependent on DoorDash algorithm not changing, and could hurt dollar per hour earnings.
If you want to understand it more in detail, read on.
How Are Dashers Paid?
First thing’s first. You need to understand how DoorDash pays its Dashers.
There are three components to the pay for each order offered to the Dasher. Take a look at the image here from DoorDash:
Base Pay: This ranges from $2 to 10+ depending on three factors: how long it takes, how far it takes, and how desirable the order is. Any order that takes forever to complete involves long-distance travel. No one wants to take them. It’s why DoorDash pays more for these orders. Make sense, right?
Promotions: These include the Peak Pay bonus during busy hours and Challenges (in some markets), allowing Dashers to earn more for completing a set number of orders.
Challenges are very similar to Caviar’s Milestone feature. Since DoorDash acquired Caviar, I’m not surprised to see this rolled out on DoorDash.
Tips: All yours. They all say.
Total Earnings: Add it all up; that’s what you get.
Problem is…
The base pay is usually under $5. And customers don’t tip sometimes. If they do, it’s before the Dasher gets the order offer. So, you cannot pull psychological tricks to make the customer tip you more after the drop-off.
Sucks. It’s like my specialty with these food delivery gigs (LOL).
Side note. Are you aware there are psychological tricks you can use to set people up to tip you more?
No?
Subscribe.
Anyways. DoorDash is not a good platform to be doing Tip Hacking with. You cannot control the tips unless you can earn a cash tip at the door. Usually not the case that this happens. So, we have to hack DoorDash another way. Ener #DeclineNow
DoorDash Earning Strategies
Generally speaking, DoorDash strategies center around five major concepts: timing, mapping, positioning, rejection, and stacking skills.
Good timing allows you to earn the Promotion component of the DoorDash payout. If you are delivering when it’s busy, you are more likely to get that Peak Pay. Simple.
Mapping and positioning skills allow you to get as many orders offered as possible. Rejection skills will enable you to make the most for the order you accept and remain in a good position after the drop-off. Altogether these skills allow you to select orders based on time and distance (Base Pay components of the DoorDash pay model).
But all of those skills do not allow you to manipulate one thing in the DoorDash payout model we saw above. Take a guess which component. Here’s the graphic again:
Which one?
Did you guess desirability?
Good job! Okay, you’re ready to understand the #DeclineNow strategy now.
What is the Decline Now DoorDash Strategy?
The #DeclineNow strategy has several pieces to it. But the main concept is to have as many drivers in a market as possible reject orders that don’t pay well. The minimum for acceptance is $5.
It triggers the DoorDash pay algorithm to recognize this order as undesirable when it gets declined. And unwanted orders will have their base pay bumped up.
Then the next Dasher that gets the same order will get a higher Base Pay.
It frees up the first driver to get another offer, and hopefully, it’s more than $5.
You decline orders and let it bounce around Dashers until the desirability is so low that DoorDash pays more than the minimum acceptable amount of $5.
Dash Utility
There’s an app used among Dashers who use Android smartphones. You download the Drivers Utility Helper (aka Dash Utility for short) app published by Middleton Technologies. It calculates and helps you decide if an order is worth it or not. You can check it out here (This is not an affiliate link).
This app does a few nice things for a Dasher. Like if you’re on a different app, this app will bring the DoorDash offer front and center, so you don’t miss it. It can be used to set up automatic rejections or accept orders.
DoorDash Version 5.63.6
Okay, now there’s more to it. We all know DoorDash masks or hide the actual value of the tips. But you can find this real value out by using an older version of the app.
Which version? The infamous version 5.63.6.
You can Google DoorDash 5.63.6 and learn more about it.
My reason for sharing is purely informational. Not promotional, okay?
I am not advocating for any of my readers to do something that would violate their independent contractor agreements with DoorDash and get them deactivated. DoorDash has been cracking down on this kind of platform abuse. In January, the company’s deactivation policy was updated. It included this reason for deactivation:
- Scraping. Using any robot, spider, web crawler, extraction software, automated process, and/or device to scrape, copy, index, frame, monitor, conduct any systematic retrieval of data or other content from any portion of DoorDash platform or its content.
That scraping language sounds a lot like DoorDash is aware of tools like Dash Utility and the DoorDash 5.63.6 exploit.
I’m not sure if the Decline Now movement would constitute a disruption, but another reason for deactivation is:
- Disrupting the DoorDash platform. Taking any action, either directly or indirectly, that is intended to or does damage, disable, interrupt, overburden, or impair the functionality of the DoorDash platform or the servers or networks connected to the DoorDash Platform;
So if you’re making good money with DoorDash on the side or full-time, you might want to be careful about killing your cash cow.
Anyways.
Android users can download this older version of the DoorDash app. And then, when orders come in, they can use this older version to see the total value of the order—basically unmasking the tip’s total value.
How Does It Make Dashers More Money?
If everyone works together in a market, it would mean many low-paying orders getting bounced around until their value raises the Base Pay to an acceptable amount.
The Dash Utility helps facilitate and make this more efficient.
With the older version of the app, Android users can take this to another level and decide on orders, knowing the total value.
All of these come together to aid a Dasher using the Decline Now Strategy to earn more money long term. On average, they accept orders with a higher Base Pay. Also, they can see the total value of the order (if they’re on Android) and make a wise decision to maximize their per-mile rate of earnings.
For Dashers, one of the main criteria of accepting an order or decline is the high dollar per mile rate. And the Decline Now Strategy is a collective effort among Dashers to achieve this.
Limitations Of DoorDash Decline Now Strategy
Every strategy has weaknesses, of course. For the Decline Now Strategy to be most effective, you need many drivers in your market to buy into it. Also, they need to agree to “Decline Now” when they see a low-paying order. It takes collaboration and organization.
And this can be hard because, as stated above, there are critics. And some Dashers do not agree with this approach as the best strategy. So it’s not going to be easy to have complete collaboration.
Another limitation is that this strategy heavily depends on DoorDash’s pay algorithm never changing. And DoorDash can change it whenever they see fit. And historically, DoorDash has changed its pay model over the years.
Also, sometimes you decline lots of orders. Suppose participation isn’t high enough among the Dashers in your market to make a dent. And you sit there and decline low ball orders. In that case, you can find yourself in scenarios that hurt your overall dollar per hour for that Dash. It’s because you’re trying to get a good dollar per-mile rate for orders during that Dash.
For example, I decline several $3-4 orders.
For over 30 minutes, I do this.
Then an $8 order comes.
I accept.
It takes 15 minutes to complete the order.
I just made $8 in 45 minutes.
That’s $10.67 an hour.
Conclusion
There are many tactics you can apply when it comes to DoorDash. All of them aim at one objective: achieving a respectable dollar-per-hour income. Dashers can use the Decline Now Strategy. But, it takes collective efforts from Dashers to be highly effective. And it has limitations also. But for the time being, you should at least know it.
Happy delivering. Good luck out there. Drive safe.
