The Start of my Experience as an Uber Driver

Well, today is the day that I began the process of becoming an Uber driver. I'd love to share my experience with those who are considering it for themselves or just curious about the life thereof.  I've already submitted all of the required documentation and am just waiting to receive approval.  The signup process is pretty involved, which is understandable.

As with everything, you have to create an account.   This obviously, requires you to agree with several legal pages provided by the company.  And of course, email address, password, blah blah blah.  However, I will note that your social security number is necessary to conduct a background check.  But the rest is obvious, so I'll move on.

Next, the pictures.  I had to take pictures of my license, insurance information, and vehicle registration.  It's definitely getting personal by now, but for good reasons.  They want to make sure that "Uber Partners" (as we're referred to) are safe, legal drivers.  After that, there's an intro video that

Once that's out of the way, I was sent a link to download the app (I started this using my mobile browser after a Google search).  It covers the functionality of the app, importance of obeying traffic laws, what to expect from a typical trip request.  It also offers some advice on garnering great feedback.  It lasts about 16 minutes.

Then comes the invitation to download the app.  Of course, I was doing all of this with my mobile browser, so I'm gonna guess here that this step is skipped if you downloaded the partner app first.  Once that's done, the next step involves yet another picture: your selfie.  I've always sucked at these, so mine took a bit longer than it probably should have.  And it still looked terrible :(

A couple of more things here and there, and I'm ready to go.  Well, except for the approval notification.  It's been about half an hour since I completed the Uber registration, so we'll see just how long this takes for my next post.  In the meantime, though, I do see an opportunity to sign up friends for a $25 referral fee.  This will definitely be an enhancement to my experience as an Uber driver.

Speaking of which, that's the basic rundown for the start of my experience as an Uber driver.  Be sure to check back often to see more updates on how this works out and whether or not I start pulling in "quit your job" money.