This article was first published in the January 2016 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Eat First, Taskrabbit, Airbnb, Uber and more. We spend 24 hours with the people powering the on-demand economy.
NAME Ramon Mayor AGE 26 STATUS Part-time OTHER JOBS Driving RATE £4 per hour + £5 per delivery REGULAR TASKS "Delivering pre-cooked chilled meals."
"The craziest time is signing in at 6pm - if you're running late, you never quite make that up," Ramon Mayor, delivery driver for EatFirst, explains. He came to the UK from Spain in March 2014. He was driving for a Spanish family, but lost his job as the economy shrank. "There's no shortage of driving jobs in the UK," he says. "All the drivers have several driving jobs."
The firm pays £4 per hour, with a £5 bonus for each delivery in central London - drivers typically make two or three per shift. With cash tips, Mayor earns, on average, £40-45 per day for an eight-hour shift. The company, backed by Berlin's Rocket Internet incubator, launched with a 15-minute order time, offering two meal options, but has since expanded its menu and range while reducing the service to evenings only. Mayor welcomes recent plans to re-introduce lunchtime deliveries: "For me, driving was just the start. I'm moving into an operations role, organising drivers for the company. I'm ambitious."
NAME Mike Jones AGE 26 STATUS Part-time OTHER JOBS Actor RATE £25 per hour REGULAR TASKS "Flat-pack furniture. Some people don't realise it comes in a box"
TaskRabbit - which launched in 2008 - is an odd-job marketplace, offering anything from standing in a queue at the Post Office to admin. Customers choose a service, enter their postcode and see a list of taskers, who set their own rate (usually between £12ph and £25ph depending on experience, ratings and reviews), with a minimum booking of one hour.
Mike Jones signed up 18 months ago, after graduating from drama school. "I don't really want to get hired to paint someone's house, in case an audition comes up - so in that respect, TaskRabbit can be unpredictable in terms of where you're going," he says. "But it's still a pretty regular and stable income compared to acting." Jones charges the top rate of £25 per hour - but he's classed as an "elite" tasker with a 100 per cent positive feedback rating on over 100 tasks. TaskRabbit takes 30 per cent of his fee for his first task with a new client, dropping to 15 for repeat bookings.
NAME Carol Fedida AGE 56 STATUS Part-time host OTHER JOBS None RATE £99 per night/room; £299 per night/apartment REGULAR TASKS "Preparing the flat, leasing with guests."
Carol Fedida's 280m<sup>2</sup> Clerkenwell penthouse has been on Airbnb for two months - she was previously on rival site onefinestay. "I thought there wasn't enough communication between the hosts and the guests at onefinestay," she says. "They handle everything and aim for a hotel-style experience, which is fine for some, but I felt like I had no control." Fedida prefers to talk to her guests directly. "I prefer letting the spare room more than the whole place - it's like having people to stay."
The average UK Airbnb owner earns £5,600 per year from their property, according to figures provided by the company, with Airbnb taking a three per cent host service fee, and a guest service fee of between six and 12 per cent. October was relatively successful for Fedida, who took £2,400. "You do get some guests asking for a discount or trying to cut a deal direct," she explains."But I'd rather stay within the system, because I know I'm going to get paid and I'm covered if they cause damage."
NAME Nick Ravenscroft AGE 36 STATUS Part-time OTHER JOBS Musician RATE £89 per hour REGULAR TASKS "Changing halogen bulbs is big"
BIZZBY launched in January 2015, offering on-demand services and charging a flat rate per hour depending on the task - £12ph for cleaning, £45 for gardening, £89 for electrical/plumbing etc. There's a minimum charge of one hour, and BIZZBY takes 20 per cent. Ravenscroft has provided electrician services through the firm for six months. He previously worked furnishing flats and houses for high-net-worth individuals, but says the freedom and money are better working through BIZZBY. "Last week I got £700, but that included a few late nights," he says. "The last really late one was screwing the legs on to a TV in Mayfair. That was £60 an hour. It depends what you're prepared to do." The worst job, he explains, is fixing macerators - the motorised waste grinders attached to domestic toilets.
NAME Neha Rani AGE 31 STATUS Part-time OTHER JOBS Mother RATE £20 per hour REGULAR TASKS "Driving people to meetings"
Rani came to the UK from Pakistan aged 14, and worked as a beautician until her first daughter arrived in 2004. After her husband left, she became a minicab driver. She joined Uber 18 months ago and works around ten hours per day, divided to accommodate school hours and childcare.
She typically earns £20 per hour - a vast improvement, she says, on her minicab earnings, which peaked at £80 for a shift, but could be as low as £26. Work-related expenses amount to around £110 per week on petrol, vehicle maintenance and insurance.
Every week, Uber tots up each driver's acceptance rate, which should ideally stay above 80 per cent. Rani's rating is usually 98: "I pick up everyone - even badly rated customers," she says. "They're usually just people who were drunk once. They're so grateful someone took their fare."
NAME Ozzy Monaco AGE 50 STATUS Full-time OTHER JOBS None RATE £8-£9 per hour REGULAR TASKS "Home cleaning"
"I think it's to do with learning about Buddhism, but I don't like walking into a person's home with shoes on," Handy cleaner Ozzy Monaco says. "I slip on flip-flops. I don't call it cleaning houses, I maintain them. I work on the feng shui." He has been working as a cleaner for Handy for a month. He spent most of his career in France - including a spell in academia and consulting for the likes of LVMH. "The corporate world was great, but I decided to go through a transition," he says.
Handy launched in the UK in 2014 and, last September, acquired cleaning app Mopp. The company charges £10 per hour for cleaning, with a minimum two-hour booking, and takes between ten and 20 per cent, depending on volume of work and customer rating. Monaco is saving to buy land in Slovenia. He takes his first job at 7am, works to 9am, switches back on at 3pm and works till 5pm. "I earn £8-9 an hour. For an acre in Slovenia - if I stay with Handy for eight months, we'll be there."
NAME Gergo Kaposi AGE 28 STATUS Full-time OTHER JOBS None RATE £8.50 per hour REGULAR TASKS "Mainly shirts and suits"
Kaposi left a restaurant job in Hungary and worked as a casual driver before signing up to laundry and dry-cleaning app Laundrapp in May 2015, just after its £4 million funding round. Customers book pick-up and drop-off times, and the app tracks drivers, sending a text with a ten-minute window for arrival. "Making sure you hit that ten minute window can be tough," Kaposi explains. "Most negative customer ratings are down to missing it." Kaposi dons a company regulation blue shirt when his shifts start at 6am or 2pm. Mornings are stay-at-home parents; lunchtimes are often dirty gym kit from office workers; evenings are male and female singletons. Orders range from an entire football team's kit to a single teddy bear.
Kaposi earns roughly £8.50 per hour - a lower rate than some rival laundry services, although he points out that, unlike its competitors, Laundrapp does have its own fleet of vans rather than expecting drivers to provide their own.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
