This is how I got 250+ free Uber rides
By: Martin Welzl
Tags: Uber, Transportation, Life Hacking, Lifehacks, Ridesharing

This is how I got 250+ free Uber rides

Screenshot part of my trip history

Marketing is on my mind 24/7. By staying on top of all the newest developments I have learned how to use the internet not only to benefit my customers but also for my own personal gain.

Whenever someone asks me about how I got my free Uber rides and I give them a quick answer I see their eyes opening up wide. To me it’s just another everyday life hack. After realising that this is one of the stories that my friends keep telling to other people when talking about me I decided to let everyone in on the “secret”.

Trying to analyse and understand others behaviours

Like everything in life, approaching everyday things and details more analytical than others will eventually make you understand things faster and helps you rationally solving problems. I often find myself estimating weights of bags that others carry or the amounts of pixels on any screen I sit in front. I love guessing whether people will end up picking the fruits they’re staring at in the supermarket or judge if people are planning to cross the street any second based on their walking and gestures.

Same goes for understanding app mechanics or any other services we use on a daily basis and marketing in general.

Growth Hacker vs. Online Marketer

I believe there is a not very obvious but huge difference between doing Online Marketing as in creating and placing banners, picking advertising networks, coordinating agencies & crunching numbers and feeling this everlasting excitement about influencing and guiding people, understanding what’s developing their decisions and eventually finding the right tools to achieve the desired goals. Whenever I decide to market a new product or project and I don’t have my predefined set of tools that I’m going to use. Instead I want to know where the target audience is spending their time, what language they speak, how they see the world, what motivates them and what kind of emotions they’ll expect from the product we want them to buy.

Placing my Invite Code on Quora and Adwords

“Hey use this code to get a free ride!” — No, not really. You certainly thought about that or have seen others trying that. As always people want some value in return for value. Weird uh?

I started my free ride hunt by helping others on eg. Quora with their questions regarding Uber and in some cases, informed them that my code will help them making their first ride free. Other methods have been showing my invite code to people via Adwords which are actively looking for free rides on google. They end up getting what they want and use my code which makes their and my next ride free.

Here’s 2 examples 2 of my Quora answers:

https://www.quora.com/Can-you-schedule-an-Uber-ahead-of-time-How-do-you-do-this-Can-I-set-the-pickup-time-in-advance/answer/Martin-Welzl (69.8k Views)

https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-reach-Uber-customer-service-Do-they-have-a-phone-number/answer/Martin-Welzl (49.7k Views)

Here’s Ubers help section regarding referring friends:

https://help.uber.com/h/720a2186-f6ee-4cfc-8645-968e08371228

Wait, is this legal?

Yes, Uber probably intended this as pure friend to friend thing, which yes, I overstepped to some degree. However, whenever you’re trying to reach new highs in online marketing I believe it’s necessary to take some calculated risks. The market is developing so fast that not all paths are perfectly pathed yet. In this case I’m actually totally playing along Ubers planned goals of getting more people to use their service and I’ve been in good contact with Uber since.

“Free”

Never forget that there is no free lunch. I invested some time into getting the machine going and honestly, I don’t know if I wouldn’t have made more money working on something else and paying for Uber the traditional way.

Do you like posts like this? Should I post more of my life hacks as a growth hacker?

P.S. My promo code to make your first ride free is “martinw45”. In case you were wondering… ;)