Running delayed_job worker on Heroku?
I recommend the workless gem to run delayed jobs on heroku. I use this now - it works perfectly for me, zero hassle and at zero cost.
I have also used hirefireapp which gives a much finer degree of control on scaling workers. This costs, but costs less than a single heroku worker (over a month). I don't use this now, but have used it, and it worked very well.
Add
worker: rake jobs:workto your Procfile.
EDIT:
Even if you run it from your console you 'buy' worker dyno but Heroku has per second biling. So you don't pay because you have 750h free, and month in worst case has 744h, so you have free 6h for your extra dynos, scheduler tasks and so on.
I haven't tried it personally yet, but you might find nohup useful. It allows your process to run even though you have closed your terminal window. Link: http://linux.101hacks.com/unix/nohup-command/