so ive been doing drone stuff on the side for about two years now, mostly real estate photography and the occasional construction site progress stuff. i have my part 107 and a decent client base but its all referral based and pretty inconsistent. some months are great, other months i make basically nothing.

my day job is fine but honestly i think about quitting it pretty much every week at this point. the drone work feels more meaningful and i actually enjoy it which is kind of a new feeling for me professionally lol. but i have a mortgage and a kid so its not like i can just yeet into the unknown.

has anyone actually made the jump to doing this full time and like... actually sustained it? not looking for the inspirational stuff, just honest answers about what the first year or two actually looked like financially. did you diversify into multiple industries or try to specialize? i keep going back and forth on this.

honest answer? the first year was rough. i kept my part time job at a hardware store for like 8 months while building up the drone side and even then there were months where i genuinely questioned everything. the real estate work is great when the market is moving but when rates spiked a couple years back my bookings dropped like 40% almost overnight because agents stopped spending on anything extra.

what saved me was getting into infrastructure inspection work - utility companies, cell towers, that kind of thing. way less glamorous than real estate but the contracts are longer and the pay is way more consistent. you need some additional certs and a decent inspection background helps but once you're in that world the referrals come faster than real estate honestly. if i were starting over id try to get one foot in that world earlier rather than doubling down on real estate photography.

not full time myself yet but i went to one of those drone industry meetups last year and talked to a bunch of people who were. the ones who seemed actually stable all said the same thing basically - dont specialize too early, get weird jobs, say yes to stuff you dont fully know how to do yet and then figure it out. also like three different people mentioned that having decent video editing skills is almost as important as the flying at this point because clients dont want to manage that separately if they can avoid it.