bit of background: passed my part 107 about 8 months ago, been doing a few real estate shoots here and there but mostly just friends of friends at basically cost. im starting to get some actual inquiries now from people who found me through instagram and i genuinely have no idea what to charge. i've looked at what other people say online and the range is absolutely all over the place, like i've seen people say $150 for a real estate shoot and other people say they charge $800 for the same thing.

i think part of my problem is i dont know how to factor in all the time properly. like the actual flight is maybe 45 minutes but then theres driving, the editing, culling through footage, uploading, dealing with emails. when i actually add it all up i feel like i've been massively undercharging but i also dont want to suddenly quote $600 and lose everyone. how did you guys figure this out when you were starting out

the real estate range thing makes sense when you realize how different markets are. a shoot in manhattan vs a small town in ohio, totally different rates, different client expectations, different competition. so comparing yourself to what you see posted online from some random person is kind of useless without knowing their market.

what actually helped me was figuring out what i needed to make per hour to be worth my time after expenses, and then estimating every job in hours honestly including all the stuff you mentioned. editing takes way longer than people think when you're starting out too, that gets faster but budget for it now. i also stopped doing 'just photos' packages without video because bundling them together let me charge more while giving the client more value, everyone wins basically.

im kind of in the same boat as you so i dont have a ton of wisdom but one thing that helped me was just picking a number that felt slightly uncomfortable to say out loud and going with that. if it doesnt feel a little scary its probably too low. had a realtor not even blink at $400 for a shoot i thought she'd definitely say no to, so now i know my floor is too low lol. you kind of have to just test it