so ive been flying for about two years now, got my part 107 last spring and ive been doing a few small gigs here and there for real estate agents and one construction company that found me through a friend. nothing crazy but enough to make me think... could this actually be a thing? like a real income?

my day job is fine but its soul crushing and every time i go out and fly for even a small job i feel like a completely different person. the problem is i genuinely dont know if the market is saturated or if theres still room. ive talked to a couple guys locally who are doing it full time but one of them seems to mainly survive on mapping contracts which i have zero experience with and the other one does mostly cinematography which seems incredibly hard to break into without a reel already.

i guess im just wondering if anyone here made the leap and how it actually went. not looking for rainbows and sunshine, honest answers only please

honestly the mapping/inspection side is where the money is at least in my experience. real estate is great for getting started and building confidence but the margins are thin because everyone and their cousin has a mavic and undercuts on price constantly. i made the jump about three years ago and it was rough for the first 8 months, like genuinely stressful, but i had some savings and my wife was still working so we weren't totally underwater.

the thing that changed everything for me was getting into infrastructure inspection, cell towers specifically. it took a while to find the right contacts but once you get one company to trust you the referrals start coming. you need to be comfortable with confined airspace waivers and logging serious flight hours though, thats not something you can fake your way through. if you have any interest in that direction id say start learning about photogrammetry software on the side now, pix4d or even just DJI Terra, just so you have something to show people besides pretty aerial photos

im kind of in the same boat as you actually so take this with a grain of salt but i found that niching down really helped even at my small scale. i stopped trying to do everything and just focused on agricultural land in my area and even though its seasonal its been surprisingly consistent. farmers around here had no idea how useful NDVI mapping could be and i basically just showed up with data and they were interested. not saying thats right for you just that finding a weird niche nobody else is serving locally can matter more than being technically perfect