so ive been flying for about two years now, mostly just weekends and vacations stuff, got my part 107 last spring and kind of let it sit there doing nothing. a buddy of mine told me he made like $800 doing a real estate shoot last month and that kind of woke me up a little bit.

im not trying to quit my day job tomorrow or anything but i want to start building toward something real. the problem is i genuinely dont know where the actual work is. like do people just find gigs on thumbtack or upwork or is there some drone-specific platform i dont know about. and is real estate actually a good entry point or is it totally saturated at this point. feels like everyone and their cousin has a 107 now.

any advice from people who actually made the jump would be really appreciated, even if its just like here's what i wish someone told me when i started.

real estate is saturated in a lot of markets yeah but it depends so much on where you are. i started there and honestly the money per job isnt great once you factor in drive time and editing but it gets your portfolio started and you learn how to deal with clients which is worth a lot more than people think.

the platform thing — ive tried a few and Dronebase was okay for a while when they had more work coming through, not sure what its like now. mostly i get work through word of mouth and a google business profile which sounds boring but its genuinely where most of my calls come from. the guys i know making real money are doing inspection work, cell towers, roofing stuff like that. way less sexy than cinematic flying but the rates are so much better and theres actual repeat business. worth getting into if you have any tolerance for that kind of work.

im kind of in the same boat as you so cant give you the full answer but one thing that helped me was just reaching out to local video production companies and asking if they ever subcontract drone work. got two jobs that way within like a month and neither required me to find the client myself which was nice while im still figuring things out.