so ive been flying for about two years now, got my part 107 last spring and been doing a few small jobs here and there on the side while still at my day job. mostly real estate shoots for a local agency, one construction site gig that went pretty well. the money wasnt life changing but it felt good to get paid for something i genuinely enjoy doing.

anyway my wife keeps saying i should just go full freelance but honestly im not sure the market is there, at least not in our area. we live in a mid-sized city, not like a huge metro. im wondering if anyone here has actually made the jump and if so how long it took before you were making like a livable income from it. not looking to get rich just wondering if its realistic to replace a 55-60k salary doing this kind of work.

also curious what types of jobs actually pay consistently, real estate feels seasonal and i hear mapping and inspection work can be steady but i dont have the gear or software knowledge for that stuff yet

honestly the real estate thing is tough to build a full income on just because you're right, its seasonal and the agencies around here at least are always trying to negotiate prices down once they realize how many pilots are out there. what changed things for me was getting into roof inspections. insurance adjusters, roofing companies, that kind of work. its not glamorous but they call you back. took me probably 8 months of part time grinding before i felt comfortable enough to drop to part time at my regular job and another year before i fully quit. so its doable but its not fast.

the software side for mapping isnt as bad as it sounds, pix4d has decent tutorials and if you can get one job with a small surveying firm or civil engineering company thats willing to work with you on the learning curve, that experience opens a lot of doors. thats literally how i got started with it.

im kind of in the same boat as you so not sure i have great advice but i did read somewhere that a lot of pilots end up doing like a mix of stuff rather than one niche — weddings, events, some real estate, maybe some industrial stuff if you can get the certs. the variety keeps it steady even if each individual category is slow sometimes. good luck either way, curious how it goes for you