so ive been flying for about two years now, got my part 107 last spring and i do a lot of real estate work on the side for a friend who runs a small brokerage. its decent money but its obviously not consistent and im starting to wonder if i could actually make this a main thing or at least a solid side income.

the thing is i dont really know what other markets to go after. ive heard construction and infrastructure inspections pay really well but i have no idea how you even get your foot in the door with those companies. like do you cold call them, find a contact on linkedin, just show up? i feel like the real estate stuff kind of fell into my lap so i never had to hustle for it and now i genuinely dont know how to approach this.

also wondering if anyone has experience with platforms like Dronebase or Zeitview — worth signing up or is it a race to the bottom on rates? i signed up for Dronebase like six months ago and got maybe two jobs total so that felt pretty disappointing.

honest answer is yes there is real money in it but the real estate side is probably the hardest way to scale because the margins are thin and clients are everywhere which sounds good until you realize everyone with a Mavic thinks they can do it too so pricing pressure is brutal. construction and inspection work is genuinely where the better money is but you're right that getting in is a different game entirely.

what worked for me was targeting smaller regional construction firms rather than the big national ones, because the big guys already have vendors locked in but a company doing like regional commercial builds or utility work often doesnt have a go-to drone person yet. i literally just looked up contractors in my area on linkedin and sent pretty direct messages explaining what i could do for them — progress documentation, orthomosaics, that kind of thing. took a few months of silence and then a few things broke at once and now most of my work comes from three or four steady clients in that sector.

Dronebase i'd basically ignore at this point, the payouts dont really make sense once you factor in drive time and processing. Zeitview is a little better if you're near areas with a lot of utility infrastructure but still not something to build a business on.

im kind of in the same boat as you so not sure i have great advice but one thing i did that helped was reaching out to local video production companies because sometimes they need an aerial operator for a project and dont have one on staff. a few of them have thrown me work when they had something that needed a drone shot and i didnt have to do any of the client-facing stuff which honestly was a relief while i was still figuring things out