so ive been doing real estate aerial work for about 8 months now and i started out charging $150 per shoot just to get my foot in the door and build a portfolio. that made sense at the time but now im getting repeat clients and referrals and i still havent raised my prices and honestly i dont even know how to bring it up without losing people.

the thing is some of these shoots are easy, like a quick 20 min flight over a nice property in good weather and im done. but then other ones i'm driving 45 minutes each way, the property is huge, agent wants a ton of different angles, wants me to wait while they do the interior shoot, and its basically a 4 hour day for $150 which is kind of insane when i think about it.

i looked at what some other pilots in my area charge and the range is all over the place. saw one guy advertising $89 shoots which like... how. does he not have insurance? anyway. curious what other people charge and how you structure it, flat rate per property, hourly, by deliverable count, whatever. and also how do you actually tell existing clients the price is going up without it being weird

the $89 guy almost definitely doesnt have part 107 or liability insurance, or hes shooting with like a mini and delivering 5 jpegs. dont compete with that, youre not the same product.

i went through the exact same thing when i started. what worked for me was just building a proper rate card and presenting it as "updated pricing for " instead of making it personal. something like hey i wanted to let you know my rates are changing as of next month, here's what things look like going forward. most agents who value your work wont blink. the ones who drop you over a $50 increase were probably always going to be price-shopping anyway.

for structure i do a base rate that covers up to like 30 mins of flight and a certain number of edited photos, then i have add-ons for video, extra stills, rush turnaround, mileage over a certain radius. keeps it clean and clients understand what they're paying for. my base for residential is $275 now and commercial starts at $450, which honestly still feels a little low sometimes.

this is something i think about too and im not even taking paid work yet lol. but from what ive read in a few places the real estate market specifically is weirdly price sensitive even though agents are making thousands per sale. like they'll negotiate hard on a $200 drone shoot but not think twice about staging costs. no idea why that is but apparently its pretty common