been doing small commercial jobs for about a year now, mostly real estate and some construction progress stuff, and i genuinely cannot figure out how to price consistently. like some jobs i feel like i charged too little after the fact, others i quoted something and the client went quiet and i never heard back so i probably went too high.

right now im kind of just guessing based on how long i think it'll take and what i think the client can afford which i know is a terrible way to do it. someone told me to look at what other local pilots charge but honestly theres barely any info out there, nobody posts their rates publicly.

do you guys have an actual system? like do you charge hourly, per deliverable, day rate, what? and does your pricing change much depending on the type of client or is it more standardized. curious how experienced people approach this because right now every quote i send feels like i'm just throwing darts

honestly pricing is the thing nobody talks about enough in this hobby-to-business transition. i went through the same guessing phase for way longer than i should have.

what worked for me was switching to a deliverable-based model rather than hourly. so for real estate it might be X photos edited and delivered, optional video package at a set add-on price, etc. clients understand it better and it stops you from getting penalized for being efficient. if you're fast and good at editing you shouldnt be earning less just because you finished quicker.

for construction i do monthly retainer packages now because the jobs are recurring and predictable, that took a while to negotiate but its so much nicer than quoting per visit.

one thing that helped me figure out if my pricing was in the right ballpark - i joined a couple facebook groups specifically for commercial drone operators and people are a lot more open about rates in those. more specific to your region too which matters a lot, what flies in a major city wont work in a smaller market and vice versa.

im kind of in the same boat so following this thread. one thing i did recently was just call a competitor pretending to be a potential client to see what they'd quote me lol. felt a bit weird but it gave me a real data point. their prices were actually lower than mine which explains some of the silence i've been getting i think