so ive been flying for about two years now, got my part 107 last spring and been doing a handful of small jobs here and there ? real estate photos mostly, one wedding video that honestly i underbid way too low but whatever, lesson learned. my day job is fine but its not what i want to be doing and ive been wondering if theres actually a path to doing this full time or if everyone is just kind of scraping by.

the thing is i see a lot of people online claiming they make crazy money with drones but then when you dig into it its like theyre selling a course about making money with drones, which is not super confidence inspiring. i want to hear from people actually in the field. is real estate enough to build on or do i need to get into something like inspection work or mapping? i have a mavic 3 pro and an older phantom 4 but i dont have any of the enterprise gear yet.

anyway not looking for a magic answer just trying to get a realistic sense of what the first couple years actually look like for someone trying to build a client base from scratch

real estate alone is rough honestly, the margins are thin and you're constantly competing with guys who will do a shoot for like 80 bucks which is kind of a race to the bottom. where i started getting traction was construction progress documentation ? developers want consistent monthly or weekly shots of their sites and once you land one of those contracts it's recurring income which is way more stable than chasing one-off real estate gigs. took me probably 18 months before i felt like i wasnt just hoping the next job would come through. the part 107 is the baseline but if you can get any kind of thermography certification or get comfortable with photogrammetry software that opens up inspection and mapping work which pays significantly better per hour. dont give up the day job until you have at least 6 months of freelance income saved up though, i made that mistake and it was a stressful few months

im kind of in the same boat as you so i cant give you the full picture but one thing that helped me was just reaching out to a local real estate photography company rather than trying to go direct to agents myself ? they already have the client relationships and just needed someone to handle the aerial portion. less money per job obviously but way less hustle to find the work. might be worth doing while you build up your own contacts