been doing drone work on the side for about three years alongside my regular job and i keep going back and forth on whether to try and make it my main thing. some months i make decent money, other months basically nothing and its hard to plan around that. my day job is pretty flexible but it does take up a lot of my week obviously.

the work i do is mostly real estate, some events, did a couple of mapping jobs for a surveying company last year which was really interesting and paid well. just curious if anyone here has actually made the jump to doing it full time and what that looked like for you. did you have a cushion saved up, did you already have enough clients lined up, or did you just kind of go for it. im probably overthinking this but it feels like a big risk when i have a mortgage and stuff

I made the jump about four years ago and it was genuinely terrifying for the first six months. What I wish someone had told me is that the income variance doesn't really smooth out until you have a few solid anchor clients, like businesses that call you consistently rather than one-off jobs. For me that was a regional property management company and a construction firm doing progress photography, between those two I had a predictable baseline and everything else on top was gravy. The surveying work you mentioned is worth pursuing more aggressively, those clients tend to be repeat customers and they dont really care about getting the cheapest option the way real estate agents sometimes do.

not full time yet but my plan is to hit a consistent 2k a month from drone work before i even think about leaving my job, just as a rule for myself so i dont do something dumb. the mortgage thing is real, same situation here. also worth mentioning that the equipment costs can sneak up on you once its your main gig, insurance gets more serious, you might need backup gear, its not just the drone you bought to have fun with anymore