so ive been flying for about two years now, got my part 107 last spring and honestly i feel pretty comfortable with the whole thing. people keep asking me to shoot stuff for them ? a few real estate agents, my neighbors wedding, even a local landscaping company reached out last month. right now im basically doing it for gas money which feels kinda dumb considering the gear i have.

my question is like... how do people actually set this up properly. do i need an LLC right away or can i just start collecting checks and figure it out later. and insurance ? i have hull coverage on my mavic 3 but i dont think that covers commercial work at all. genuinely have no idea what im doing on the business side even though the flying part feels solid. any advice from people who have actually done this would be really appreciated, even just knowing where you started would help

ok so been there, went through all of this about three years ago. first thing i'd say is dont wait on the LLC, it's genuinely not that complicated and in most states you can do it online for under a hundred bucks. the main reason is liability separation ? if something goes wrong on a job you really don't want that coming back to your personal stuff. i used legalzoom at first but honestly just going direct through your state's business filing site is the same thing for less money.

for insurance the big one people use for commercial drone work is Thimble or SkyWatch, both are pay-per-use which is great when you're just starting out and not flying every day. hull coverage from like State Farm or whoever is totally different, that's just for the physical aircraft and yeah it probably won't cover a commercial gig liability claim. you want something with at least a million in liability for most clients, some bigger companies will ask for two million before they'll even talk to you.

pricing took me forever to figure out honestly. i was way undercharging for the first six months. real estate agents will lowball you hard if you let them, try not to go below like 150-200 for a basic shoot even if it feels like a lot at first. your time driving there, setup, editing, that all adds up fast.

the LLC thing is solid advice, i'll second that. also just a small thing ? make sure whatever business name you pick you can actually get the domain and social handles for. sounds dumb but i named my thing and then realized someone had the instagram already and it was annoying to work around.