so ive been part 107 certified for about 8 months now and i keep hearing that real estate is the easiest way to break in but honestly im not seeing it. i reached out to like a dozen local realtors and most of them either already have someone or they want to pay like $75 for a full shoot which barely covers my time let alone wear on the equipment.

im in a mid-size city not a tiny market so i dont think its purely a location thing. just wondering if anyone here actually built something sustainable doing real estate work or if its one of those things that sounds easier than it is. maybe im pitching wrong i dunno. open to any thoughts

real estate was my entry point too and yeah the $75 crowd is real and you just have to ignore them. what changed things for me was going after the higher end listings ? like $500k+ homes where the agent actually has a marketing budget. those realtors understand that good aerial footage moves properties and they'll pay $200-300 without much pushback. took me a while to figure out i was targeting the wrong tier of agents honestly.

also if you can bundle stills with a short video walkthrough you can charge more and its actually less competition because a lot of drone guys dont edit well or dont want to deal with video. that combo has been my bread and butter for about two years now, not getting rich but its consistent side income on top of my day job.

i had the same experience at first. one thing that helped me was just cold walking into real estate offices instead of emailing ? sounds old school but people actually responded way better face to face. brought a little printed portfolio thing and got two recurring clients out of the first three offices i visited. emails just get ignored i think