okay so I passed my 107 a few months ago and I have decent gear, been practicing a lot, feel pretty comfortable flying. but i have literally zero clients and I dont really know where to start. everyone online just says "build your portfolio" and "network" but like... how. I dont know anyone in construction or real estate or any of the industries that supposedly hire drone pilots and cold emailing feels weird and awkward.

did anyone here actually start from scratch with no connections and figure it out? what actually worked for you vs what felt like a waste of time. im not expecting to go full time anytime soon just want to get some actual paid work to build from

cold emailing is awkward but it works better than you'd think if you dont overthink the email. i spent like a week writing this perfect long pitch and sent it to a bunch of real estate agents and heard nothing. then i wrote a three sentence email with a link to a short video sample and suddenly two people replied within a day. shorter and more direct is better, they dont have time to read your life story.

also local facebook groups for small business owners, that sounds kind of lame but genuinely got me my first two paying gigs from posting in one. just something simple showing what youve shot and saying youre available for hire. people in those groups are often looking for local vendors and havent thought about drone footage before you put it in front of them

just walk in places. i know that sounds old fashioned but i literally walked into a small construction company with a usb stick with some sample footage on it and asked to talk to whoever handles marketing or documentation. felt weird as hell but the guy i talked to ended up hiring me for a project the next month. most of the time you'll get brushed off but you only need a few yeses to get rolling. the digital stuff is fine but in smaller markets people still respond to just showing up and being a real human