got my 107 cert about 4 months ago and have been trying to turn this into at least a part time income thing. done a few free shoots for friends to build a portfolio and i think the work looks decent but i have no idea how to actually get paying clients. ive posted on instagram and made a website but its crickets. starting to wonder if the drone service market is just totally saturated in my area or if im doing somthing wrong with my marketing.

the obvious stuff like real estate agents seems super competitive and i reached out to a few local agencies and either got no response or a polite no. one agent told me they already have someone they use. so how do people actually break in here, is it really just grinding through cold outreach forever or is there some smarter way to go about it

real estate is competitive yeah but it's also high volume so it's worth sticking with. the trick i found is not emailing agencies ? go to actual open houses on weekends, introduce yourself in person, bring a card and maybe show them something on your phone. agents are way more receptive in person than to a cold email they didnt ask for. took me a few months of doing that before i had a handful of regulars but now most of my work comes from like 3 agents who just call me whenever they have a listing. also check if your area has a local real estate investor meetup or landlord group, those people often need aerial content and arent already locked in with someone.

and honestly dont sleep on construction and roofing companies. they dont pay as glamorously as real estate sometimes but theres steady work there if you can position yourself as a documentation service not just a photographer.

the instagram thing rarely works on its own in my experience, you need some kind of referral loop going before social media does anything useful. like people need to see that other people trusted you first. one thing that helped me early on was doing a really solid free or heavily discounted shoot for a local business with a decent following and asking them to tag me when they posted the content. its slow but it builds faster than posting into the void.

also worth just checking local Facebook groups for your town, surprising how often people post asking if anyone knows a drone guy for an event or something. being in those groups and being helpful gets your name out there more than you'd think