Looks like Dronebase has STOPPED paying...
- Thread starter rmp5s
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I can relate. I fly some Dronebase panos when I'm not flying for myself. Before July 10th I got paid for 20 of 31 uploaded panos. After July 10th, I'm 5 for 25. This was also the time that it started taking over 10 days to even get them stitched. I was going to do some commercial panos today, but after some research, I discovered that 15 of the 20 available, that were closest to me, had already been sold,rented or leased. Their program for finding these properties has, as of late, become tragically flawed. I'm going to stop bothering with them, for a bit, and see if they can get things straightened out.
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Is that even worth the time and investment into insurance and proper flight certification? Charging $130 isn't worth the time of a professional drone pilot that has proper insurance. We won't bother going out for less than $350/hr and 150/hour after
In Sweden, we may not have to pay as much as in the United States and there is no special education as a requirement. More like in case you want to ... and pay for it.
However, you must sign that you have knowledge of what you are doing.
I myself have paid 5000skr (around 500usd) for licenses and 1200skr (120usd) for insurance. (annually)
BTW, tomorrow we will fly drones again in Sweden.
August 1st should be a national day.
$350....an hour.
Man, what it must be like for you man. I'm simply looking to get $80 an hour.
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So, when you last did a real estate transaction and hired a licensed surveyor to measure your property... how much did you pay? I'm going to bet it was a good deal more than $80. They probably spent an hour or two. I think it's useful to consider all of this in the context of other licensed, professional services. The sunk and overhead costs weigh heavily, such as insurance, there is a cost to keep your licensure up-to-date, flight services, keeping current training-wise, subscriptions, travel/mileage etc. I generally bill day rate, because my jobs typically require travel and burn my entire day (or days). $1250, $1500 if specialized post-processing is required (such as with expensive to maintain software subscriptions like Pix4D). For pure travel days I bill half-rate. This is pretty standard in the film industry, for example...
I think you misread what I said, I simply said my rate is $80.00 an hour...his is $350, in addition with the real estate business already such a saturated market in a already piss poor paying group of people (the realtors) I'm not even interested in attempting to get into that sector. In addition, I am just getting started and getting my feet wet and I welcome any and all advice / constructive criticism that could be offered by those who are already making a living. I am very...skeptical of how much to charge so I simply worked up a sheet with my overhead and my profit margins and came up with that number for 1200 billable hours for the year. When I say I am new, I mean...less then a month old.
Thankfully I have a full time position I am using to fuel my funds right now as I get myself started. Good information to have on that side of things though, thank you.
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The first thing I did when I was contemplating this stuff was sit down with a RE agency owner (a BIG one) and their "technowizard", and I soon realized this would be a race to the bottom. It's like asking auto dealership salespeople to be polite to minorities ("I'm not doing that, they're all just 'Looky Lou's' etc etc). It's low margin, and when there is low margin, you're lucky to even get paid. Your average agent doesn't give a **** about the law, permits, or licensing. They just want to connect the buyer to a seller as quickly as possible and make a commission and all else hell-be-damned. If you're contemplating starting drone services for real estate photography understand that you're nothing more than a glorified interior decorator/stager. And apparently it now pays $20 per job....
Right now I live smack dab in the middle of some of the largest farming towns in New England, I'm going to try to capitalize on that.
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And an interesting article... Hiring a hobbyist? You might be committing a federal crime.
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Farms and ranches are great opportunities, not just for real estate transactions, but crop inspection/NDVI.
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Well that is a major overstatement. In Canada the rules are quite clear and the majority of reputable realtors are aware and hire accordingly. There are still rouge pilots and agents but they can risk fines and deal with consequences. Our real estate market in Vancouver in unlike most where an average house is close to 1.5 million but average properties often sell for 3+ million. That does leave realtors larger margins. That being said, you still need to prove your worth the money that you charge. To operate legally has significant cost attatched and time it takes to travel and acquire flight certificate if needed. You need to be very proficient at flying and framing shots, and very importantly have good people skills. Flying drones is fun but not everyone likes them and occasionally you need to put of a fire while trying to shoot a house.
Find a company that does interior real estate films and see if they want to incorporate drones. There many ways to make it work and not be wasting your time.
Keep in mind that when you sign up with Dronebase, you gave up all rights to fly for yourself. The contract includes a non-compete clause that allows them to come after you for damages if you do any work outside of Dronebase. That is the #1 reason to stay away from them in my opinion. $100 or whatever is not worth losing your rights to conduct business.
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They have the rights to anything you upload to them, and you can't use the platform to try to entice customers away from Dronebase. They do not require you to refrain from running your own business.
From their website: "You agree that this paragraph goes beyond the governing law on intellectual property law, and includes prohibitions on any competition that violates the provisions of this paragraph, including starting your own competing website or business."
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So, if you start a business that offers drone flyers to go out and do panos for you to sell, there might be a problem. I've had the main operations people at Dronebase even offer advice to me about my own business and website. They have different levels of pilots, that are offered different client missions, based on experience and quality of work. They get this info from all sorts of places, including our own business websites. It's really not an issue with them. They just expect you to not go out and do pano missions, while wearing your own company logos, etc. That's pretty reasonable. They understand that better, more proficient drone operators, provide better quality stuff for them, especially client missions.
It's obviously vague, so take it as you may. I have decided that working with Dronebase is not in the best long-term interests of my company. Remember, just because they may be supportive doesn't mean that an attorney or new corporate decision-makers will see things the same way in the future.
