so I've spent a lot of time on my channel talking about how to build a successful drone business, and one of the questions I get asked the most, probably more than any other question, is how much do I charge for my drone services. If you charge too little, there's a potential for doing a lot of work for not a lot of money. If you charge too much, then you price yourself out of the market, and the client will never call you back. So, in today's video, I'm going to help you think about all the different factors that should be involved when thinking about how to price your drone services. And then, make sure you stick around to the end because I'm going to show you a website that tells you exactly what your competitors are charging for specific services. So, let's get into it. First off, remember that you're not just a drone pilot; you're actually a problem solver. Your client has a problem, and they are paying you to solve it. Therefore, you are selling solutions, not services. And I would argue that drone photography for

example is not a solution; it is a service. Let me help explain that by using an example. So, in your Discovery call with your client, they reveal to you that they're not hitting their sales goals because they don't have enough exposure. So, the solution then is exposure; it's consistent branding; it's trying to keep their brand top of mind with their potential customers. So, how can your services help provide a solution to that problem? Well, one way is through consistent, engaging social media content. You can help that client reach their goals. So, now you're becoming an asset; you're becoming a part of their team; you're becoming irreplaceable. So, how does this relate to pricing? Well, as you become a more valuable part of their team, I believe that you can raise your prices; you can raise your fees because you're helping them solve a problem that they have, and people pay money for Solutions, not Services. Let's move on to the next part of the video, and we're going to talk about the three different ways that you can charge. I believe

there's others, but we're going to talk about three today in this video. Number one is you can charge per hour. That's just a flat fee. You can put it on your website, wherever, say, I charge 100 bucks per hour for drone photography. And that's a flat rate per fee. So, you get a job, your ese takes 2 hours, you charge $100 per hour, that's $200. Okay, pretty simple, pretty cut and dry. The next way you can charge is what's called a day rate. Now, in the cinematography world, this is pretty common. I work with a lot of DPS, freelance videographers. They typically charge a day rate. For example, I know people here in Charlotte, cinematographers here, that can charge anywhere from $800 to $1,000 per day, depending on their skill level. The third way you can charge for your services is per project. And so, every project is different, the deliverables are different, the requirements are different, the needs of the client are different, the solutions you provide are different, so

in that sense, instead of just saying, here's a flat fee, you're going to gather all the necessary information from that client and then come up with a customized quote based upon their needs. So, for any new project I get, I like to break it down into three distinct phases: pre-production, production, and post-production. So, let's talk a little bit about each one of those phases. Number one is pre-production. This is anything that you do leading up to the actual shoot day. This is all the work being done before you actually go out and fly your drone. So, I have a list here of things to run through and help you think about, well, what is pre-production? And that's going to include things like phone calls, emails, meetings. You know, some clients are very needy and they want to have three face-to-face phone calls before you actually go out and fly your drone. They're going to want you to come out and spend time driving or in traffic, time in the meeting. That's a very needy client, and that client is going to get

charged a lot more money than a non-needy client. What else is involving pre-production? Well, depending on the project, you might have to go out and buy new gear or more specialized gear. Maybe you're going to be flying for 8 hours, right? 1 hour versus 8 hours makes a big difference because now you need to consider extra batteries and extra storage, right? You have a lot more footage and capture in 8 hours, and maybe your batteries aren't going to last all day. So now you have to go out and buy more batteries and more SD cards, right? Does the job require any special certifications apart from the 107? There are specific types of jobs that require you to have specific types of certifications. So do you need to go out and spend money on research or training or test prep or take this is the test you take to get that certification? Cost money. Those are all factors you need to take into consideration. So all that, all those factors, meanings, advanced certifications, potentially more gear or more specialized gear, all that should be

uh factored in when you're doing your pricing during the pre-production phase. Now, the next phase we're going to move into is called production. This is when you actually go out and fly your drone. So, what are some things to consider in this part of the production? Well, how far do you have to travel for the job? Is it 1 hour away? Is it 8 hours away? Are you going to drive there? Are you going to fly there? Now, we talk about plane tickets. If you're driving far, we're talking about gas. Are you staying overnight? Do you need to pay for lodging? Do you pay for food? Those are things to consider as well. How far away is a job? I mentioned this earlier, but how long are you actually going to be on site? Is it going to take you 1 hour to fly and film or 8 hours? So, by now, I think you're starting to get a good picture that every job is unique and different, and it may not be beneficial to charge by the hour. You may want to start thinking

about either a day rate or a customized quote per project. Lastly, the third phase is post-production. This is where we actually are done flying, we're done filming, we're back home now, and we have to actually deliver some content, some assets, some media to the client. And what does that look like? Are those photos? Are there videos? Is it 2D Maps? 3D maps? What are you actually delivering? And so, factor in the time it's going to take you to process, to backup, to store, to transfer, to edit all that media. In the case of video, they want a one-minute video, they want a five-minute video. Like, editing a one-minute video obviously takes less time than a five-minute video. So, factoring that time. Another thing to think about is how quickly do they want this content? What's the turnaround time? Do they want it tomorrow, or can it wait three months? I know typically if people want things faster, it costs more. Also, think about the computer or the hardware that you have.

is it sufficient to actually deliver the content? Uh, I actually have a nice MacBook Pro laptop that's pretty beefy, but I haven't always had fast computers before. I know when I've tried to edit things on slower computers, it can really bog me down and slow down my workflow. Do you need to buy more memory for your computer or more hard drive space, or do you need to buy a brand new computer or a different computer, uh, to do the work? Uh, think about the things you're going to need to actually process that media. Does the job require any specialized software like DroneDeploy to help you create 2D maps or 3D models? And those things cost money. And then think about storage, right? Uh, physical storage or cloud storage. I know some people, uh, who do weddings, for example. They will buy a hard drive for every single wedding, and then they will put all the content on that hard drive and give it to the client. So, you have to factor in the cost of the hard drive and your quote. And also, some clients, you could say, Hey, I

will store your media for up to a year, and that's a good way to upsell a service, right? Like, if you deliver the content and they lose it, well, it's gone, and you're not going to keep it on your SD card forever. You're going to wipe that SD card and use it for another job. So, you could say, Hey, I'll store your media for up to a year, and then that requires you to pay for some sort of Cloud storage, like Dropbox. But then you just factor that into the cost of the project. So, when you're pricing out your jobs, don't forget to include time spent processing the media. Okay, we're almost there. Before we get to the website that tells you exactly what your competitors are charging, there's one more thing we need to think about, is what is the type of job that you're doing. So, let's go through a list of types of jobs that you may encounter or may get hired for: residential real estate, commercial real estate, 3D mapping.

event coverage like concert or sports event inspection surveillance marketing travel tourism surveys uh land Wildlife Management. There's a ton of different jobs out there. I actually made a video uh and I gave I provided 46 different Jone jobs. So I made that video a couple weeks ago. I'll put a link to it in the description below. It has 46 different drone jobs that you can get into with your drone. Now every one of those jobs is unique and different and has different requirements for Hardware software time energy pre-production production post-production. They all have different requirements so they're all going to be priced differently. I do know that something like uh residential real estate does not. You're not going to make a ton of money with that. From I know that from experience and from watching other videos online. It's not a huge Money Maker as compared to something like commercial real estate which does make pretty good money. So every job is going to be different and the price points going to be different based upon uh the project requirements. So that's something to consider not

every drone job is equal. All right, so we're going to go to the computer now. I'm going to show you a website that tells you exactly what your competitors are charging for specific drone jobs. And, uh, when I've I was doing some research for another video I'm going to be doing soon, and I came across this website. And I was like, Wow, this is a really cool tool to help give me some insight to what other people are charging. Uh, because I know that's something that a lot of people, uh, struggle with, and they're trying to figure out. Uh, I've been there. And so I think this website is going to be a huge help to you. So I'll leave a link to the description below, and the website is called, uh, the URL is droners.io. Droners.io. So go ahead and pull that up in another tab or window, and let's walk through it together. And if you're not familiar with droners.io, it's a what we call a drone network. Basically, you sign up, uh, for a

free account as a drone pilot. You upload all your information, and then when droners.io gets a job, a drone job in your area, they will contact you and say, Hey, we have someone who needs AAL photos of this house or whatever, and we're going to pay you x amount dollar for the job. Do you accept it? And you have the choice to accept it or reject it. So here's how we're going to find out this information about these pilots. So if you scroll down to the bottom, it says some of our top drone pilots. You'll see a couple of them here. So we have Ohio air photos. It looks like he services Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio, and will travel up to 140 miles. He has insurance coverage up to $1 million, and he has his license number. That's probably his FAA license number. And then there you go. It says that he charges an average of $175 per hour. He has 41 reviews, looks like four and one-half star, four four and

a half Stars. That's pretty good. And then at the bottom here, it tells you all the different um Avenues or all the different uh types of drone jobs that he specializes in, such as agriculture, construction, uh maintenance, cinematography, event coverage, real estate, roof inspections, weddings, survey mapping, infrastructure, Etc. So you can see there all what he does. Now, if you're not in one of those states, that doesn't really help you that much. So how can we find someone that's in your state and your area? So one way you could do it is by go up the top and click on browse, hover over browse pilots, and then click on portfolio reels, portfolio reels. And let's say that you are in uh I'll do I'll do in North Carolina. It's where I am, and I want to see what people in my area are charging for uh real estate. So I'll choose real estate, and then here in the search next to it, I'll type in North Carolina, and I'm in the Charlotte area, so I'll just pick this one 'cause it says

Charlotte. I don't know exactly where that's at, but it's somewhere in Charlotte. Okay, so remember these are pilot profiles, portfolio real. So these are actual jobs that these pilots have done. So the first one here is a company called Charlotte Drone. He did a project for Villa Heights in North Carolina. And again, the same information. It says he will travel up to 70 miles, no insurance specified, license not specified, and charge is $150 per hour. And this was a real estate job. And then what's cool is you can click on and hit play, and you can actually see what the job was. So if we just sit here and watch this for a minute. So he's got music, he's got flying drone footage, he's got overlays. There's an overlay here, Nota overlay. Villa Heights is over here. There's a Subway icon, Subway icon. All right, all right. So this was a, this was almost a 3-minute [Music] video. All right, so there if there's so that would

be my competition right there was someone that I'm competing with uh and then you can also see um other people in the area some of their jobs that they that they did uh I think it's pretty cool you can actually see not just um how much they charge but you can see the quality of their work. Now what else can we do as far as looking into these these Pilots looking to our competition. So I went ahead and signed up for um a free account on here as a as a pilot and so if you go back to the if you go back to the navigation and then click on pilot profiles um so this is me and my account and what I can do here is click on on again uh Charlotte North Carolina I'll just pick and I could I couldn't choose by services like I did before but I'll just leave everything empty can change filter by entry intermediate Advanced you can sort it by what they do like photogrametry Liar photos 4K video whatever. I'm just going to keep it kind of generic and see.

what comes back so I hit search, okay. So then I get this nice map, alright. So then I see, wow, look at all these guys around me that offer drone services in the Carolinas. So I'm pretty a lot of competition, right? Um, so then I can zoom in. Here we go, Sky Limit NC, uh, 37 reviews, five stars, 89 flights, charges $85 an hour, a million do in insurance coverage, um, more than 15 years of experience in GIS mapping and drone operations. And then he has a link to his website here. You can also click on the name Sky Limit, click on that, and that goes to a, uh, detail page here with more information. You can see he has a little description, so I'm assuming this is something that like a client who is looking for specific, uh, um, drone operators would have access to. They can see, uh, samples of his work through this little drop-down. There's a video there. You can see what drones he has. He has, uh, an Air 2S and a Mavic 3. He has a Mavic 2S and wireless.

microphones okay. 37 reviews, and he's got a professional drone pilot approved badge. Okay, so here you go. This is a ton of great information to help you figure out who's in your area, what are they charging, what types of jobs are they doing. So there you go. I hope that information was helpful, but knowing how much to charge a client, it's just one small piece of running a successful drone business. There's so much more to learn, and it can be kind of daunting to try and do it on your own. So if you want to make money with your drone, then check out this video here where I break down everything you need to know to start and operate your own successful drone business. Okay, that's it for this video. Thanks for watching. We'll see you in the next video. Bye for now.

How Much Should You Charge For Drone Services (2024)?

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