17 Ways To Make Money With Your Drone [Steps Included] 

Today I’m going to show you 17 ways to make money flying drones.

In fact:

These are some of the same methods that helped me go from collegiate student athlete to full time drone pilot.

Let’s Dive Right In:

1. Riches in Real Estate
2. Sell Stock Media
3. Construction Monitoring
4. Inspect Cell Towers
5. Industrial Inspections
6. Monitor Crops For Cash
7. Forestry Funding
8. Photo contest payouts
9. Make Travel Videos
10. Teach New Pilots
11. Film Local Events
12. Social Media Money
13. Insurance Claims Adjustment
14. Reconstruct Accidents
15. Make Maps For Money
16. Thermal Inspections
17. LiDAR Surveys
18. Bonus

1) Riches In Real Estate

The first method we’re going to cover is real estate. There are a few reasons we’re starting here:

 1) Low startup cost

2) Constant demand

3) Short Learning Curve

Also, real estate is where I got started. It helped me pay through college with the little free time I had outside of college classes and track practices.

To succeed in real estate, you’ll need a few things:

1. A drone that can take good quality photos and videos.

• You don’t need an Inspire 2 (see below). What matters is what you can do with what you have. Some smaller drones take very professional photos.

Our entry recommendation for now is the Mavic Air 2s. You can get a new one for around $1,000 even. Refurbished models can be found for around $800.  

2. Editing Software

You will need software to edit your drone media. Our recommendations are in the Adobe Suite (Photoshop, Lightroom, and Premiere Pro to be exact).

• If you are a student or teacher you can receive Adobe’s student discount.

3. A Portfolio Of Your Work

To build my portfolio, I called up agents representing the most beautiful properties in my area and offered to film for free. I added these photos and videos to a portfolio and showed it to real estate agents in my area.

• Bonus Tip: Ask for a testimonial after your free shoot. A top producing agent’s backing will carry a lot of weight with other agents in your area.

4. Focus On A Few

There are only a few top producing agents in each area. Find 3 and strike up a deal with them through discounts, fast delivery, or other bonuses.

• Trust me, these producers will give you all the volume you can handle, maybe even too much depending on how busy they are.

2) Sell Stock…Media

Selling stock media is a GREAT industry to get started in while you’re honing and perfecting your skills.

We’re going to talk about two methods for stock media.

Method #1: Sell through a stock footage site (pond5, shutterstock, etc).

Method #2: Create media that sells itself on your own platform.

Pros & Cons to Method #1

Pros

1. Advertising for media handled by stock site
2. Mass exposure to potential buyers

Cons

1. Tough to compete if you don’t live in a desirable location
2. You get a percentage of sales from YOUR media
3. Stock site marketing can be ineffective

Pros and Cons Method #2

We personally recommend this method*

Pros

1. You can become the lone provider for potential customers.
2. You receive 100% commission
3. You create an evergreen asset

Cons

1. Marketing is up to you. With this method however, you don’t have to market. 
2. It costs time same as the other method.

Why This Works:

Stock media for local places is hard to come by!

Let’s say I work for a news agency, and I have to create a promo video of a local park for an event by tomorrow afternoon. I’m in a time crunch.

I search the park name on Google and stumble across a YouTube video of it and the owner is selling that footage. The price looks good, and the video even better.

The news company wins and you do too.

3) Construction Monitoring

This job is about as simple as it sounds.

The point of this work is to provide your client, a project manager or foreman, with aerial media that shows construction progress over time.

Many construction sites take months to years to go from start to completion.

All projects have timelines. Investors and builders want to make sure they’re on track.

A manager could arrive on site and check on each process manually OR you can show in a few snapshots the progress of every part of the unfinished site.

How To Win Work

Like real estate, do one or maybe two free jobs for the purpose of putting together a portfolio and receiving a testimonial.

Get a testimonial from a company who’s name carries weight confirming what you say about the quality of your work.

It only takes a few construction progress jobs lasting a year or more to create a steady income that can be handled in your spare time. 

4) Inspect Telephone Towers

With the rise of 5G, grants have been given out to upgrade cell towers to meet demand.

These funds are allowing companies to buy drones, and hire pilots who can inspect towers cheaper, safer, and more efficient than the traditional method.

5) Industrial Inspections

This method is a little more complex. It’s great to pursue after you’ve developed skills and acquired a commercial drone.

This is a great starting point if you’re already a plant operator, inspector, or non-destructive tester.

You don’t need to be an expert on flare stacks, boilers, and more to perform industrial inspections, though it helps.

You are an expert in your field, flying drones.

Refineries hire inspectors who can predict problems and fix those existing.

Most inspectors don’t have a drone license, though this is changing rapidly.

How To Win Work

Offer your commercial drone and professional piloting skills on a free pilot project with the help of a refinery inspection team.

Work with their inspection expert if you don’t know this industry yet, and create a high quality deliverable that you can use to sell future paid projects.

Bonus tip: If you can’t pay for an expensive system up front, rent one for the job from a reputable company. We trust SiTech South for our rental needs.

This method lowers startup cost, allowing you to enter the industry with little upfront expense, and start toward earning your first paid projects.

6) Monitor Crops For Cash

Drone work in agriculture can take a few different forms. Here are 3:

1. Map out mass acreage by drone and gather data on vegetation health.
2. Spray crops autonomously
3. Plant trees and crop faster than 10 people can plant manually. (See airseed)

7) Forestry Funding

8) Photo contest payouts

Photo contests require you to capture beautiful media, which can’t hurt, only help.

You will improve skills and develop assets that pay even if you don’t place.

If you do however, you can win monetary prizes, free gear, and many other perks, along with a major boost in your credibility.

9) Make Travel Videos

There are creatives all over the world who rely on this method as their sole source of income.

I’ve received discounted and free stays by providing my skills (taking great photos and videos) to hotel managers, or airbnb owners where I travel.

10) Teach New Pilots

I understand this area well, because teaching pilots is what UAV Mentor is all about. Our mission is Training the Next Generation of Pilots®.

You do not have to be one of the top service providers in your country to offer training to new pilots. We are always perfecting our crafts.

Although you as an expert service provider might not think much about the service you offer at a professional level each day, a newbie is aspiring to reach your current level.

You can offer your expertise through many methods, here are just a few we’ve used that may benefit you:

• One on one coaching
• In person workshops
• Online courses
• Tools that make beginner’s lives easier (presets, actions, templates, etc.)
• Webinars

If you were starting fresh with the knowledge you have now, what would you do differently?

Lay the steps out in a direct, easy to follow path that new pilots can use.

Explain a few pitfalls that you walked into and how to avoid them, and offer a line of communication  to you if they have a new situation that arises.

If you can provide this knowledge in a direct, easy to understand, and engaging way, you can profit tremenously!

11) Film Local Events

Drones offer perspectives that bring great value to event coordinators.

On the sports side:

Football, baseball, formula 1, and even cross country races are seeing the rise of drones to film their events.

On the more personal side:

Weddings, fundraisers, and concerts, are seeing a similar rise.

Events are fun, and exciting to capture!

There’s typically some stress associated with capturing one time events. 

Like all other industries, with proper planning you’ll be sure to get the shot every time.

Events can be great to film for one off jobs as they come. But striking up a deal to promote a brand can provide a more consistent, longer term income stream which is worth considering.

Drone Recommendations

Our advice is to start with the DJI Air 2S. We personally feel this drone is the perfect middle ground between lower recreational models, and the more expensive “prosumer” category.

As your skills increase as well as your client base, you can upgrade accordingly. On the higher end, we would recommend the Mavic 3 cinema, or the DJI Inspire 2 with X7 lens set.

There are a few nuances you’ll want to consider like navigating the FAA’s new flying over people and moving vehicles regulations.

If you don’t hover over people, but rather stay away from the action and use a longer focal length, your videos will feel like they’re right in the mix.

Winning work

There are a few routes you can take, we’re going to recommend the easiest and most direct.

Step 1: Get in contact with your city’s main travel agency.

Step 2: Introduce yourself

• Most local travel agencies will have a physical location. 
• Meet with their sales or tourism manager

Step 3: Offer to film an event for free

• If you haven’t filmed an event before, offer to film and upcoming festival/concert for free.

Step 4: Deliver and Follow-Up

• Return in person after delivering your high quality media.
• Receive feedback, and provide your plan to capture another upcoming event, this time paid.
• If you’ve delivered, this agency will pay you for the next event, and many more to come!

12) Social Media Money

If you’re an avid drone fan, which you must be if you’re this far along in the post, you likely follow a few popular drone accounts on social media.

In terms of side income, this method can be great! Some popular channels seemingly explode overnight.

If you decide to pursue this route, I hope that yours is one of them. But, I wouldn’t bank on this.

Many studies have shown that consistent quality over time creates a content snowball that grows exponentially.

Beyond shooting for future monetization, or brand sponsorships, social media is great for many other reasons for budding drone pilots.

When properly used, social media can be one of the most effective portfolios that show your quality of work

Let’s say you call up a real estate agent and request to do work for them. After a great conversation, you both hang up, and the first thing they do is search your company on Google.

The first thing that will pop up if your company’s name isn’t all over the news is your social media site.

With natural curiosity, they’re going to check out your social media, and for better or worse what they see will influence their decision.

Although you may not have received money from your channel yet, in a somewhat tangible way you have if your photos and videos served as a factor in their decision to pay you for your work.

13) Insurance Claims Adjustment

Insurance agencies are rapidly discovery how beneficial drones can be, notably when documenting natural disasters for insurance claims.

In 2017 Hurricane Irma devastated many cities on it's way through the Caribbean and Eastern United States.

The storm damaged 95% of all buildings on St. Martin island.

The area was flooded, roofs were caving in, and the situation was worsening by the day.

Insurance companies needed to accurately assess damage without placing more lives in danger.

A team of 5 drone pilots armed with Phantom 4 and Mavic 2 pros assessed 300 buildings in just 10 days.

With the use of UAVs this feat helped to accurately allocate the use of 2 billion dollars worth of claims to rebuild properties across the island.

Drone Recommendations

When it comes to insurance claims and adjustment, all you need is a good camera drone. 

This industry doesn't require great camera skills. You are documenting conditions as they are on a given day, so little to no editing is expected.

Larger projects will require a drone capable of performing basic mapping missions. We recommend the DJI Mavic 2 Pro. 

14) Reconstruct Accidents

Accident reconstruction is a field where drones are being adopted rapidly.

The reason being, drones can provide abundantly more data in literally a fraction of the time compared to traditional reconstruction methods.

The goal of reconstruction is to gather data from an accident scene to help you and your client (an attorney) determine what happened. 

Drones can help you cover large areas, like highway traffic scenes.

There are also drones like the Skydio S2 and X2, that can create highly accurate 3d models of smaller scenes. 

For example, a terrestrial LiDAR scanner will run you north of $50,000.

It's accuracy can't be beat by drone, but a system like the Skydio S2 with it's 3d scan package comes very close.

The Skdyio S2 with 3d scan is under $5,000 and can capture in just minutes a complete 3d model of a scene with sub millimeter relative accuracy.

Drone Recommendations

We recommend acquiring a drone capable of capturing basic mapping missions. Our pick for this task is the Mavic 2 Pro for entry level. 

However, thanks to a company called Skyebrowse, most DJI drones are now capable of creating models with high relative accuracy through "videogrammetry". We definitely recommend checking them out!

Winning Work

You don't have to be an expert reconstructionist or even have a background in this line of work.

Our advice is to partner with an experienced accident reconstructionist. With little effort you can drastically improve the way data is processed, reported, and delivered.

The benefits are tangible and immediate, and you can be rewarded greatly for improving such an essential industry.

15) Make Maps For Money

As a drone pilot you can enter the survey and mapping industry with the knowledge that the technology you use is re-shaping an industry older than the Ancient Egyptians.

Experts using traditional methods can collect a few hundred survey accurate points in about 2 hours with the right equipment.

A drone in the same time can map out over 500 acres, and collect over 1 billion survey accurate points.

The point is, your tool, a drone, can offer survey quality data for a fraction of the cost and time of traditional methods.

This creates a great opportunity to either enter into business for yourself, or partner with a survey firm as a pilot.

Drone Recommendations

To attain survey accurate data by drone, there are a few additional pieces of equipment you will need.

Drone Survey Kit #1

• Mavic 2 Pro with PPK Kit
• DJI Base Station
• Trimble Catalyst

Drone Survey Kit #2

• Phantom 4 RTK or Matrice 300 RTK
• Subscription to VRS network
• Aeropoint GCPs

Winning Work 

There are a few ways to get into this field.

Method 1: You can start by entering a "neighboring industry" like construction monitoring.

Provide survey accurate orthomosaics as an add-on for 2-3 free projects until you can reliably deliver accurate datasets.

Method #2: Partner with a survey or engineering firm and get experience on a variety of projects to build your portfolio. 

Once you have a few projects down, you're prepared to sell your services to a wide variety of niches including but not limited to...

• Construction Monitoring
• Forestry
• Land Surveying
• Cartography
• Ecological Surveys
• Accident reconstruction
• Urban Planning & Development

Any industry that can benefit from accurate data represents a market that you can serve with your expertise.

16) Thermal Inspections

Thermal drone inspections provide value to a long list of use cases:

• Roof and building inspections
• Industrial inspections
• Solar farms
• Powerlines
• Pipelines
• Search and rescue
• Public safety

We recommend thermography as an upsell to other inspection services (i.e. plant assets, pipelines, etc.)

Thermal inspections require a different skillset than filming with an RGB camera. This skill takes time to learn, and an upfront cost to receive certification and training.

Drone Recommendations

There are many thermal drone kits available.

1. You can attach 3rd party thermal cameras to your drone.
2. You can purchase a drone with a built in thermal camera like the Mavic 2 enterprise advanced.
3. Purchase an interchangeable payload like the H20T (It can't be beat on quality, but this comes with a price tag).

Winning Work

The initial investment you make in certification and training can be quickly recouped and surpassed with a few paid thermal inspections (especially for plant assets, or anything else industrial in nature).

The Upsell

If you already offer RGB drone inspections services, this entry method will be much easier.

In addition to your current inspection services, offer a free thermal inspection with the guidance of an expert inspector at the project site.

The benefit of working with an expert inspector at the project site is he/she knows the equipment to be inspected well.

They will ensure any deviations are noted, pointed out, and addressed. 

Using the data you've collected, and the expert guidance of the plant's inspector, generate a professional inspection report.

From the partnership you will learn the ins and outs of inspecting that asset. Also, you will gain a quality inspection report that you can use to sell future paid projects!

17) LiDAR Survey and Mapping

LiDAR (light detection and ranging) is a method for determining distance using laser pulses.

Over the past few years, a few companies have pioneered the application of ground based LiDAR technology on drones.

LiDAR is especially helpful when you want to gather data on the ground underneath lots of trees or other vegetation

LiDAR fits in the realm of drone survey and mapping. LiDAR mapping provides highly accurate detailed models for all sorts of project sites. 

The main benefit with using LiDAR is its ability to capture points on the ground beneath layers of canopy and dense vegetation.

A very common use case we've seen is mapping large vegetated areas with the purpose of stripping off the vegetation layer above ground to get an accurate view of the bare earth beneath the trees.

This is something that no other data collection method can provide.

Drone Recommendations

Drone LiDAR payloads are heavy. The reason I'm bringing this up is that you will need a drone capable of carrying heavier payloads.

Ideally you will want a drone with good flight time while carrying a payload weighing between 3 to 9 lbs.

The drone we recommend for LiDAR inspections is the Matrice 300 RTK. This drone is very versatile. DJI offers compatible thermal, RGB, and LiDAR payloads with this system.

As for the LiDAR payload itself, we recommend you start with DJI's L1, especially if you plan to purchase the Matrice 300 RTK.

DJI's L1 is not as accurate as higher end payloads that run into the 6 figure range, but it is also not nearly as expensive. 

If after a few projects, you decide to dive further into the LiDAR industry, we recommend you check out Phoenix LiDAR systems.  

They have a very knowledgeable team that can guide you to making the proper purchase decision for your project needs.

Winning Work

By now you've likely seen the benefits that free work offers for building your portfolio. It is no different with a high ticket service like drone LiDAR.

We don't recommend jumping into drone LiDAR at first, at least without previous experience in this field.

However, this is a great service to add once you understand how to collect, procure, and process data on large project sites.

Because drone LiDAR is so expensive, here you can gain a great benefit out of renting a LiDAR payload for a proof of concept/portfolio project.

Ideally you want to offer this service to an industry that will receive the most benefit (and in return compensate you accordingly). Here are some of the largest:

• Agriculture
• Forestry
• Utility Line Inspections
• Transportation (railways and roadways)
• Cartography
• Mining

If you provide or plan to provide services in one of these niches, you can offer this service as an add-on to a current project of yours. 

Bill for RGB mapping/analysis of a project site and offer LiDAR in addition.

You will already be on site, and flying the area, so you will be paid to capture data for future projects while meeting the current project's scope.

You gain a portfolio project, and the client gets a bonus deliverable, you're both happy!

18) Giving Back

Before we close out this list, I want to cover one more topic that falls outside the money making list, but will reward you in ways money can't.

 Everyone has a unique background that influences what we value. This also holds true for the charities that move our hearts.

Although you don't get paid to donate services and time, giving to a cause that really matters to you will reward you more than money ever could.

I began in drone work with a company called Viznu that my mom owns.

She has donated photography to the St. Jude dream home giveaways within our state for 12 years now.

I've been fortunate to donate videos and drone media for the past 5.

The dream home giveaway means something to us.

Since it's first year in 1991, this event has raised over 300 million to help fight childhood cancer, and provide for the families it affects!

There's no other commercial project we take on throughout the year that brings us the same joy that helping St. Jude in our own little way does.

We suggest you find a cause that matters to you, and if you can, use your newfound drone skills to improve the lives of others.

What Did You Think?

Now I’d like to hear from you:

Which method from today’s post are you going to use first?

Are you going to become a social media influencer or inspection expert?

Either way, let me know by leaving a comment below right now.