Brett Garamella here. In today's video, I'm going to give you 9 ways to make money
with your drone, so let's get right into it!
alright before we get into talking about how to make money with your drone you're
gonna need the right drone so I would recommend the Phantom 4 Pro that would
be my go-to drone just the most versatile drone has the best photo or
video quality without spending more than two thousand dollars and you're not
gonna want to spend too much money if you want to start a business right if
you spend like ten thousand dollars if you have that money great but most
people don't so I would say around two thousand dollars is a good budget to
start with so you want to get the Phantom 4 Pro you can also use it for
mapping and other things now if you want to go lighter you could go with the
Mavic 2 pro although the image quality I find is a little better right out of the
box with a phantom 4 Pro Plus as a mechanical shutter and it shoots 4k up
to 60 frames per second which is a Mavic tube Pro doesn't and if you have a
little patience you could also go with the hotel Evo 2 but I would go with the
Evo 2 Pro so for right now as of this video I would go with the phantom 4 pro
now one thing about the phantom 4 pro I will say I kind of still like my Mavic 2
pro better because it's easier to fly the phantom 4 pro it still occasionally
isn't as smooth and it's kind of like it has a little like jerk to it and a
little like idiosyncrasies that you have to get used to it I can't really explain
it but basically flying it it's easier to get that nice cinematic smooth
footage with the Mavic 2 pro than the Phantom 4 pro however once you get used
to the phantom 4 pro you can still get equally if not better results because
the image quality is better in my opinion
then the Mavic 2 pro but a lot of people get hung up on the gear there's so many
other things you need to work on to make money with your drone and having the
right drone is just one part of that you're also going to need a commercial
license if you're in the u.s. so you're part 107 license and you get this nice
little card here you're going to need that card if you make money with your
drone so since we're in this video we're talking about making money make sure you
take your part 107 test pass it and then you get this little
I'll put a link below and basically you can do a google search for cats and then
find a testing area in your location and it's usually at an airport or like an
airport flight school that you take the test I'll put a link in the description
so you can find out more information about that let's get into ways to make
money so now you have your drone you have your part 107 license it's time to
make some money so the first way to make money I'd recommend is doing real estate
real estate photos really includes any type of building whether that's
residential or commercial so you might want to take a second to think about
your network of friends or people you know if you're more in the commercial
aspect and you have a lot of business small business owners and people you
know that you might want to start with them if you have just a ton of friends
and people who are looking to sell their house or people would just need pictures
of their house you may want to do that however a better way to do it may be
just reaching out to real estate agents and other photographers and
videographers who already do real estate so you could contact them and say look
you're doing a real estate video and I'm a great videographer with my drone would
you like to team up or you could reach out to a photographer and tell them look
I can provide you these aerial images and we and I we could work together that
way you're collaborating you're meeting more people you're making money and
you're expanding your contacts so I think that's a good way to start out and
that leads into my second way of making money with your drone which is weddings
now when it comes to real estate or weddings people want an entire package
they don't want just aerial images they want an entire package so if you already
have photography or video skills you can sell it as an entire package if you
don't then like I said you're gonna have to reach out to a videographer or
photographer and collaborate with them so it all depends on your skill set I
say always work on your skill set that way you can sell entire package because
while drone photography and videos are nice for weddings in real estate they're
gonna want ground shots they're going on the video on the ground as well so work
on your overall skill and try to sell it as a package if you're just starting out
and you have no contacts a good way to meet people maybe get work is to go to
bridal shows or to go to a trade shows for real estate agents and architects
okay just hand out your card or open up a booth and then people will come there
you can get their contact information their emails or phone numbers and then
just follow up that way all right another way to make money with your
drone is to reach out to PR houses production houses and the Chamber of
Commerce in your local city or area so think about the city where you live go
to a Chamber of Commerce meeting and out your business card or get the contacts
of people you meet and the same thing with Public Relation places or
production houses try to meet with those people in person if you can it's going
to be a lot easier to start making money and getting jobs when you see people
face to face but if you can't here's my little secret that I have that not a lot
of people are doing but I feel like it's a good way to make some money so on your
website or some other site like a free version of WordPress or blogger you
could create a one page post on that one page post you're gonna create beautiful
images of your city or your location and basically let's say you have a beautiful
bridge or a beautiful building in your area let's say a beautiful bridge you
could write a whole description about this bridge take different photos or
make a nice short little video about this bridge promoting it and marketing
it in a really professional manner with high production value and you have this
whole proposal written out and how you can sell this bridge or make the site a
beautiful place to come visit let's say you're in a certain town and this bridge
is this amazing everyone's gonna want to come to see this bridge once they see
that page they have the proposal all laid out it looks very professional and
it says so much more than just sending some random photos okay it tells a story
has a lot more thought and effort into it and it shows that you're a
professional so I would try to create a one page post on your website or on a
free site and send that link in your email to that person now my next way to
make money is to license your footage now there are a lot of places out there
like pond5 and other places where you can post your footage and people will
buy it and then you'll get a percentage of that however I think a lot of these
stock agencies for licensing your footage
we'll make you that much money and for me I don't really see it as a good
business model instead what I'd recommend you do is either create your
own website and work on your search engine optimization or hire someone to
do search engine optimization for you or take places in your talent like we
talked about that bridge let's say it's a beautiful bridge or a beautiful
building or a beautiful mountain or beautiful River whatever is in your town
geographically or architectural II that's really nice
take some beautiful photos and video now it doesn't have to be many fewer is
probably better you could post that on Instagram would be a good place or on a
YouTube channel that way it gets a lots of views you can say look if you want to
use this footage and for personal or commercial use you can contact me put
your email or however you want to be contacted and then you could sell it
directly to that person now I would look up the prices I would say a good site
would be pond5 because they have good pricing you can sell your video both as
a 1080 version and as a 4k version that way you have different price categories
for how it is same thing with the photos whether they want the raw photo or they
want a JPEG you get to have different prices for how you distribute that those
images in those videos but make sure you price it high enough because you want to
be on the race to the top not a race to the bottom and when you sell your images
for very cheap or let's say you're doing a wedding or a real estate video and you
price yourself really low you're gonna devalue the entire industry
so not only do you hurt yourself but you hurt the entire industry because then
that person is gonna suspect that same rate and you really can't run a business
like that so I would say for wedding and real estate you price your stuff at
about $200 of minimum per shoe and for stock footage licensing your images I
would look at pond5 they have good pricing right there now another way to
make money with your drone is to be either a blogger or youtuber or just
make youtube videos or blog videos you don't have to have that official title
but you could just make a really good post it doesn't have to be a lot but you
can focus more on quality than quantity I think
that will draw more traffic to you because there's so many bloggers out
there there's so many youtubers out there it's hard to get the traffic if
your stuff isn't really good so maybe you could make your video or your blog
post in a really good way blog posts tend to do well if they're really long
YouTube videos tend to do better if they're a little shorter and you're
saying well how do you make money well there's two ways to make money the first
way to make money is to do affiliate marketing that's what I do so if I teach
a tutorial or I show you a different product let's say this drone behind me I
have the Mavic 2 Pro and I tell you all about the Mavic 2 Pro then I put a link
either to Amazon or let's say to DGI site and I'm a part of the DJI affiliate
program I'm also a part of Amazon's associate program which is another
affiliate program so when you use the link that I put in the description and
you buy that Mavic 2 Pro I get a certain percentage of that profit now affiliate
programs you're not going to get rich with just a few buys you have to get a
lot to make some money at it so you're gonna have to generate a lot of traffic
and get a lot of people buying that product usually you can expect a
commission of anywhere from like 4 to 6% around there and if you're consistent
with it you could make some decent money it all depends on so many other
strategies so it probably wouldn't be my first way to make money with your drone
but it could be a side way or another way that you do part-time starting out
now another way to make money with your drone if you end up getting a huge
following and a lot of people subscribe to your channel or to your website and
to your blog post and then they want to get all that new information because
you're really good at that either you're educating them or you're giving them the
latest news and so forth or you just have a great personality and you're
entertaining then you could also make money with Adsense so you could run ads
on your website or on YouTube something called Adsense you could use that
basically the commercial that came on before this video I get a couple cents
every time someone clicks on it and stuff like that so it's very small in
Adsense really like I said is only a part-time thing especially when starting
out you really have to get millions of views to make it substantial but it's a
good way to make a little side income while you grow your drone business now
another way to make money with your drone is do
inspections so you're gonna need a good thermal camera I would recommend a FLIR
camera and then you're gonna need a drone like a mitrice 200 or you could
also use the Maverick to enterprise or even the inspire one you can use a
thermal camera on that so all those drones will basically allow
you to inspect things like roofs like pipelines things like that that people
normally had to do by hand but now you can do it quicker and it's much safer
with a drone and that's a huge growing industry although getting the jobs might
be difficult I don't have too much expertise in that but I know it's a way
that some people make really good money and I like to explore that myself but I
haven't done so but that's a way you can make money with your drones so if you're
interested in that you want more information about that you want me to
make another video I will do my research reach out to some people I know and I
could make that just leave a comment below and I can do that for you alright
next way to make money with your drone I would say is doing working with
contractors or construction sites there's so many ways that you can make
money and just like you license your money like on pond5 or any of these
stock websites or your YouTube channel or Instagram where you're selling the
footage to people who want to use it you can do the same thing with construction
sites or basically real estate too for that matter because there's so many
people involved all right you have the contractor you have the architect the
electrical persons the carpenter this person that person and so many more
people so you can reach out and sell your videos whether that be a time lapse
video an aerial video and Weiss a time lapse what I mean is you could take a
picture overhead of the roof being built the entire building being built
over the course of six months you just would have to go there maybe once a week
and get that same picture ok so it could take time but you have those photos and
like I said you're not just selling it to one person but you can sell those to
a bunch of people now all depends on the quality and what you have you can make
that look good it helps with everything I've talked about so quality over
quantity and my opinion always is more important alright guys so I'm gonna give
you one bonus way to make money with your drone and that's mapping now the
best mapping drone right now as of this you know that everyone is kind of like
the go to mapping drone is a phantom for pro DJI phantom4 Pro and I recommend you
get the RTK now if you have a big budget you could also go with a mitrice 200
series the RTK with that because it's even more accurate and you can do so
much more with that because it has like the base station and everything so does
the Phantom 4 but the mitrice is a more sophisticated unit that you can use with
software like drawn deploy picks 4d so the mapping industry is growing and
basically you can take pictures of a construction site that's going to be
built agriculture there's so many things you
can do with mapping so personally I would like to get involved in mapping I
haven't done it yet but something I'd like to get involved with in the future
if you'd like to see more videos about that leaving in the comments below
I know it's outside the realm of normal photography and videography that's why I
kind of left it down there till the end and I'm not sure if you guys want me to
make videos like that that are more like enterprise solutions types of videos are
you guys more interested in just your traditional photography and videography
let me know in the comments below alright guys so there's so many options
to make money with your drone and you may be a little bit overwhelmed by the
end of this video so I would say concentrate on one thing at a time think
about both what you're interested in and what's relevant where where you live for
example if you live in Charleston South Carolina
then weddings would be huge or that you live in New York City yeah there are
tons of weddings there's tons of wedding photographers videographers that you
could collaborate with same thing with Charleston South Carolina if you live
there weddings would be great if you live in South Florida or you live in
Miami it could be real estate because real estate is growing so do some
research in your town or maybe you already know your town really well and
find out what the demand is and then figure out what you need now if you're
in a totally remote location then you're gonna have to do other things like work
online and educate people start a YouTube channel start a blog and find
ways to make money licensing your footage online that sort of thing
alright guys I hope you enjoyed this video and found it helpful if it was
share it with a friend and give it a thumbs up also before I go if you
haven't done so download my free drone gear guide which
shows you all my favorite gear software applications accessories etc you can
download that free guide by clicking right over there. I'm Brett Garamella,
the drone pilot pro, and remember, Siempre Pa'lante, Nunca Pa'tra!