Top 5 Drone Jobs To Grow Your Business to SIX Figures

As the drone industry evolves, so do the interests of drone pilots as they focus on the top 5 drone jobs to grow their business.

While the benefits of being a drone pilot continue to expand, many pilots are looking for more profitable drone jobs.  Drone pilots love to fly but many struggle with the hustle of becoming a freelancer or business owner.  Hopefully, this article will help drone pilots realize the top 5 drone jobs to grow their drone business.  If you’re looking for more information on the typical salary or revenue for drone pilots, check out this article. 

Drone pilots can service a slew of industries and verticals.  Albeit, particular drone jobs offer better rewards and create sustainable returns over time.  Before we jump into the top drone jobs for your business, its important to illustrate one particular system when considering drone jobs.  Scalability.  Drone pilots should be focused on acquiring drone jobs that offer repeatable missions.  With repeatable drone jobs and missions, pilots can focus more on their work and less on selling the next client.  Not only do repeatable jobs offer more income over time, they also offer the opportunity for drone pilots to hone their systems of running a business.  These scalable drone jobs offer drone pilots the opportunity to create long lasting business success.

Whichever drone job attracts you the most, ask yourself… will this particular drone job set my business up for success over time?  We compiled a list of drone jobs that offer high profitability, scalability and repeatable drone business opportunities.   When reviewing the jobs that most of our successful students are serving, we found that these jobs often require creative and technical skills.  Meaning drone pilots are often finding themselves flying for photos, videos and mapping.

Top 5 Drone Jobs to Grow your Business.

1. Construction Progression and Mapping
2. Solar Inspections
3. Utility Inspections
4. Luxury Real Estate
5. Film Production

Construction Progression and Mapping

An astounding amount of our drone pilots have seen long-term sustainable success when servicing the construction industry.  Construction verticals are by far one of the best drone jobs to grow a business.  Frankly this makes a lot of sense, as construction companies can solve a plethora of problems from drone based data.  We have even seen construction companies evolve in how they use drones. Typically, drone pilots are asked to create a standardized set of deliverables.  Drone pilots are visiting a particular site weekly or bi-monthly in some cases.  The reason we love that drone pilots are seeing success in construction… these jobs are massively scalable.  Generally, when a drone pilot gains favor with a company, they are likely to hire the drone pilot for all future jobs.  In addition we have seen various construction companies build a relationship with a pilot, then offer them multiple sites to fly at any given time.  A drone pilot could build a successful drone business by servicing just construction.

Deliverables:

1. Progression Photos (standardized locations and altitudes)
2. Progression video (We have seen a large emergence in the standardization of video to include orbits around a site.)
3. Orthomosaic

Frequency:

1. Weekly
2. Bi-Monthly

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Solar Inspections

Drone U students love to fly solar inspections, and recently it has become even easier!  Now that the Mavic 2 Enterprise Dual Advanced can create the same maps as an M210-M300 with an XT2, the barrier to entry has lowered significantly!  We love to promote these particular drone jobs because the entire system from flight to interpretation to client action… is all automated.   Drone pilots are tasked to create a 2d map and shoot thermal images over solar panels.  The point is to determine which solar panels are actually generating electricity.  Drones create the fastest means possible to discover broken panels and autonomously calculate the power loss.  Raptor maps continues to be the industry leader in automating flights and processing data to create client reports.  Raptor Maps autonomously calculates the number of defective panels and the size of the panels to ultimately generate a report that shows the client the overall net effect on power generation.  Drone U has numerous drone pilots who  have created sustainable businesses with just one vertical, solar inspections.

Deliverables:

1. Raptor Maps generated report of broken solar sells and calculation of loss.

Frequency:

1. Quarterly

Utility Inspections 

Surprisingly most drone pilots would assume that in order to service utility inspections, they would have to fly a thermal drone.  While this can be true, the largest utility companies are using drones with digital cameras, not thermal cameras.  From power line inspections to cell tower inspections and rail inspections, utility inspections cover a wide gamut.  The deliverables from one particular vertical to another can vary greatly.  Albeit utility inspections typically offer annual contracts or hire employees full time.  Many pilots are aware that PG&E has hired thousands of drone pilots to assess old power infrastructure in California.  The goal is to document all old and potentially faulty lines and transformers.  While thermal does make the process easier to determine faulty equipment, the thermal cameras typically don’t offer enough resolution to make informed decisions.  This is why so many utility companies are asking drone pilots to fly zoom cameras.  Drones are limited in where they can fly near powerlines, as you don’t want to fly between the lines.  This particular drone job requires pilots confidence in flying in close proximity.  Pilots have mastered these flights through our proximity drills that are offered with Flight Mastery Class (in-person).  

While utility inspections can also include cell tower inspections, there has been a race to the bottom on pricing.  Drone pilots might want to avoid these particular drone jobs with clients who have limited experience utilizing drones in the field.

Deliverables:

1. Specific Photos of Power Poles
2. 3D Modeling of Power/Communications Towers

Frequency:

1. Typically pilots fly between 5-25  power poles per day dependent on environment
2. Typically pilots fly between 3-5 cell towers per day.

Luxury Real Estate: 

Lets get real…real fast.  We are not talking about lower end real estate with this vertical.  Luxury real estate drone jobs typically focus on $5M Properties or higher.  Luxury real estate also includes farms, ranches and estates.  These drone jobs are not working for a local realtor, filming residential homes.  Luxury real estate typically leads drone pilots out of the city into more rural areas.  Which is one reason these drone jobs are a particular favorite with the Drone U Flight Crew.  These drone jobs are typically more creative in nature.  Pilots are also tasked with discovering creative means of showcasing vast landscapes.  This can be extremely challenging for non-creatives.  Imagine trying to showcase the water infrastructure on a 50,000 acre ranch with nothing but tumbleweeds on it.  These challenges require pilots to film with a variety of subjects from barns, ranching infrastructure and live stock.  We would argue these drone jobs are also the most rewarding.  Very little oversight combined with creative freedom means drone pilots can have a lot of fun and rake in great pay.  These drone jobs typically start at $3,000 and can go up to $25,000 dependent on the size of the property and assets on the property.  It is important to note that these jobs do not have a frequency. Yet once a relationship is setup with power brokers, expect to film most of their future listings.

Deliverables:

1. Aerial & Ground Photos
   1. Landscape and property
   2. Buildings and Infrastructure
   3. Live stock and assets
2. Aerial Videos
   1. Landscape and property
   2. Buildings
   3. Live stock
3. Rarely: 3D Models of exterior ranch 
   1. Interior 3D models included with higher end real estate.

Frequency:

1. In-Frequent as typically

Film Production

These drone pilot jobs might be the most infrequent on the list and difficult to scale.  Yet these drone jobs also pay the highest prices and pay pilots to “rent” their equipment while on set.  The beauty of a film set job is that a drone pilot might work 1 day or be on set for a month.  Each day the pilot and crew are on set, they are also paid.  These drone jobs necessitate the highest level of drone skills.  Pilots typically have to master proximity flights with large scale aircraft and also must master FPV flight.  These drone jobs are highly creative in nature and typically require the least amount of work.  Once a drone pilot is done capture the media assets, there is typically no editing or post processing.  Acquiring these drone jobs may be extremely difficult, once you’re in with a crew, you typically are called up on to fly numerous jobs.

Another caveot of these drone jobs, is that they require the high end equipment.  Drone pilots typically fly Alta Drones carrying large payloads.  Not only are these drones expensive, but you must typically own multiple aircraft to service any given job.

Deliverables:

1. Aerial Video with high end cameras
2. FPV video with super-slow mo cameras (like the wave)

We hope this list of the Top 5 drone jobs to grow your business ,will help you garnish more data to pursue the right verticals.

Final reminder for all drone pilots looking to succeed: While finding the right niche may take time, we recommend focusing on your particular vertical as soon as you take to the skies.  This way you’ll be better positioned to acquire jobs that just keep on coming.  You’ll quickly be on your way to creating a scalable drone business that will last years.

IF you’re looking for more information on the exact salaries of drone pilots, check out that information here. 

Don’t forget, Drone U members have access to our business course on top of Part 107, Don’t Crash, Mapping Courses and More.