Should You Accept These Drone Jobs?

I’m not sure what Zeitview is thinking. Every time we take on missions like this, we’re allowing our skills to be diminished.



They want $70 for Pix4D work? It’s like $400/month for that! I get mine from my university but if someone told me they want me to fly and process hundreds, maybe thousands, of images for $70, I’d tell them not to contact me again.

Glad I never took any of those jobs.

Nope, they mean the flight software options. Fly and Pilot 2, which come with drones, work fine for this.

Fair enough, but the pay is still super low.

Totally agree. For me, it’s about location or if I can do several in one day. It used to be that turning jobs down would get them to increase the payout, but now, with so many people accepting low offers, it’s harder to keep my rate up.

I get that. When I was doing waypoint missions for a Pix4D project for a class with my Air 3, someone offered me $50 to drive 20 miles and take pictures and videos of their 15-acre property.

When I said $150 was more reasonable, we got into an argument… sometimes you can’t win.

Exactly. If we, as pilots, don’t set our own rates, they’ll keep taking advantage of us, like in any other job. Sadly, there are always people who will accept the low pay, and that messes it up for everyone else.

Their photos will probably be terrible. Stick to your rates.

If I find out someone without their Part 107 is taking these cheap jobs, I’m reporting them to the FAA.

Half the networks I joined never even asked for it.

Who was the beggar in that situation?

Some random guy looking for cheap labor. He got so mad, the police had to come. The good part was, in my city, the police knew the rules for drones, so they didn’t take his complaints seriously.

You should value your skills more. Why do 10 jobs in a day when one should cover that?

I’m happy making $137 an hour doing something I enjoy. These networks work with big companies, and I still get plenty of $500-$1000 jobs. I know my worth and know how to build repeat business.

Last time I did this, DroneDeploy was about £100 a month. Has that changed?

If you just take one $70 job and pay £100 to activate the software, that’s a bad deal. But if it’s just 30 minutes on-site and you had enough of these jobs lined up, it could be good money. Still, it’s up to the contractor to find enough work to make it worthwhile. $140 per hour looks good from the client’s point of view, but the problem for the pilot is finding enough work.

I started getting emails asking me to upload my 107 cert. I haven’t done a job for them in years. Never see any decent jobs, so I asked them to remove me, but they keep emailing me. Then they asked for customer service feedback. Weird.

Same here. When I asked why I needed to re-upload my cert since it’s already on my account, they said they’d flag me for deletion. Oh well!

Yep, same exact name too. Just delete me already!

Depending on them for income is a bad idea. You need to use multiple services and pick jobs that fit your schedule. I made $30k freelancing last year on top of my full-time job.

I’ve been self-employed for over 5 years now.