blog — KFAerial

It all started during a conversation with my wife Jess over tacos and margaritas.

"You know, I was doing some research earlier today, and it looks like there's a ton of demand for drone photography in our state, but almost nobody is offering it."

Having started a boutique marketing consultancy five years ago, I consider myself fairly adept at identifying smart business opportunities when they arise. Self-publishing my writing, even though it demanded a substantial initial investment, turned out to be one of the most fulfilling things I've ever done. Podcasting looked like a great way to make money doing something I already loved (read: talking too much), so I went ahead and did that, too. I certainly wasn't always gifted in that regard, but after spending half a decade clawing my way toward a comfortable, steady living, I managed to learn a trick or two. The drone thing seemed like a sure bet in a greatly underserved market, and a really cool line item to add to my list of offered services.

"Really?"

"Yeah, I mean, it's super popular in real estate right now. I was talking to a realtor friend of mine today, and she said she could hook me up with at least three dozen clients right out of the gate. A fancy drone would pay for itself after seven jobs or so."

"Only seven jobs? I think you should do it, then."

Inspired by my wife's support, I used my smartphone to impulsively buy a very expensive DJI Phantom 4 Pro + drone with all the bells and whistles, ordered a celebratory round of margaritas, and spent the rest of the night brainstorming about cool business names. KFAerial stuck. E.T. Drone Home did not.

THE STUDYING:

The following morning, I took to the Internet to look up information about drone videography as it applies to real estate and other industries, and was surprised to learn that you couldn't just buy a drone and fly it as you saw fit. Instead, a person had to pass an exam put together by the Federal Aviation Administration known as a Part 107 (small unmanned aircraft regulations), and then apply for a commercial drone pilot's license, which would have to be renewed every twenty-four months.

Could you just skip this part and fly the drone anyway? Sure, if you want to risk a civil penalty up to $27,500. Or a criminal penalty up to $250,000. Or imprisonment for up to three years.

"Yeah, studying sounds way better. Let's do that instead."

I learned very quickly why realtors weren't just buying their own drones and shooting their own amazing sales videos. It wasn't the flying difficulty part; I was positive anybody who's spent any amount of time playing video games could easily master the remote controls. It was that pesky Part 107. Unless you'd spent your childhood obsessing over planes, the testing material might as well have been Sanskrit. Seriously, look at some of the stuff you not only have to become familiar with, but have a masterful understanding of:

Source: http://cfijapan.com — Source: http://cfijapan.com

Source: http://contrailscience.com — Source: http://contrailscience.com

Source: http://www.cfinotebook.net — Source: http://www.cfinotebook.net

METARs, airspace classifications, holding patterns, sectional charts; it's enough to make your head spin, right? Not having any experience with aerospace (other than taking the occasional vacation flight) made studying this material nearly impossible, but stacking my lifelong inability to test easily on top of that made me have second thoughts about the entire idea. A huge portion of the information you need to know for this exam has nothing to do with the day-to-day business of filming real estate videos with a drone, which only serves to add insult to injury.

Still, stubbornness persevered, and after 30+ hours of studying a sUAS (small unmanned aircraft systems) book I purchased from Amazon, watching study guide videos on YouTube, and taking many, many practice tests online, I scheduled my Part 107 exam. I passed with a solid grade (you only need to get a 70% to pass), but it became clear after five questions that my study materials were either far out of date, or woefully inaccurate. Because the FAAs' Part 107 exam for unmanned aircraft is so new, reputable sources of information pertaining to exam preparation have yet to be proven and identified. With the test out of the way, I could then register my passing grade on the IACRA website, have a temporary sUAS pilot license made available to download and print, and wait for a permanent card to arrive (you have to have your identification with you at all times when you're flying your drone).

THE MONEY:

After the exam, it came down to drone insurance. A bit of research showed me that the industry standard is $1,000,000 of coverage. AIG offers drone insurance, and when I plugged in all my information, the premium worked out to be roughly $955 annually.

For those of you counting at home, we've spent $2000 for the drone, $150 for manufacturer's equipment damage protection, $50 in study materials, $150 to take the exam (every two years), and $995 a year for drone insurance. That means we're up to $3,345 so far, not to mention the hours you practice flying the drone, the 30+ hours of studying you'll put in up front, and plenty of hours you'll spend studying every two years, as regulations mature and change with the times.

How are you going to edit those movies? You'll need proper software, of course. I use Adobe Premiere Pro CC, which costs $19.95 a month ($239.40 a year). Want to add music and narration to your video? I offer my own narration services, but the music licenses can cost anywhere between $20 and $50 a pop. You're also going to want to put a boatload of hours into becoming proficient at editing, as this is what separates an amateur video from a professional one. Luckily, there are a ton of incredibly helpful, incredibly free tutorials on YouTube for you to use.

Oh yeah, can your computer even handle 4K video editing? If it's not jam packed with a huge video card, loads of memory and a burly processor, that'll be at least another $2,000, please and thank you.

Where are we now? Down $5,584.40, and we haven't even filmed our first drone video yet. But wait, there's more.

How are you going to host your drone's videos? You'll need to get them online if you want people to see them. You can always upload them to YouTube for free, but Vimeo offers the far superior Vimeo Pro, an upgraded service catering to professional videographers that gives you 20G of HD storage per week, analytics, unlimited player bandwidth, and loads more. That'll cost you another $199 annually.

Wait a minute, are you doing real estate videos? If so, do you already own a camera setup that will work, you know, inside a house? You're certainly not going to be flying the drone in there. If you don't already have a proper camera, get ready to blow another small fortune on a DSLR camera body, a series of lenses that work well indoors and in low light situations, a fluid head tripod, a slider dolly track; the list goes on and on. I spent roughly $1700 on my indoor filming setup, which seems like a lot of money, but is laughably cheap when compared to what you can end up paying. I got lucky with some great friends and some great deals.

MONEY = $7,483.40 worth of hardware, software, exams, insurance, services and learning materials.

TIME = Literally hundreds of hours spent learning how to fly the drone, use the editing software, watching tutorials, become proficient using indoor filming techniques and equipment, sourcing out places to host videos, scouring the Internet for the best deals on the items you need, and studying, studying, studying.

THE CONCLUSION:

Had I been less impulsive, and took the time to research what it really took to become a commercial drone pilot in today's world before I bought my drone, I might not have gone through with it. The initial investment kept growing and growing, to the point that I started experiencing palpable second thoughts about the viability KFAerial. The initial time investment was even worse. I could have been out having fun with my wife and friends during my free time, but no, my nose was buried in a book or smushed against a computer screen for months. If I wasn't the most stubborn man alive, I would have given up, returned the drone, and chalked the whole thing up as a learning experience.

Now that the ramping up period over and we've finally launched, I'm incredibly glad that I stuck it out. It's a really fun way to earn a living, and I genuinely enjoy what I do. I can enjoy it because flying the drone is seamless part of my pre-existing marketing business model, not an extraneous, alien thing I have to pound and shove into an already hectic work schedule.

If I was a professional who was long-entrenched in a particular industry, and I thought I was going to save some money by becoming proficient in drone photography / videography, I would be making a huge mistake. I would be biting off way more than I could chew. Had I said this at the very beginning of the blog, you would have laughed at me, and told me I was just trying to scare you out of doing something great for yourself, and into hiring KFAerial instead. I knew that would be the case, which is why I took the time to detail my personal experiences in this blog. There's so much more to it than just buying a drone over margaritas, and I learned that the hard way.

THE INEVITABLE PITCH:

All of that being said, you can either do what I did, or you can simply hire a professional drone photography service like KFAerial who already did it all for you.

If it helps your decision making process at all, $7,483.40 will buy a lot of margaritas, and you're going to need hundreds of free hours in order to drink them all.

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Hiring a Drone Pilot > Becoming a Drone Pilot