Drone Base Honest Review

Before I begin this review, I would like to say that I was not sponsored, paid, or compensated in any way for writing this review. These are my views. Also, unlike other companies(who HAVE been paid to write reviews for them) I am a pilot. This means that I have had ACTUAL experience flying for their company and that this review is not copied and pasted from their own website. Now that I've said that, let's get started!

With the intention of starting my own business, I recently passed my part 107 certification test. I was able to do this by listening to the Drone U  podcast and signing up for their test prep. This was a great experience (A review of this is coming soon), and on their podcast, they mentioned one of their sponsored Drone Base. Allured by their perceived easy non-commital Attitude towards drone jobs, I soon signed on. In my hometown, there are currently over one-thousand "jobs" available. This sounds great, but I have some issues with it. Lets get started!

What is Drone Base?

Before we get started with the pros and cons of drone base, we need to first understand what they are. Drone base is the AirBNB of aerial photography. It is similar to Uber in that it provides jobs and customers for your service, and in return you give them a 50% cut. They also edit and cold call for you, so all you need to do is fly and upload (which is basically the fun part).

____________________PROS_____________________

Cold Calling

Drone base does the cold calling for you, meaning all you have to do is fly and send in your pictures. cold calling is calling a realtor and trying to get a job from them when they don't know you, you don't know them, and they have no idea what your business entails. For me, cold calling is the worst part, so it was easy to decide to give them a try.

Warming Market

By piloting for Drone Base, I feel like every cold call they make warms the market to aerial photography. many realtors have never tried drone photography,  and many are too busy to think about changing over to (or adding) drone pictures with property photos. This setup allows realtors to see the value in such pictures without needing to schedule their own appointment. This, in turn, creates jobs for local pilots should the realtors go with a more personal approach.

Practice

Practice is key in a drone business. in order to succeed at business, you must be marketable. It doesn't matter if you are the best marketer in the world: if you suck at flying, your business WILL FAIL. Drone Base provides an incentive to create high-quality images. If they don't look good, they won't sell. one of the primary uses for this company is for businesses to practice their photography skills before stepping into the "big leagues".

 Website

Their website is outstanding! Uploads and panoramas are a breeze with their simple format. everything is clean and professional, leaving nothing to guess about. Instructions are neat and not confusing at all. Kudos!

Editing

Drone base edits all your pictures and stitches the panoramas together, all you have to do is upload the jpeg files and you're done!

All this makes Drone Base look pretty good, but there are some things that you should know about before you start working for them.

____________________CONS___________________

They own you while on shoot

they state on their FAQ page that you cannot self-promote or advertise while on a  mission. you cannot wear any branded clothing that points back to yourself. also, you are not allowed to use any of the footage you capture while on a shoot for them. they own you and anything you shoot, while you shoot. Taking the footage you shot yourself can be a copyright infringement. To skirt these rules, however, you can take additional pictures and not upload them to drone base, but this might mean your pictures won't sell. The magic one might be the one you kept to yourself!

You might not get paid

Remember, Drone base is cold calling for you, but that doesn't mean a payout is guaranteed. On the flip side, client missions have a 100% payout guarantee, but they are much rarer. More likely than not, you will not get paid on the first several missions, just because of the warming market I mentioned above. Later, however, you might expect to see about 3/4ths of uploads paid. Also, one of the main things about Drone base missions is their panoramas. If an agent's website cannot support panoramas, though, wat use does he have for them? Also, because of the high volume of pictures and panos coming their way, it could take a while to hear back from a potential client. You can expect to see wait times anywhere from 24 hours to around a week. The amount of time also depends on the time of year as well. winter is an especially slow market time for real estate and marketing in general.

You are not Insured

THEY DO NOT INSURE YOUR FLIGHTS. IF YOU CRASH, YOU WILL PAY OUT OF YOUR WALLET! Drone base does not include hull insurance (insurance for the drone itself) or property liabilities. This scares me! I ALWAYS fly insured just in case, however, this company, like I said, is geared towards newer pilots for the most part. instead of causing a warmer market, uninsured pilots flying at locations without the client's knowledge could shut down the market completely for some who would otherwise be interested. I use verify for all my missions insurance, but his costs money and every mission you are not paid to fly is money wasted. It is important to note that, since you are flying over the street, you are less likely to incur damage from a crash, but I still would recommend getting the insurance anyways.

you need to have all the certifications

You need a part 107 exemption to fly for drone base. you could be fined if you do not comply. You don't want to be THAT guy.

They get 50%

They get 50% of anything you make for pano missions. that's a pretty big price cut considering you will usually get $50 per shoot. Cut that down by half and you are left with $25. But factoring that in with the time you spend, you can easily make $75 an hour. Pano missions are super easy and shoul take you ten miutes max.

 Clients don't know

Clients don't know their properties are being photographed. this is a big worry for me. I would hate to be filming and have the owner of the listing come out and ask me what the hell was going on. again with a closing market. I wish drone base would schedule shoots beforehand.

Final Thoughts

In my opinion, Drone Base is totally worth working for if you are just starting out, or hate calling potential buyers yourself. Once you get your business up and running, move on and work on your own platform. Several things to look out for when using this company are insurance, wait times, and your 107 certifications. Give it a try!

Edit: I recently uploaded a video on how to fly a drone base mission from start to upload... Here it is:

StatiK