I have my Part 107. How do I get real estate drone clients?

Cut licensed pilot from your headline, put five aerials inside a package at your normal price, and message agents whose listings in your zip have no aerial and a price cut.

Should I charge less for drone photos to get my first clients?

No. A cheaper photographer with a drone is still the cheap photographer. Sell the gap, the lot and the street the ground can't show, at your normal price.

Do real estate agents care if a drone photographer is licensed?

Not when they're hiring. No seller ever asked. They ask whether the house will look like the one across the street.

Answers › Getting agents

Ask the agent

I got my drone license. Where are the clients?

I passed the Part 107, dropped my prices, and still haven’t booked one shoot. Where are the clients?Asked by a photographer on Reddit (Durham, North Carolina)

Agents don’t buy drones. They buy a listing that looks pricier than the neighbor’s. The license lets you fly; it doesn’t give an agent a reason to text back, and the price drop told them you’re the disposable option. Every week with no booking makes the next drop look like the answer. It isn’t.

The license isn’t what she’s buying

Agents buy a listing that looks pricier than the neighbor’s. Not a drone, not a certificate.

The Part 107 is table stakes for you. It’s nothing for her. She doesn’t know what it is, and the seller she’s trying to impress has never heard of it.

"Licensed pilot" in your headline answers a question nobody asked. In ten years of listing, no seller ever asked me if my photographer was licensed. They asked if the house would look like the one across the street.

And the price drop told them something you didn’t intend. It told them you’re the disposable option.

Lower price, same silence. That’s the pattern when the price was never the problem.

The license isn’t the product. The listing that looks expensive is.

Take the price drop back. Sell the gap

The cheaper price booked nothing. Here’s what replaces it.

A cheaper photographer with a drone is still the cheap photographer. The drone doesn’t change the category.

The gap is what her listing can’t show from the ground: the lot, the lake, the street. Five aerials inside a package at your normal price. No line item, no discount.

She isn’t buying an aerial. She’s buying the moment a buyer sees how big the lot is, or how close the water is, and starts thinking about a bigger number.

Mike, a strategy-call client outside DC, went drone-first and was shooting floor plans inside a year. The aerial was the door, not the business.

Find the listings with no aerial and a price cut

Your clients are already listed in your zip. Most have no aerial.

Type your zip into Zillow and open the active listings. On a strategy call we found three no-aerial listings in five minutes, one cut $24,000.

You don’t need a database for this. Your zip, active listings, scroll. A listing with no aerial and a price cut is a listing with an agent who’s out of ideas.

A price cut means an unhappy seller. The agent needs something new to show them, and an aerial is something new.

One observation, one question. Saw Elm Street took a price cut, no aerial yet, anyone shooting drone on it. Before you send it, fly one front exterior of a listing on your list and send it with the opener.

The front exterior from the air, attached to the message, is the whole pitch. She’s looking at her own listing from an angle she’s never seen it from. The license never comes up.

The line

Saw Elm Street took a price cut, no aerial yet. Anyone shooting drone on it?

The big lesson

Agents don’t pay for what you’re allowed to do. They pay for how the listing looks.

Do this

Tonight, cut "licensed pilot" from your headline. By Friday, send the opener to ten listings in your zip with no aerial.

The agent opener scripts

One observation, one question, and the day 3 and day 10 follow-ups. Free. Then take the sixty-second roadmap quiz and I tell you what to fix first.

Get the scripts Get my roadmap

Straight answers

I have my Part 107. How do I get real estate drone clients?: Cut licensed pilot from your headline, put five aerials inside a package at your normal price, and message agents whose listings in your zip have no aerial and a price cut.
Should I charge less for drone photos to get my first clients?: No. A cheaper photographer with a drone is still the cheap photographer. Sell the gap, the lot and the street the ground can’t show, at your normal price.
Do real estate agents care if a drone photographer is licensed?: Not when they’re hiring. No seller ever asked. They ask whether the house will look like the one across the street.