Has anyone used Drone Base?

Do those of you who do these missions regularly select properties to photograph according the the Drone Base rating, or do you photograph them all? I have been clicking on some of them and they all seem to be between 40% and 60% probability.

I generally don't pay much attention to the probability thing. It hasn't been terribly accurate. They don't pay a lot, but don't take a lot of time, either they pay or they don't. I usually make my decision based on location.
 
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Just curious. For the sake of argument, let's say you (above or anyone else experienced with doing this work) had to do this and nothing else full time. Is there enough turn over that you would have enough properties to photograph within a reasonable drive to keep you busy all year? What do you think you could earn in a 40 - 45 hour week? (counting travel time and time to work with images and presuming during months of dependable weather. Also, regarding weather, can photos be taken on overcast days?)
 
Just curious. For the sake of argument, let's say you (above or anyone else experienced with doing this work) had to do this and nothing else full time. Is there enough turn over that you would have enough properties to photograph within a reasonable drive to keep you busy all year? What do you think you could earn in a 40 - 45 hour week? (counting travel time and time to work with images and presuming during months of dependable weather. Also, regarding weather, can photos be taken on overcast days?)


Nope, no way. There's just not enough of the panos to make a decent ROI. Even with the client missions, which is all I do for them now, there are just not enough assignments, but at least they pay more. However in either case, it's not enough to make a living, just a little side cash.
 
I was mainly curious how much someone could earn if they worked it full time, regardless of whether it's enough to earn a living. For example if a college student used it as his summer job, how much could he earn in three months doing it full time (presuming he has the right drone and knows what he's doing).
 
I was mainly curious how much someone could earn if they worked it full time, regardless of whether it's enough to earn a living. For example if a college student used it as his summer job, how much could he earn in three months doing it full time (presuming he has the right drone and knows what he's doing).

That's tough to answer. Panos pay $25-30 on average. You could do maybe 3-4 of these a day for a week and perhaps get paid for 3-4 total out of your 20 missions at the end of the week...maybe a 5th comes in a week later. (...remember panos are on spec, no guaranteed payout) This was typical for me when I was doing just panos and I've seen many other similar reports from other pilots on this forum. At best, maybe half of those 20 convert, but that won't happen every week. That's, what...$300 a week???, maybe? Next week, $0, the following week you convert 2 panos...$60 for the week.

My point is this...doing panos fro DB is not a good strategy for earning a living, assuming you have regular bills to pay. As a college student trying to earn some 'go back to school' cash with no financial obligations...sure, but don't expect to earn much.
 
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We all need to get together and agree not to support these sketchy organizations. I mean how many sites are getting flown without waivers ? This whole operation is shooting the drone industry in the foot by encouraging pilots to fly by standards they would not regularly and at a fraction of the rate of pay. While we're at it we need to stop agreeing to overpay for goods and service which are all becoming the trough of the greedy: gadgets in cars, overpriced construction services, hunting leases. prices are being driven up because we play along.
 
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Looks like db is getting rid of pano missions?? If you log on the web site it’s still there but with the latest app update I’m not seeing pano as an option
 
I wrote in and the answers was, plans are in the works to make the pano missions guaranteed pay outs instead of the hit and miss type they do now.
Details to come later.
 
That's tough to answer. Panos pay $25-30 on average. You could do maybe 3-4 of these a day for a week and perhaps get paid for 3-4 total out of your 20 missions at the end of the week...maybe a 5th comes in a week later. (...remember panos are on spec, no guaranteed payout) This was typical for me when I was doing just panos and I've seen many other similar reports from other pilots on this forum. At best, maybe half of those 20 convert, but that won't happen every week. That's, what...$300 a week???, maybe? Next week, $0, the following week you convert 2 panos...$60 for the week.

My point is this...doing panos fro DB is not a good strategy for earning a living, assuming you have regular bills to pay. As a college student trying to earn some 'go back to school' cash with no financial obligations...sure, but don't expect to earn much.

I think your doing too view a day, I work in property preservation and we also do inspections which is realy similar to this sometimes ~100 photos a house and pay $10-25 a house. I lived off it no problem when I was a single guy in Tucson it was easy to do 20+ jobs a day.

This seems really similar hell working on the same houses and while I just started it was easy to do 5 in an hour.
 
I was a big supporter in the beginning...but now it’s gone to crap. There’s obviously another pilot in my area since I get the client mission email and it’s already gone in 5 minutes before I can even open it. Got one last week offering $40 hell no am I doing that by the time I drive to the location I’d lose money.

Are client missions offered to multiple operators at the same time? I've noticed the same thing lately. I'll get for a client mission but by the time I login to review the mission, it's no longer available.
 
Are client missions offered to multiple operators at the same time? I've noticed the same thing lately. I'll get for a client mission but by the time I login to review the mission, it's no longer available.

Yes, it’s first come first serve. I just finished a $100 client mission that took me 10 minutes. But if I was not watching my e-mail, I would have missed it.
 
Yes, it’s first come first serve. I just finished a $100 client mission that took me 10 minutes. But if I was not watching my e-mail, I would have missed it.


Ditto...there's about one or two other operators that I compete with in my area, but if I stay up on my alerts I generally beat them out. Also, some client missions tend to show up at certain times. (...end of the week, end of the day PST) On the other hand, I've seen a lot of these $70 insurance jobs lately...don't really mind missing those.
 
If anyone is thinking about submitting some videos to Dronebase for Getty, check out some posts over here first. ------> DroneBase Getty Images I've shared some recent experiences that, I think, are worth considering.
 
Dronebase pays next to nothing and is the worst gig Ive found so far for professional drone pilots. Dronebase finds kids with Standard Phantoms or Maviks to fly these (sparsely available) "missions" at $35 per home. Importantly, this DJI forum unexpectedly reveals what you are bidding against. A lot of money for a kid, peanuts for a professional, especially for Dronebase' specialized training regimen. The resulting, typical profile of a Dronebase pilot is... a sharp kid with no job.

Uncompensated tedium. Each home requires approximately 80 precisely positioned (angle, height, distance) photos, plus a specialized scheduling protocol (again, rarely dispatched), dress code, customer presentation and logistical tactics. To justify the peanuts payout, the Dronebase description of the gig, to sucker you into the elaborate training program, says the shoot is a quick and easy "15 minutes". Im a retired military pilot and these missions take at least 1 1/2 hours and two batteries to perform correctly. BTW, my sample mission was fully accepted by Dronebase with no flaws. And dont forget another hour for Dronebase's tedious organization of your photos into groups, called "buckets" before uploading to their server, before a looming deadine.

Uncompensated risk. Hypothetically, Dronebase literature indicates a substantial rate of rejection of entire missions (not mine) for faulty photo precision... and denote this fact in capital letters in their tedious online manual. Just speculating, but try to complete one of these missions in 15 minutes and expect it to be rejected.

Another Dronebase claim falsely states; says as soon you finish training, you can "...start accepting client missions". Immediately upon finishing training, I received a canned response saying "We have nothing in your area right now...", even though my area was listed with Dronebase as the ENTIRE state of Florida, since I'm centrally located. Dronebase's fraudulent marketing claims, in order to create a large pool of reserve pilots, logically borderlines on being called a [ ].
 
Just made a video on my experience flying for DroneBase. Check it out when you get a chance.

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If anyone is thinking about submitting some videos to Dronebase for Getty, check out some posts over here first. ------> DroneBase Getty Images I've shared some recent experiences that, I think, are worth considering.

Looks like this was a killing blow to the Getty mission section.
IMG_0168.jpg
 

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