Your shooting pics while spinning??
You need Litchi
And a photography class. Lol.
. I'm just poking, don't take it to heart.
Is drone base a scam?!
- Thread starter guyinthesky
- Start date
Your shooting pics while spinning??
You need Litchi
And a photography class. Lol.
. I'm just poking, don't take it to heart.Your shooting pics while spinning??
You need Litchi
And a photography class. Lol.
There's no blur when the shutter is 1/300+ and the pano sold, so that's really all that matters to me for these jobs.
I've been flying with DB since January and have nothing but positive things to say. Also started getting client missions which pay more than the usual pano missions. Nick Osgood is very responsive to any emails or questions I have. Could the payouts be a bit more? Sure. Could the conversion rate be better? Sure. But this is still a new business concept and they're sort of figuring things out as they go.
I have not flown any residential missions, I just focus on the commercial side. I don't feel comfortable shooting someones home without permission. That being said you could always knock on a door and ask for permission before flying. Some may say no, but I would think some people would be all for it if it'll help sell their home faster.
I definitely recommend DB and am excited to see how they continue to grow
I have not flown any residential missions, I just focus on the commercial side. I don't feel comfortable shooting someones home without permission. That being said you could always knock on a door and ask for permission before flying. Some may say no, but I would think some people would be all for it if it'll help sell their home faster.
I definitely recommend DB and am excited to see how they continue to grow
I can confirm Nick is very responsive and easy to deal with. That alone significantly upped my opinion of the site, because good communication is something most of these other drone work clearing house sites really suck at.
So I've been unveiling some pretty disturbing info over the past few days about how DB works. To say the least I'm somewhat upset and not sure what direction I'll be going with DB in the future.
I met a local pilot here on the forums. Great guy, in fact he lives in the same city as me. He's been shooting for DB since January and we even have agreed upon territories, set up. I get an email from him last week asking if I accepted the two client missions offered in my area. Client missions??
Turns out another pilot in our area accepted the 2 missions, one of which was in class C airspace (I have a class C waiver for this area and DB is well aware of it). No big deal right? I was late to the draw. But this got me thinking..... According to some info stated from Nick, DB client missions are presented first to the pilots with the most experience. All this time I've been trying to "rack up" missions so I could be that "go to guy" here in this area. I have 139 to date. So maybe the other pilot who got the missions had more experience than me? I'm fine with that too.
The problem is, I don't know what the problem is.. I was never notified! Nick, or anyone on his OPs team can not tell me why I wasn't notified. This is insane to me. DB is notifing pilots, yet can't figure out how they are doing it! I've also asked specifically what to do to make sure I at least get a notification, weather it be improving my work or changing my email or something...... I get nothing except, "not sure, just keep looking out for jobs in your area." I have been since November of last year.
So basically I put everything into DB, even down to soliciting for them! Talking good about them here in the forums and trying to keep things positive. The main reason for my insurance policy is because of DB. Lessons learned.....
So just a heads up guys, you might want to try and meet some local pilots in your area to see what they are up to. Had I never met the pilot here on this forum, I would have never known about not being contacted....... I'd just be flying around shooting panos telling myself there's just no client missions in Portland yet, like I have been for the past 5 months.
As of now, I'm going to continue to shoot panos. The next client mission put out that I don't receive notification on, will probably be the straw that breaks it........
I met a local pilot here on the forums. Great guy, in fact he lives in the same city as me. He's been shooting for DB since January and we even have agreed upon territories, set up. I get an email from him last week asking if I accepted the two client missions offered in my area. Client missions??
Turns out another pilot in our area accepted the 2 missions, one of which was in class C airspace (I have a class C waiver for this area and DB is well aware of it). No big deal right? I was late to the draw. But this got me thinking..... According to some info stated from Nick, DB client missions are presented first to the pilots with the most experience. All this time I've been trying to "rack up" missions so I could be that "go to guy" here in this area. I have 139 to date. So maybe the other pilot who got the missions had more experience than me? I'm fine with that too.
The problem is, I don't know what the problem is.
. I was never notified! Nick, or anyone on his OPs team can not tell me why I wasn't notified. This is insane to me. DB is notifing pilots, yet can't figure out how they are doing it! I've also asked specifically what to do to make sure I at least get a notification, weather it be improving my work or changing my email or something...... I get nothing except, "not sure, just keep looking out for jobs in your area." I have been since November of last year.So basically I put everything into DB, even down to soliciting for them! Talking good about them here in the forums and trying to keep things positive. The main reason for my insurance policy is because of DB. Lessons learned.....
So just a heads up guys, you might want to try and meet some local pilots in your area to see what they are up to. Had I never met the pilot here on this forum, I would have never known about not being contacted....... I'd just be flying around shooting panos telling myself there's just no client missions in Portland yet, like I have been for the past 5 months.
As of now, I'm going to continue to shoot panos. The next client mission put out that I don't receive notification on, will probably be the straw that breaks it........
I don't see anything wrong with that at all. It says right in their FAQ that client missions are assigned to pilots. You aren't supposed to be notified and there isn't a bidding system for client jobs. They get a client request and then push it to one pilot. If that pilot cannot or does not accept, they push it to someone else.
It is kind of annoying that Nick can't give you a straight answer about how work is assigned though and what you can do to get ahead. But unless you know that you have more successful missions than the guy that got first dibs, there's not much to worry about there.
It is kind of annoying that Nick can't give you a straight answer about how work is assigned though and what you can do to get ahead. But unless you know that you have more successful missions than the guy that got first dibs, there's not much to worry about there.
I know for a fact that I have about ten times the missions completed then the other pilot who got the notification.
So DB see 3 pilots. 2 in the same city. One pilot has over 130 missions completed the other has about ten completed. Why would you contact the pilot with only 10 missions complete, but not notify the pilot in the same city with over 130 mission? There is absolutely zero logic here.
Is there a difference in quality in beauty shots? Did the client request a specific platform (e.g. they needed an X5R and you only have a Phantom 3)? Was the other pilot geographically closer, even if you're both in the same city? Is your license number in your profile info? Are you over 18? etc. There's a lot of factors and, like I said, it is pretty annoying that Nick can't just give you a straight answer, but I wouldn't immediately jump to condemnation without all the facts.
Thank you so much for asking me the simple questions that DB should be asking.
I don't now about the quality of the Beauty shots because we as DB pilots are left in the dark when it comes to feedback. I wish Nick could email me and say you know what, you need more practice. Then I would have something to work towards. As of now, I have nothing.
Not sure what the client asked for because again, nobody knows anything at DB. I do know that I have a P4 and the pilot that was notified has a P3S. I also do know that I have several years experience with DSLR cameras and DB knows this too.
I feel geography has nothing to do with it. I literally live a few miles away from the other pilot. My profile states that I am willing to travel 100 miles!
Yes my license number is in my profile.
I turn 40 this year...
In that case maybe you need a more strongly worded email to Nick. Given how well he typically communicates I'm surprised he won't give you a straight answer. I agree it's BS if they refuse to lay out the parameters for client job selection. Maybe he doesn't personally know. I don't know what his role at the company is. Maybe they aren't hand picking and it's down to an algorithm to automatically select, but he could at least tell you that.
I've done 10 missions so far, all close to home and mostly close together in groups as well. About 9 of the buildings had commercial real estate signs out front. I might try to do my own selling and see if with some minimal additional effort my own conversion rate and revenue per shoot might be higher. I'm looking to go pound the streets for business though. The revenue per effort just isn't there for these type of shoots.
I've done 10 missions so far, all close to home and mostly close together in groups as well. About 9 of the buildings had commercial real estate signs out front. I might try to do my own selling and see if with some minimal additional effort my own conversion rate and revenue per shoot might be higher. I'm looking to go pound the streets for business though. The revenue per effort just isn't there for these type of shoots.
Well good news over here! I was contacted for two client missions! I immediately accepted and shot them the next day. All went well and I feel much better now. I even used my DSLR for one of them. One of the client missions, I had actually shot a pano of a few months back. Maybe there's a relation there, not sure.
157 panos shot to date.....
157 panos shot to date.....
With what total earnings? I'm getting 30% sell rate here. Hardly worth it unless it's a property I'm driving by for unrelated reasons.
Good to hear you got some client missions though.
I've stated before, I average around 10 bucks a pano. I'm a little off ATM, but just submitted a few.
I signed up for DroneBase, but after looking at the options decided not to pursue. I don't think it's a scam, but to me it appears borderline misrepresented. It appears that they are just posting the real estate for-sale listings and leaving it up to you to take the photos uninvited, which they then try to sell to the real estate companies selling the properties. So, what's preventing me from getting all the sales listings off Zillow, shooting my own pictures, and then selling them directly to the real estate agents myself? Or even just contacting the sales agents without taking the pictures and offering my services? Seems the pilot is doing all the work with DroneBase. I do see there are commercial properties on there, but don't know how that system works.
Commercial properties shoot the same as residential.
You most definitely can edit your own photos, contact the realitor, make the sale, and then collect the money. Your going to spend way more than ten minutes doing that however. The average pano mission takes about ten minutes to shoot. You might spend a year trying to get a realitor to buy your pano at 50 bucks that you spent an hr on producing. All this could pay off in the long run, but I don't think so. I can't (and several others) just can't compete with the advertising. So a realitor looking for someone to shoot a property is going to have a much easier time finding a company like DB, not you or me with a FB page and a few good pics. And if you have a nice website and good equipment and 20 plus years experience, your price is going to off the charts compared to DB. So again the customer would choose DB.
I like to use DB to get out and get exposure. I tell people that I'm contracted with them, but that's as far as I go. If they seem the least bit interested, they get a business card and a few questions answered that pertains to my company.
Granted, there are benefits to being affiliated with an established company.
Nothing, other than a lot of hassle, dead ends, and minimal success.
It took me only a couple hours to buy PTgui ($85), setup an Amazon S3 server (also not free), and figure out how to host my own 3D Panos and provide them in a format customers can use.
So far I'm at $57 on Dronebase for about 1.5 hours of total work and I'm at -$85 for about 2 hours of attempting to do it on my own. Dronebase is still winning so far.
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