Commercial property

Drone pilots can earn extra money from geo-tagged images

Drone Snap is experimenting with a new project and we’re pretty excited about it. Currently, as a drone operator, you’re out and about with your equipment for the most part of your day. What we’re aiming for is maximising earning potential for our drone operators that are registered with us. All it involves is just a few minutes more flying and snapping images each day.

We’re launching our new side project and platform in Beta (the testing phase) so that drone pilots can earn extra money. This allows pilots to register, upload their images, manage their portfolio and monetise their photos. Access to this feature is through dronesnap.co.za.

How it works and how drone pilots can earn extra money

Most drones, such as the DJI series, automatically geo-tag all images taken. This means that the GPS coordinates are stored for every image. Once uploaded to our platform, the location of the image is extracted so we can target the sale of it to the correct client, such as the fund manager of the property in the image. Drone Snap has partnered with a company that provides business intelligence solutions. This company already has a large database of property fund managers that require aerial images of their properties and we’re simply making them easily available to them. Images go through a brief screening process to assess that they have been geo-tagged and that they are of a high quality. All images remain the property of the drone operator that took them until the sale is made final in which case Drone Snap will contact them to arrange payment.

How much pilots can make

Images will be sold in different sizes depending on what the client needs. The prices that images are sold for are subject to increase or decrease depending on the demand. Below is the profit the pilot stands to earn at the moment.

A2: +- R670.00
A4: +- R330.00
A5: +- R80.00
A7: +- R29.00

The model is still being tested to see how often pilots can earn extra money from their work. So we’re encouraging pilots to take as many images as possible with as little extra effort. Our aim is that this will be a great way to supplement your income but not necessarily be your primary source of income.

A possible phase two

We’ve got a few ideas to extend the project if it becomes a success. For example, once a real estate fund manager sees his/her property from an aerial point of view, we’d like to “up-sell” to them by offering them more photos with a possible promo video. This can then be done by the drone operator that took the original image.

If you would like to find out more about this project or how pilots can earn extra money then please send a mail to info@dronesnap.co.za.