daveumr

well, that's the coolest thing I'm going to see all week.

Thats something I'm considering implementing in the very near future, giving the pilot the ability to select from several payment terms (1/3 upfront, 1/2 up front, 100% upfront).

I know money makes the world go round, but it just doesn't feel right to me to take thousands of dollars for a referral fee. I use to work at CustomMade.com and we implemented the cap also for our makers. CustomMade made it possible for artisans to make a living doing what they love, perhaps Droners.io will do the same for UAV pilots. I don't know what will happen as it scales up, but for now at least, the cap seems fair and feels right too.

Droners.io is currently a one man shop. I'm hoping I can continue to run it lean, and offer a great service without taking too much money from the people working for it (the pilots). The current fee is 10%, and that is capped at $1,000 max per job. I've seen other sites take a flat 20%, no cap.

That article is outdated, the FAA regulations were drafted this year. I posted a link to them in my other comment (currently directly below)

That is correct Dan, it is illegal to commercially operate a UAV without obtaining the FAA's 333 exemption (https://www.faa.gov/uas/legislative_programs/section_333/). As I mentioned in another comment, there are now 1100 pilots who have obtained the exemption.

We've currently on-boarded almost 400 pilots in the last 10 days. The FAA has also began issuing 333 exemptions at a faster rate. To date there is now ~1100 exempt pilots that able to commercially operate a UAV, earlier in the year there were only around 100.

Regarding video quality, there is a wide range of pilots, giving clients a wide range of services for the price.

SkyCatch is geared more towards B2B, particularly architecture/construction/scanning, there is still quite a market in the other areas.

Regarding pilot base, we've on-boarded almost 400 pilots in the last 10 days.

Thats correct. Clients can search for a pilot and accept a bid from them. After the work is complete, the pilot creates an invoice, and the client pays them through the marketplace.

Hi George, Dave here at Droners.io. I've seen a lot of pilots actually offer that as a service to their clients. Have you seen any of the FPV races from a pilots POV (i.e. on Youtube)? Its pretty insane, feels like your in the middle of a Star Wars movie. VR goggles would really push it to another level :)