Eleven weeks certified and $4,180 billed, with roofing paying better than listings

What does your invoice actually say? "Imagery only, no condition assessment" is a sentence that has to survive a client who forwards your photos to a homeowner with his own conclusions attached. I'd want that language in the engagement, not just the invoice, and I'd want someone licensed to look at it once.

Eleven weeks and you found the seasonality already. That's the part of the service side I keep underestimating. Was the drop after Labor Day the agents having fewer listings or the same listings with a smaller marketing budget?

$270 out of $3,910 is a 6.9% receivable at eleven weeks with one client. That ratio gets ugly fast if you add three more agents on the same terms. Do you invoice on delivery or hold the files until payment? Holding files is the only real collection tool a one-person media shop has, and it needs to be written into the agreement up front rather than announced when someone goes late.

So the certificate and the drone are maybe a quarter of this and the rest is finding a client whose work isn't tied to somebody's listing calendar. That's clarifying for me, thanks.

If you want more of the non-listing side, ask property managers about vacant land and pad sites and insurance documentation after wind events. It's sporadic and it doesn't fill a week, though it does show up in the months when agents go quiet.

Following up on my own question. @halyard, if the contractor goes elsewhere next season you're back to $2,730 over eleven weeks, which is not a business. One client at 29% of revenue is the number I'd be nervous about, not the late $270.

@halyard, from the other side of this, you're the freelancer I said I should have hired. What would you charge a media company to fly a property and hand over raw files with no editing? I ask because there's a rate where that's easy money for you and still cheaper than me owning the aircraft, and I never found it.

The $150 anchor is the expensive mistake here and it's the one everybody makes. Raising an existing client is much harder than starting at $250 and giving one free reshoot. When those four agents refer you, they'll quote your old price to the new person too.

@solder that concentration point lands, though the counter is that a contractor at 8 flights in eleven weeks is proof of concept for a category, and there are a dozen more roofers in any market. Losing him would sting. It wouldn't invalidate the model.