Pricing aerials per shoot when drive time is half the job

Question

I've been charging $250 flat for what I call the standard aerial: 8 to 10 edited stills plus a 60 second clip cut to music, delivered next day. Agents keep asking me to fold it into their photographer's package instead, which in practice means $150 to $175 and I invoice the photographer, not the brokerage.

The math that bothers me isn't the rate, it's the geography. A shoot is 25 minutes on site. Round trip in this market averages 70 minutes. So a $250 job is really about two hours plus 40 minutes of editing, and if I stack two in a day I'm fine, and if I get one I'm not.

Two things I'm weighing. One, minimum radius pricing, so anything past 20 miles carries a $75 travel line. Two, pushing harder into roof and facade inspection work for property managers, where the deliverable is a set of raw high res stills and a short note on what I saw, no editing, and I think it supports a higher per stop rate.

Curious what the people running this as an actual business think, especially about whether the inspection pivot cannibalizes your marketing relationships or feeds them.

Rena Expert · Accepted Answer

Your $250 job is a 3.2 hour job at 40 minutes of editing, which puts you around $78 an hour gross before you pay for batteries, insurance, software and the truck. The $175 version at the same distance is closer to $55. Neither number is a business on its own if your day averages 1.4 shoots. Everything in your post depends on whether the second shoot exists, so before you reprice anything, go count how many days in a normal month actually had two paid stops. If the honest figure is under half, radius pricing isn't the fix, routing is, and that means telling agents you fly a given zone on set days rather than on demand. Some will refuse, and the ones who refuse are the ones who were paying $175.

On the inspection pivot: the deliverable difference you describe is real, and the rate usually holds up because the client is comparing you to a lift rental or a roofer's time rather than to a photographer. Two cautions. Writing "what I saw" as a note can edge into the home inspection or contractor licensing rules in some states, and where the line sits varies by state, so get that language in front of someone licensed to tell you before you standardize the template. Second, aerial marketing insurance and inspection work over occupied buildings are not always treated the same by carriers, and you want the endorsement confirmed in writing rather than assumed from the policy summary.

The cannibalization worry is backwards from what usually happens. Property managers who trust you on roofs hand you lease up marketing later, because they already have you in the vendor system and approved. The friction is scheduling, since inspection windows and golden hour don't overlap.

angela_burke · Answer

We hit exactly your wall at about 90 shoots a quarter. What broke it wasn't price, it was putting a second certified pilot on the schedule and splitting the county in half so nobody crossed the river twice in a day. We went from something like 1.3 stops a day to 2.4 with the same demand. The uncomfortable part is that pilot two costs money for about two months before the routing pays for itself, and you carry that.

mitchell_ray4 · Answer

The roof piece interests me more than the video piece. Coming off tools, a drone pass tells me shingle condition and flashing at the chimney in four minutes, and I'd rather have that than climb a 12/12. What are managers actually paying you per stop for that, and do they want stills or do they want you on the phone describing it?

joe_delgado5 · Answer

I pay $200 and I'm not paying $275. Half my deals are infill lots where the aerial exists to show the buyer that the lot backs to a greenbelt and nothing else. If you added a travel line to my invoice I'd use the kid with the Mini who charges $125 and I'd accept the worse footage, because on a 6 point margin the footage isn't what moves the price.

tonyv88 · Answer

flint's answer is why I think beacon's inspection idea is the right read. On the management side I'm not buying art. I've got a 24 unit where the insurance carrier asked for roof condition documentation and my options were a lift for around $400 a day plus a body to run it, or somebody overhead for a couple hundred. I'll book that four times a year on the same property, which is a thing no listing ever does.

brandonlee36 · Answer

One thing nobody's priced here is the reshoot. Two of my lease up shoots got scrubbed for wind and one for a cloud deck that made a beige building look like concrete. Who eats the second trip? If it's the pilot, beacon's effective rate is worse than his spreadsheet says.

monica_tran3 · Answer

Five years in and the single change that moved my numbers was killing on demand scheduling. I fly two zones on fixed days and there's a rush fee if you want me outside that. I lost maybe four agents and picked up better ones, because the agents who wanted me tomorrow at 4pm were also the ones sending back three rounds of edit notes on a 60 second clip.

On thicket's point, my terms say weather reschedule is free once and the second one carries the travel line. Nobody has ever argued about it. What people argue about is deliverable count, so I stopped saying "8 to 10" and started saying 8.

Pricing aerials per shoot when drive time is half the job

7 replies