The certificate is closer to a weekend than a semester. Commercial drone flying in the US runs under the FAA's Part 107 rule, and the remote pilot certificate comes from a written knowledge test at an approved testing center. The test fee has generally sat around $175, and study courses run from free material up to a couple hundred dollars. People commonly report a few weeks of evening study. Fees and requirements do change, so confirm current numbers with the FAA before you budget.
On hardware, a drone that produces footage nobody squints at starts around $800 and the range agents and pilots actually use runs up to roughly $2,500. Add a couple of spare batteries at $100 to $200 each, memory cards, and a case. Registration of the aircraft is a small per aircraft fee. Editing software is a subscription, usually $20 to $60 a month, and that's where the unglamorous hours go, since color grading a flyover of scrub land into something appealing is a learned skill. Liability insurance for commercial drone work is sold both annually, often in the several hundred to around $1,000 range, and per flight by the hour.
So call it $1,500 to $3,500 to be equipped and certified, and then the real cost, which is flight hours and edit hours before your output looks like the video that got you in the truck.
One thing that isn't in the gear list. Part of that $600 was the pilot handling airspace. Parcels near an airport sit in controlled airspace where flying needs authorization through the FAA's system first, and a rural parcel can also sit under a low altitude restriction that surprises people. On your own future purchases, check the airspace over the parcel before you plan on flying it yourself.
