🎯 The business: a licensed drone pilot with a thermal camera, inspecting solar farms, roofs, substations, cell towers, bridges and construction sites, and mapping land for surveyors and farms. The data is the product; the drone is the way you collect it.

Solar operators (thermal scans find failing panels), roofing and insurance companies, utilities, construction firms that want weekly progress maps, real estate and agriculture. Day rates run $1,000 to $3,000; a solar farm thermal scan is often priced per megawatt; a construction site is a monthly subscription. Recurring inspection contracts beat one-off photo shoots.

Pass the Part 107 exam and get a thermography certification; clients buy the certificate as much as the pilot. Produce three sample deliverables (a roof thermal report, an orthomosaic map, a progress video) on your own time and show them, not your drone photos. Call solar operations managers, commercial roofers and construction project managers in your region. Price the report, not the flight.

A $1,500 commercial roof inspection is a morning of flying and an afternoon of reporting, with almost no direct cost. Two paid days a week is about $150,000 a year solo. The firms that grow sell recurring contracts (monthly construction mapping, annual solar scans) and train a second pilot, because the owner’s week is the ceiling otherwise.

Part 107 for any commercial flight, airspace authorization near airports, the Remote ID rule for the aircraft, night and over-people waivers where needed, state and local privacy and trespass laws, and the client’s site safety rules. Insurance is a contract requirement on any commercial site.

Wind and rain cancel a scheduled flight and the client’s deadline does not move. A crash on a client site. Thermal data misread by someone without training, which is why the certification matters. Competition from cheap hobbyists on photo work; stay in the inspection and data business, where the report is worth paying for.