Be aware a lot of folks in forums are going to tell you they charge ridiculously high fees, just to make themselves look good, or "successful."
Don't fall for that. The market in your area will set your fees, not the other way around. You cannot expect to charge the same in Beverly Hills, CA as Albuquerque, NM.
Surely, you want to do a cost analysis before setting a fee schedule. Real estate agents and brokers are notoriously cheap and will try to low ball you, if you can get them to pay the bill at all! Many just get their friend with a drone take the pics illegally.
Well, I guess it depends on what kind of service you offer. If go to a property, fly your drone for 5 minutes, edit it in 15 minutes and send the video to a client, I assume someone can do that for $300.
If you want to create a one of a kind video, you have to study the property to make it look at its best, get the right sequences, repeat them if needed, find the right music track (then buy it), edit the video, do some colour correction, publish them to YouTube-Facebook... I don’t see how someone can make more than the minimum wage if they charge $300.
As Luis Martinez said, there’s obviously a large variation based on your market. That has to be checked beforehand. However, some agents are willing to pay for a higher quality product if you can provide that, especially if it’s original and unlike "all the other drone real estate videos out there".
There’s also the selling part; you have to
sell your services to your potential clients. Again, if you offer the same services as the last 5 drone operators who approached the agent, you’ll have a hard time making it. We got our first paying client by first asking the agent what was the feature he wanted to highlight (long driveway, double gate). We came up with the "car driving" concept and were able to sell it to the agent. Here’s the
published video. We’ve gotten better since, but that video helped sell this property (around $4 million).
Also, you don’t sell your services by sending a mass email to all the realtors in your region; call them, talk to them, show up at their office...
Sell.
I wouldn’t target "second tier" agents. As was also pointed out, those agents are more likely to "hire a friend" or just do it themselves (without a permit). Aim for the top tier; the ones who don’t have time to mess with videos because they’re too busy driving their Maserati.
This also goes without saying, but you need to present yourself - your company professionally to be taken seriously. You need a good website (not just a Facebook page), and at least one great demo video. Here’s our
first demo.
With all this being told, people shouldn’t expect to quit their day job to start selling videos for real estate. For us though, it pays a few bills and we’re having a blast doing it. I just wouldn't bother doing it for less than $800; certainly not for $300.