If you're running a business you want to be competitive, not cheap. The business quoting cheap rates is a business that will be taking money out of their pockets to perform every job. In essences they will be paying either a little or a lot of the customers expenses to perform a job and soon learn they are not making any money and go out of business because they spent all they had "doing business". They weren't running a business, instead they were running a charity. Asking what other people are charging for their work is not a good way to run a business. Those replying with a fixed rate might well be running a charity and not turning a profit, and turning a profit is not the same as earning a wage. They might be lying to you. How could you know? You really need to establsih what your actual costs are and base your rates on those, not what someone else might be charging.
It takes a little time but it's not difficult to work out a rate schedule, but you do have to understand your costs to develop overhead.
AAA did our vehicle costs for us, establishing that it costs somewhere between $0.70 to $1.00/mile to drive our cars. Those rates include fuel, insurance, tires, oil, and general wear and tear. The highest costs are for mini vans and pick ups which run from $0.95 to $1.00/mile. That cost should be factored for a round trip as none of us want to walk back to our base of operations from a job location. Note those mileage rates use private insurance rate factors, not commercial rates which cost more than private insurance. If you're using your vehicle for business your private insurance carrier likely will not cover an accident that occurred while conducting business with the vehicle.
Next we need to decide how long our equipment will last while remaining 100% functionality. That time should be computed in hours, not years. We also need to estimate how many flight hours might be flown in a calendar year. 100 hours does not sound like very many but how many flights will you make to achieve 100 hours? If we have a 15 minute flight time we'll fly 4 times to accumulate 1 hour of flight time so 100 hours would equate to 400 flights.
Now establish the average life span of the system in use. Unless you're one of the reckless types that constantly runs into things or crashes a lot your system will likely last at least as long as it takes for the manufacturer to obsolete your system and release another with new technology that will be needed in order to keep up with everyone else. Figure 2 years as average life cycle. So now we've established our system will, with a little care and maintenance, either last or remain effective in the market for 200 hours. Let's say the system cost $2000.00. Divide $2000.00 by 200 and we have $10.00. $10.00 becomes the base for system depreciation. We know that if we fly 200 hours and set aside $10.00 for each flight hour, after accumulating 200 hours we will have enough money to buy another system of the same price. If you are involved in high risk operations, such as those always conducted over water, you'll want to establish a much higher (faster) depreciation rate because you will not be able to recover and repair your aircraft if it goes down.
Now we have to establish a cost factor for things like batteries, lens filters, and propellers. Those fall under flight operation costs as they need to be acquired, serviced, and replaced as needed to keep the flight system functioning. Depending on how you treat your batteries you can expect to obtain 2 to 3 years of use from them. In theory a single battery will provide a full 200 hours of total flight time but rarely do things work out that way. To be safe, figure you will certainly obtain a year's worth of flying from a single battery. Anything more than that is great and money you got to keep in the bank. You know you'll need at least 4 batteries, probably closer to 6 or 8, in order to obtain more than one flight per job site and perform work at second flying site during the work day. If your batteries cost $100/each for 4 batteries you have an annual battery cost of $400.00. If you divide your annual battery cost ($400.00) by your annual flying hours (100) you arrive at an hourly battery cost of $4.00.
Now develop a rate factor for things like battery chargers and small tools you bought to service your system. perhaps you needed to obtain carry cases or other specialized items to assure safe carriage of the flight system. All those are a direct cost and have to be factored into a depreciation schedule in order to set aside money to replace them as they wear out. A two year life cycle works out pretty well for such items.
SD cards, processing programs, cloud data storage services, computers or tablets, and other peripheral equipment that needs to be bought and will be in constant use. A good computer that has the ability to effectively process 4k video is going to set you back $1,000.00 or more. Computers also have a useful life cycle and two to three years is a fair average for a laptop. If you use Adobe processing programs you will have a monthly or annual subscription rate to pay. SD cards will set you back $20.00 or more per card. Do you store and back up all your work files? If so you have data storage devices to purchase. If you use Dropbox to store and transfer your videos you have an annual fee to maintain it. All this stuff ends up costing real money and has to be paid for. Do you pay them out of pocket or do you factor them into your rate schedule for your customers to pay for them? If you're running a business the customers should be paying for them.
Now you have things like a business license and liability insurance to consider. Both of those are easy to deal with because they are fixed annual costs. As we've established we'll be flying 100 hours a year we can add the costof a business license and our insurance together and divide by 100 to establish the hourly cost. Let's use a business license cost of $150.00 and a liability policy cost of $700.00 as an example. $150.00 plus $700.00= $850.00. Divide $850.00 by 100 and you have an hourly costs of $0.85. If you work in locations that require a business license for every city you operate in, every additional license needs to be added to the job or hourly cost. Don't forget to factor in the cost of maintaining Part 107 currency, which works out to $75.00/year for the certificate alone
Now for the one most are interested in; what are
you worth? You have to decide what you are. Are you basic, unskilled labor of low value or are you a person that is well trained and educated in multiple disciplines? That's pretty important as someone digging a ditch is usually not paid as much as someone that is fluent in things like WIndows, Apple software, Photoshop, Excel, or other professional computer operations. Those all involved the time and expense of obtaining an education and developing experience. What is the value of being able to perform a site survey, establsih safety protocols, reading aerial charts, and obtaining flight waivers worth? How much is involved in safely and effectively flying an aircraft while dividing your attention between the camera, the aircraft, the surrounding area and all that might be taking place within it? How much value (hours) should be added to perform post processing activities for each job? Is $10.00 and hour all you're worth or might $30.---$50.00 be more appropriate?
Don't forget taxes.
Businesses don't pay taxes, they factor them to their costs to let the customers pay them. If you generated $100,000.00 in revenue and deducted $70,000.00 from that as actual expenses you'll have a reported income of $30,000.00. Being self employed your state and federal tax rate will be somewhere between 35% and 50% so add a tax factor into your rate structure.
Now that you've established all the above to arrive at your costs, those things that will let you break even and pay the bills, you get to determine what you need to generate a profit. Profit is what lets you build and expand the business. 10% of the total never works out as there are always unforeseen expenses that eat up a 10% margin very, very fast. 20%-40% is more realistic for a company that wants to make enough money to carry through the bad weather months while also expanding the business.
After all of that, what's a good job or hourly rate?