Zeitview VS Reality: Is It Worth It For Drone Pilots?

I've flown several missions for Zeitview. Their pay is low and their communication sucks. However, I fly for them if the job is close. (I need the money.) However, I just recently flew for them. I carefully reviewed all instructions and shot list. Never got paid. Contacted them about this. They told me my photos were unacceptable due to not being able to see the horizon. I went back and reviewed the instructions, which clearly stated "horizon is NOT necessary..." I provided a screenshot of their own instructions. No response. So they don't even take responsibility for their own mistakes! Instead, they blamed me and didn't pay me. I will NEVER work for them again.

Great info!

If you are doing these, you are probably doing about 2 jobs a week, from what I've seen other pilots report online. For each job, you have an estimated $10.5 in taxes, $10 bucks in amoritized equipment costs, $18.75 in mileage assuming 30 miles average total, $6.15 battery use (assuming 65 cycles before you have to replace one), $7.62 in insurance (assuming a yearly rate, paying by the job is much worse) and average at least 2 hours from getting the job to reporting the data. You also have training overhead from Zeitview, but I'll leave that out. That means, a $70 job, it costs you $51.1, so you make $9.45/hour. McDonald's pays $15 per hour. You have other costs, related to continued training and your required certificate, but I left those out. These are just rough estimated, but if your distance is longer (which most of mine are) or you do less than 2 of these a week, the costs go way up from there...and each $70 job gets sucked up immediately. Droners is not much better, but the average $100 job, at least, pays more than McDonald's, even with the 10% taken off.

This is making me hesitant on buying a phantom 4 pro that I am set up to buy later this week. I was hoping zv would pay it back

Just raw numbers; $60K/Yr, at an average of $70/Mission, that's about 857/Missions a year, which is 16 missions a week. FOH...and that's gross before expenses. If you're willing to pay for experience, go for it!!! Waste of your time and money. There is no money in drone work for 98% of certified pilots!!!

Q: Can you use the footage from a mission you completed from Zeitview and use it on your own marketing experience?

I made over 200 000 with their telecom project last year, so its possible

Hey Dylan, I recently discovered your channel; great stuff!

I've been flying drones for 10 years, but I'm just starting out in this biz as a side-hustle. I hope to have my skills ramped up to where I can take on more jobs when I retire from my day job in the spring.

As you mentioned, I think these DPNs are a good resource for beginners to get some experience. I'm signed up with Zeitview, FlyGuys, and DroneGenuity. I've received mission offers from all 3, have done a couple photo/video jobs, and am heading out on my first mapping job next week for FG.

Are there any other DPNs you (or your viewers) would recommend signing up with? Thanks for all your great content!

Thanks, Dylan. I am looking to transition from standard photography/videography to jobs like this and am considering ZV as an option for gaining experience with low effort of entry. I have no delusions of getting rich (I still have a full-time career that I love and just want to set myself up for the next chapter) and I would be happy to cover my expenses as I learn on someone else's jobs. I need to start working with third-party drone apps and get the mapping basics down before signing up, but I feel like there's a good chance I can pick up one or three jobs to gain some hands-on experience.

Just deleted my Zietview account. $70 to take pics 8 of them at different altitudes. Zietview said my pics were low quality (DJI mini 4 pro 4k pics) said my pics didn’t have geolocation meta data attached, when by default my settings are set to put meta location. Then they shut the job down and used my pics my work and used excuses why they wouldn’t pay me. That really pissed me off. I pray the Luigi affect spreads to all industries.

Great video, I have a question. Have you flown the Freefly Astro Prime yet? I’m thinking about getting one. I love my DJi drones. But I’m just looking into the future in case the ban does come.

I appreciate you sharing this.

Thanks!

Great Video Dylan!

I hate DPNs, they underprice jobs, under pay pilots, and devalue the whole industry. Great video Dylan, I know how uncomfortable it is to talk about how scummy these companies are, but we have to help our viewers get real project that actually pays them a respectful rate.

Cost of those programs covered by them? Pix4d is drone deploy

Less than 150$? 175 for me

I have been flying with Zeitview for a while. They have other services like telecommunication towers or wind. The Telecom towers pay 230 per tower and you can do about 3 or 4 a day if your pushing 5-6.Your really pushing for that and have zero issues with combo and what not. The upload is where it gets you. The uploader sucks. You don't use the same uploader as in your video. For the Telecom towers a pilot should really be getting paid closer to the 500-700 dollar range for everything that is done. If you were to charge for the whole process yourself with the creation of the 3D model and what not it would be like 1500 a tower. You have to take camera photos of the compound and equipment typically 270 photos, then you use a BLK G2 360 camera and do a lidar scans of the hole complex, then you use a program called "Scanlink" for the drone flight of the towers. Its a nice program overall but its way slower then flying manually with just a waypoint and using point of interest. One tower can be done in just under 2 hours. During the summer months you get around I'd say 30ish towers to go drive to and get done. Towards the end of the year the work just slows down to a crawl of stops. in December I just had 2 new towers go fly. I started doing the telecom back in June and made about 30k. I had a friend bring in 57k last time we had spoke but he was getting more towers each month but he was driving Everywhere.

I call total & complete BS on 5 figures. 😂. I don't believe that for a second.

I signed up for ZV just for extra jobs here & there. Long story short, its a joke & a waste of time. I would not even sign up again.

The average "job" is $50-$75 & you are lucky to get 1x a month if you aren't in a hotspot for such jobs.

They are never worth the money! They pay less than minimum wage for time invested. 😂

Often the drive alone would cost more in gas than the job pays. It's truly offensive.

I've accepted 1x job in 3 years!

Do yourself a favor & don't even install that garbage.

Back in the early Dronebase days there was some decent money drone jobs in the $175 - $350 range buy those days are over. These days, I won't consider taking a job for less than $250 which is my two hour minimum.

I've done a lot of jobs for ZV and made a lot of vids about them. Idk how you can make 5 figures. I did about 70 jobs this year and only cleared 5K. And yeah, the RE/CRE jobs get snatched in seconds. It's a little longer for the mapping missions. For new pilots it's ok, but obviously not for anyone who makes real money already. Nice vid as usual! You've been an inspiration to me and many others. Keep it up! ✌🏾🚀

I tried them for 3 years...oh the stories I could tell. Bottom line they are horrible. Good luck getting off their email list or talking to a person or even getting a job. Simply horrible company.

Zeitview jobs, when you can get them, are a good way to gain some experience but there are other ways.

As someone who has been on Zeitview for a few years, I have never taken a single job but gotten several notifications about jobs. They range from $50-$80 and are ABSOLUTELY NOT WORTH IT. As stated in this video, people grab them within seconds and I personally don't even understand why lol.

Thanks!

Thanks for your professional insight into this and confirming how few missions they really offer. I thought it was just me. It was months before I even was offered a mission (at 4am) and it was gone before it even hit my phone app. I have yet to even grab one successfully. Apparently they are leaning more towards Enterprise grade drones like the 3E now. Ive noticed also that DJI's lack of an updated SDK is also blocking the better drones from being used. Appreciate all your contributions to this profession.

When it was drone base the customer service(for pilots) was pretty good. When Zeitview took over. Things take a little longer. I still do jobs for them when its convenient for me. Close to home and I am quick enough to get it. Builds my confidence to do jobs on my own. South East PA - look me up and hire me!

Earnings-costs incurred =net income.

I assume most of these companies hire you as a 1099 ( independent contractor) and you pick up all your own costs and insurance. What a deal !

From my experience, you need larger enterprise drones using thermal, RTK or LiDar to really get any decent paying work. Also, jobs using the Agras or fixed wing units like the eBee are much more likely to get higher paying work. The average pilot with a Mavic 3E is going to find a lot of those $60-150 jobs and that's about it. You might get lucky if your pilot network isn't dense in your area but with the affordability of drones these days, earning a living on Zeitview alone is setting yourself up for failure.

I always like to inform these companies that 60k in Ca. Is not like 60k in Florida. Cost of living has a lot to do with it. Don't be afraid to said no if it doesn't make sense to you. Great advice for beginners!!

Race to the bottom with ZV.

Finally someone reviewing a company that isn’t sponsored with a bias opinion. Thanks! I’m a part 107 debating on where to start but these companies appear worse than they claim.

They used to be better when they were DroneBase. I had a construction progress job lasting a year and a half which was good money. But mainly it’s a tax write off for my toys. I’m retired military and county anyway.

At our civil engineering company we process mapping missions using PPK methods which need a base station logging on site during the flight.
We used to do GCP targets but its way more work with worse results. The end result is surveyors must fly the missions as the surveyor union requires it.

To make any reasonable income a pilot must fly for every network possible, Zietview, Bark, Connexicore, FlyGuys, FotoFitch etc., and market your business outside of the various networks. DO NOT drive more than 100 mile diameter from your shop/home etc unless the bid is high $... Take your lunch, coast down hill to save gas, keep insurance cost as low as possible. one network site has 16000 pilots. Please talk about the service fees, banking fees. I have flown 45 missions with 5 separate networks in 2024 and only made $9200, then don't forget city/county/state and federal taxes out of that money I made.

I noticed that you didn't mention or perform the required "Coverage Check" before you left the site. Is that not a requirement there? That adds a little time to the mission as well. As far as risk I am on my insurance and in my vehicle there and back. Unless there is a clause in their contract with the clients, I don't see where they're taking the risk.

I used Zeitview for a hot minute. Will never use them again nor would I recommend others to use them. Horrible customer service to say the least.

In the right programs you can absolutely make 6 digits working for Zeitview. I know dozens of people who are doing it. I was one of them. Doesn’t work with those dumb one off jobs. Zeitview is probably incorporating the numbers for those specialty crews.

But you can't use the images for your portfolio. Yes it's good to get paid to practice though.

I noticed a definite down trend in payouts over the years and some local jobs in your town may not be worth doing. $50 only for a next door neighbor 5 shots only! 😅

Well said. It's a bummer you couldn't get more missions, but I understand Tampa has a dense pilot network.

Service providers aren't meant to be a pilot's full time gig. It's meant to be a supplemental bit of business that has a marketing, sales, operations and sometimes QC teams taking the load off and giving pilots a foot in the door.

There are several platform like this that I have flown for, and believe me if you are depending on them to make a living you’ll be broke fast. Now I never depended on these platform to make a living off of, but if I’m not doing anything and it in my area I may take the job. But they only call maybe once a month, if that. You’ll better off knocking on doors then waiting on these platforms

I applied to work with them in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton areas in Ontario many months ago, with the necessary qualifications and equipment, and never heard back. They didn't even have the decency to respond to say why. In my view they are a very unprofessional operation.

Another great video Dylan! Hoping you are well my friend.

Nice, but using the Coverage Checker is recommended before leaving the site according to ZV.

Just the video I needed. Thanks man. I have a DJI mini 4 pro so waiting for a job to come in has been a long wait. Learning how to use DroneDeploy still as well.

I would respectfully disagree that they are taking the risk. The pilots are. You have to provide your insurance and equipment. If something goes wrong you are liable, not them. They seem to be very poorly run. My badges showing that I completed their training keep disappearing from my profile and new training I took months ago, are still not there. I have had much better luck on other platforms.

Thanks for the video, I enjoy your channel.

I appreciate the video Dylan. I just got my Part 107 and have been curious about the drone job websites.

Your videos have been an inspiration and have helped me get a decent idea of what I could possibly do.