Seeing more and more of these, specifying a make, not even a model of drone.

[robport]

"Budget is $90, estimated time needed on each site about 1 hour. Need ground and aerial photos of a retail site in Ft. Wayne, no video needed. Ground photos should be taken using a DSLR camera if possible, aerial shots done with DJI drone. Around 40 images total, no editing needed. We will pro... "

Yuneec has a long way to go to match DJI in their aggressive marketing. Sad thing is I'm not sure they are trying. If you build it, they will come" was just a movie line, not a marketing strategy.

On the other hand, even with the recent disclosure of Hillary's email server being hacked in real time by the Chinese Government (every company in their political model owes it's survival to the state), I bet the faithful aren't making any connections to any risk of using their apps.

 

[AeroJ]

It's difficult to know if these people have some genuine / valid reason for wanting specifically a DJI, or if that is merely the only drone company they have ever heard of...
Or perhaps they know that $90 isn't going to secure the services of anyone with anything better than that !

 

[NorWiscPilot]

It's difficult to know if these people have some genuine / valid reason for wanting specifically a DJI, or if that is merely the only drone company they have ever heard of...
Or perhaps they know that $90 isn't going to secure the services of anyone with anything better than that !

My first inclination is toward your latter point, Sir Aero!

 

[biltno]

$90 won’t get most people out of bed

 

[AH-1G]

Unfortunately there are those will do this as chump change, they don't care

 

[robport]

Last time I saw it yesterday, before I deleted it, 13 people had already bid on it. I can't imagine what it will actually be paying. Some of them actually specify a higher end DJI drone...for the same money.

 

[FlushVision]

$90. That equates to less than £80.

£80 is my absolute minimum charge for a basic straight up and down 5 image flight using my old P2V+ probably putting me in the air for just a couple of minutes and on site for around 20 minutes...that is if I bother to take the job on. They want 40 images taken on multiple sites with a hour on each site. Only a nutter would take that job on...or someone who is desperate beyond belief for the work.

 

[PatR]

They will have no shortage of applicants. Too many people look at $90.00 as being a lot better than the wage they work for now, and will work for “wages” if that’s all they can get. They also don’t have any comprehension of self employment taxes, overhead, or equipment depreciation and maintenance reserves. They also don’t realize that wages are not profits. Forget about insurance, unless the enlisting company mandates it the applicants won’t have any. The majority of 107 holders fit the above description.

As for the equipment requirement, do some research with disaster response, cell tower inspection, and insurance companies and you’ll find just about all of them either specify DJI directly or list system performance features that are only matched by DJI equipment. That is the result of DJI’s massive efforts making it a point to meet and educate the leaders of different market groups. They’ve done the same with first responders. Their success is the difference between a long term market strategy and short term unit sales. Yuneec didn’t really try to address the commercial sector until the 520 was about to be released but shortly thereafter dumped their commercial marketing team. I don’t know if letting them go mattered or not as DJI’s commercial marketing efforts had established the performance parameters over a year before the 520 was announced as being in development.

I don’t much care for DJI but it’s hard to fault their business planning. Design and sell lots of small, relatively cheap consumer drones and use that market to refine product design in order to fund the development of high end products intended for markets with deeper pockets. DJI planned ahead, invested in their marketing teams, and executed, winning the market. With the exception of 3DR, the others didn’t but 3DR management went crazy spending their venture capital in ways that did not focus on their product or the market.

 

[robport]

Good analysis. I almost wish I felt comfortable with DJI's collection of data, but I understand the security concerns around them collecting real-time critical infrastructure coordinates and other info.

 

[biltno]

You hit the nail right on the head PatR
Yuneec was just too late with a more affordable drone, which is what most hobbiests want. Of course there is the exception to every rule and for some of us it’s certain qualities in products that make our decisions
The marketing thing is a whole different ballgame and I think we agree yuneec needs to get it together .

 

[PatR]

Yuneec was just too late with a more affordable drone, which is what most hobbiests want.

The marketing thing is a whole different ballgame and I think we agree yuneec needs to get it together .

The comment about what hobbyists want was really quite important. Hobbyists want as much as they can get as cheaply as possible. They also don’t differentiate between hobby and business, nor do they perform market research to establish what businesses want or need, or how those needs would be best met.

Meeting with business entities, especially those entities that establish the standards for their market sector, or satellite agencies, to review their needs and develop products and service that would fulfill those needs, is how specialty companies establish themselves and their products. Doing that costs time and money, something hobbyists are not willing to invest. Lacking the time, money, and desire to invest in themselves hobbyists quickly fail as a business and view their hobby grade purchase as a bad investment, not realizing their multirotor was in fact the least important factor in their business plan.

The businesses we serve don’t really care what product we use, they only care the product used can fulfill their needs and deliver the necessary results. As they’ve established how their needs will be best served they have minimum performance standards, standards they were sold on by a specific company. So they may not specify a platform, but do specify what the platform must be able to do. DJI was pretty smart in getting to everyone in order to establish performance standards. Funny thing is, those standards are easy to meet or exceed but some multirotor makers are playing games with the buyers through software separations. They should take note that virtually every DJI product can make use of different apps to accomplish commercial endeavors. People don’t have to buy a “commercial” drone to get the job done, where they have to step up is with payloads and the better payloads require a better, more expensive platform.

 

[DrNewcenstein]

I'm sure this job also includes handing over the SD card once the shots are taken, and you don't get it back, so there's that expense. If you do the job with a 64GB card and only took 5GB of shots, you'd have to scrounge a cheaper, lower-capacity card and take them over again, as it's doubtful they brought a device to transfer the images to.

As for specifying a brand, they're probably trying to weed out the racing drones and fish-eye sports lenses, although that's pretty much all I've seen on YT from DJI users. As well, maybe they think only DJI uses standardized uncompressed image formats.

And then of course, since they're only offering $90 for a multi-site 1-hour engagement, it's clear they know nothing about what they're asking for, except the top 3 Google searches.

And yes, hobbyists looking to get into the business will jump on it since their "real job" pays their bills.
You don't have to abandon traditional employment to launch an aerial photo/video service. While it could be said that it diminishes the image of a "professional" aerial service, the concept of "my brother-in-law's kid vs a pro" is not entirely dead in any other market. People still understand that professionals do a better job than hobbyists, they just don't want to pay for the quality of a professional.

Performance costs in all things, especially where humans perform work. This will not change regardless of the quality of the tools.