When you’re building an aerial service business, there’s a lot to think about.
Your equipment and maintenance. Drone registration and pilot certification. Permissions and notifications. Liability insurance. Business entity paperwork and client contracts. Bookkeeping and accounting. Your website. Your pricing and packaging and positioning.
Upon completing Drone Pilot Ground School, our students are asked in a short survey,
“What’s been your one biggest challenge in the sUAS industry so far?”
As you might imagine, that response is overwhelmingly something along the likes of, “Getting business.”
We get it. Building a service-based business is hard.
That’s why we’ve put together a list of certified drone pilot directories and national drone networks for you to submit your company information to and get listed in.
Why You Should Get Listed in a Drone Pilot Directory or Network
Potential employers can validate your Part 107 certification by submitting an FAA Airman Inquiry. However, there’s no official database for certified drone pilots in the U.S. Rather, there’s just a hodgepodge of companies looking to build various types of service marketplaces that connect certified pilots with jobs.
So here’s the thing.
Even if you don’t get direct business from these websites, the pilot directories that offer public profiles often give you a link back to your website. Without getting too technical here, this is VERY helpful for search engine optimization and ranking higher for relevant keywords. Wouldn’t it be great to rank #1 in Google for “drone pilot [YOUR CITY]”?
[Related read: American Drone Companies: A Master List]
Online marketing is the new Yellow Pages, folks.
If you’re serious about making money as a drone pilot, you should actively be learning how to rank #1 for keywords like “drone pilot [YOUR CITY].” As a result, when your potential customers are doing research online, you’re the one to show up at the top of the list. Not your competitors.
Furthermore, you should also be hustling to get business. Again, we can’t promise any of these drone pilot directories or networks will bring you fame and fortune, but it’s pretty easy to register and it gets your name out there.
We’ve done our best to vet the below directories and networks, which are listed in alphabetical order, and we recognize that our list is not exhaustive. If you have a company we should add to this list, please email us at [email protected].
List of U.S. Certified Drone Pilot Directories and Networks
We’re doing our best to link directly to the pilot sign-up or application page. We encourage you to poke around each of these websites to get a better sense of what each is about.
