My Latest Online Side-Hustle…

The first time is always the scariest.

How do I start? Am I going to put something in the wrong place? How is this going to end?

Thankfully, I was alone. Less chance for embarrassment.

Just to the left of me, the Atlantic Ocean rumbled ashore, launching at me a gusty breeze every few moments—that could be a problem.

Just to the right, a rocky cliff—that, too, could prove problematic.

In front of me… the DJI Mini 4 Pro.

A drone.

And I was about to launch this drone skyward for the very first time.

This was back in May, on the Portuguese island of Madeira, where I was partly on assignment for International Living, partly on a week-long holiday with the family. I’d owned the drone for nearly a year… and I’d yet to fly it.

Frankly, my aerial inaction stemmed from laziness. I’d needed to take an online class to earn the license required to fly a drone here in Europe. But in the runup to the Madeira trip, I decided now’s the moment. I really wanted to shoot some footage of the island to build a little travel video for what I hope will be an ongoing series of cinematic travel videos for a YouTube channel I’ve launched—Roamadic Films.

So there I was, nervous, about to send my drone into a sky buffeted by gusty ocean breezes, next to a cliff, which, you might guess, wouldn’t play so well with a wayward drone.

Up she went, and…

Damn, this is fun!!

I had a blast over the remainder of week, flying my drone over the ocean, through mountain gorges, under bridges, up and down waterfalls… Anywhere that was scenic, I was out flying my drone. I even let my wife take a moment to pilot the drone out over a salmon farm about a mile or so offshore, just because she wanted to see if she could look down from the drone and see the fish swimming in their circular cage. (She could.)

When I returned home and put my video together, I sent it to my son back in the US. He’d bought me a high-end cinema camera for Father’s Day a year ago, and I’d used that—along with the drone—to film my Madeira video. I wanted to share the results with him.

His first comment was: “You have a talent for this.”

His second comment was: “The drone footage is insane. You really should be selling those clips online.”

Wait—what?

Selling drone clips?

Online?

Really?

That’s a thing?

Yep—turns out that’s a thing.

Stock-photo sites all over the web these days not only sell photos, they sell drone and traditional video clips that are used in advertising, corporate presentations, and elsewhere.

As such, they’re constantly looking for high-quality, well-framed, artistically compelling 4K drone footage of anything imaginable. Urban cityscapes from the sky. Landscapes, like the various shots of beaches and mountains and tropical valleys I gathered in Madeira. Farmland. A lone car driving along lonely country roads. And on and on.

Honestly, I didn’t know this side-hustle was an option. Never dawned on me that my drone might have the power to earn a bit of scratch doing what I would have been doing with it anyway—namely, flying my drone for fun, and for making cinematic travel videos as a hobby.

So… I signed up on one of the stock-photo sites and I will soon begin uploading my edited and color-graded footage.

Maybe some will sell. Would be such a hoot to see my footage show up in some kind of advertising campaign somewhere.

That said, I do not harbor any expectations that I’ll make “retirement money” selling drone clips of some beautiful forest in northern Spain or a beach scene from southern Portugal. Clips sell for about $179-ish dollars, on average, and the drone pilot’s cut is 30% to 40% of that. And who knows how many times any of the clips I post will sell. I saw a couple of YouTubers reporting on their income from selling drone footage: one earned about $1,100 in a year, another just over $2,000 in six months.

That’s not money that will change lives. Then again, who’s going to turn down easy green from selling something tied to what they enjoy doing? At that point, it’s not really work. You’re getting paid to play.

And truly, flying a drone really does feel like being a kid again.

Learning the moves for creating different kinds of shots. Racing low over the edge of a cliff to see the drop off and the ocean below. Watching the landscape from above unfold on the video controller in my hand.

And someone might want to pay me for that?

Yes, please.

I will begin posting my footage after we move to Braga later this summer and I can focus on my efforts. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Until then, if you want to see what Madeira, Portugal looks like (it’s gorgeous) and some of the drone shots I captured there, you can watch my short, five-minute travel video here.