An accidental business is born

Just sharing a little drone and love-filled journey which has the potential to be something more.?

I’ve been sending my DJI Air2s Drone at my local beach during the lockdowns capturing kite, wind, surfers, boarders, foilers, jetskis, boats, kayakers and sunrise morning swimming groups for the last 6 months.?

I tick all the privacy boxes where I can, making myself known, introducing myself to all I capture and genuinely not be a pest.

I noobed my way through Adobe Premier Pro, moved some Lumetri sliders around to make over-saturated, clickbait, eye-pleasing effects that would make professional photographers puke.

I created a bunch of template setups for day sunrise, sunset and overcast shots. That way it was quick for me to drag, chop up and export.

Adobe Lightroom Presets and Luts were the key in processing 1000s of photos quickly. It generally meant that photos were way oversaturated because of the bulk edit approach.

I then joined a bunch of super local and niche-specific Facebook groups in my area.

Kayak, kiteboarding, morning swim groups and began to share love and value with no expectation of a return as I genuinely loved it.

If you don't live near the beach, trail runners, motor cross, car tracks and other outdoor sports of that kind where people would love to be captured could work I imagine?

Week by week, I shared all kinds of captures and spread the love to the relevant groups.?

I was lucky enough to capture whales once and dolphins on several occasions, which I've shared in this group before.

Suburb-specific local groups love the sunsets, sunrise and general local captures of their area.?

Watersport captures I upload to their groups.?

Those middle-aged blokes dream of having even the basic capture of their air time, let alone 5k footage or a proper print-ready album.

Each captured I'd introduce myself to make sure I can send the footage later.

So you can imagine how wowed everyone was from this stream of love and good vibes via average photos and footage.

I linked Google drive links to all the groups for everyone to download everything in the highest quality.

From there, I evolved and built a super basic WordPress website, and via Pic-Time allowed all photos to be downloaded in the highest quality, print-ready format for free.?

At any stage, Pic-Time allows for me to charge for each digital copy or enable the drop-ship style shop, which has calendars and large print options available.

Everything I captured is available for free, and a fair bit of my spare time went into this—all without an expectation of any return, which I feel is the key.

From there, a monthly stream of good vibed content established me as the local drone guy in all the groups, and generally sent a lot of love my way.

I built many genuine relationships and grew a large contact list based on give give give.?

This pushed a fair bit of attention to the businesses that pay my bills as I run a few marketing agencies.

I’d get pinged when swimmers were out and big groups would show up the moment I'd confirm that I'll be out at 6am.?

Kayakers notify me when they're going past or kiteboarders were in the area.?

I’d capture when I could and I’d always get a lot of good energy in return.

I made connections with local small business print companies and pushed attention their way. “I don’t want anything for my work, but it would mean the world to me if you had these shots printed at our local print guy John”, so more love was transferred to other local businesses.

From there came a stream of people getting my shots printed on canvas and shared with me.?

It’s a pretty cool feeling.

It wasn’t long after my first share on month 1, that I was offered payment from individuals, groups or businesses, which I declined, but accepted bottles instead ;)?

Who doesn’t like a bottle of Shiraz Gin or a slab of beer?

I was invited to day trips of Kayakers, kiteboarders and other random directions by people that heard of my activities. With payment offers more than some of the websites my agencies sell.

There is now a steady flow of enquiries of all kinds of businesses and groups looking to be captured in their place of zen or projects.?

Some local real estate agents are playing my over saturated, slowed down piano sunsets in their reception foyers, and now contacting me for property photography etc.

The business is far from built, but the foundations are there.

Next step would be to systematize and create niche specific service offerings, and double down on proof of work in that space.

Outsource the editing and ind some $2-4 USD per hour Fiver or Ukrainian video editors, so you’re just doing the flying if that’s what you love.?

Or have someone fly for you once the systems and processes are ironed out.

When you love what you do, you never work a day in your life.?

I hope what I've experienced helps.

The basic site is: https://eugenewashere.com/

YouTube channel is: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCcePjLnCB5v5WTPMR89EIA