Why Rotor Rate Partnered With Vets to Drones

I took off the uniform for the last time and figured the next chapter would be simple. Start my own business, buy a good drone, pass Part 107 (the FAA's commercial drone pilot certificate), pick up some jobs. How hard could it be?

The flying part turned out to be the easy part. The business part took me a lot longer to figure out.

The part nobody hands you at the out-processing brief

On your own, you're the owner, the pilot, the scheduler, the bookkeeper, and the guy deciding whether a $150 job forty miles away is worth getting out of bed for. I took a few jobs early on that looked fine on the offer and came out close to nothing once I counted the drive, the editing, and the overhead. (I wrote about that one in the $150 real estate job .)

That's the gap Rotor Rate was built to close. Not the flying. The math behind the flying.

Why Vets to Drones

Vets to Drones (V2D) is a nonprofit that helps veterans get into the drone industry — training, a member community, job leads, and partners who have been where they are.

From the beginning, I intended to put Rotor Rate into the hands of newer Part 107 pilots, particularly fellow veterans. I joined V2D within a month of retiring, and when I first imagined Rotor Rate, I had these pilots in mind to give something back to my peers and support their progress. During my first meeting with the V2D team, several testers offered a comment that stayed with me: they wished they had owned a tool like this during their early stages. That is the best feedback I could hope for, and it aligns precisely with the audience I pictured while developing it.

So Gold Dog Studios — the veteran-owned company behind Rotor Rate — signed on as a Veteran-Owned Small Business Partner. It's a two-way street: they get a tool that helps their members price work fairly from day one, and we get to support an organization doing real work for people I care deeply about.

What this means for V2D members

V2D members can find Rotor Rate in the Partners/Discounts section of the member portal, with a member link for a free year of the full product. Same app everybody else uses. No watered-down version.

If you're a member and something about the sign-up doesn't look right, use the Send Feedback button on any page and it comes straight to me.

What this means for everybody else

Nothing changes. The free calculator and rate builder are still free, the articles are still written for newer Part 107 pilots, and I'm still not going to tell you which jobs to take LOL. I'll just help you see what they actually pay. Oh yeah, you still get the full 60 days free to try it out and decide if it's a good fit for you and your business.

For the old hands

If you've been at this a while, you already know the industry runs on referrals and people who look out for each other. Organizations like V2D are where a lot of that starts for veterans. If you've got a few years and some scar tissue, they could probably use you as a mentor more than you'd guess.

The bottom line

I built Rotor Rate because I wish I'd had it. Partnering with Vets to Drones puts it in front of the folks most likely to be standing where I stood a few years ago — good pilots, scratching their heads trying to figure out the business one job at a time.

Fly safe, and price it right.

— Bill