Selling your Drone videos

So, we have all spent £ 1000 on the drone, the filters, bags, accessories…
What do we get out of it ?
A few photos and videos that wind up sitting inside the computer and eventually forgotten about.

But the views in your drone videos have probably never been seen before by anyone from that same angle, they are unique, and might be of interest to advertising companies and websites.
So it is possible to sell them.

This bloke on Youtube explains how …

Not sure how this affects you needing to be a licenced drone operator or not,
considering you did not actually enter into any paid contract to video anyone’s house
or property for any form of payment.

.

He’s an American - no idea what their rules are.

In the UK, if you fly with even a hope of earning money from pics/video, you need to be a certified PfCO pilot.

Should you be flying for your own pleasure, and you happen to be in the right place at the right time to capture something of significance that cannot have been planned, then you can sell the pics.

It’s all about the reason for the flight taking place. If that reason is to gain reward, then it become a commercial flight.
Actually, the exact same applies to someone with a PPL (Private Pilot License).

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As well as the licensing rules mentioned above for using drones for commercial gain (e.g) profit … can I be all “accountant-like” and just make the point that if you do start earning from your hard work making videos then HMRC “may” look upon it as trading rather than a hobby and seek to charge you tax on your earnings. I only mention this because I have an accountancy practice and we’ve seen this before with the likes of a certain auction site , you know the scenario, sold £5k worth of items that had been bought to sell , HMRC challenge this as trading and, as with forums and the internet in general, there’s clearly a lot of evidence (item numbers, forum posts etc) available to them to “assist” their enquiries …

They are becoming more aggressive all the time mainly because the penalties start at more than the tax you will owe them !

Just a thought …

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