I agree with much of the above. I founded a successful drone company in 2010 when the pilot market was tanked and have since made a lucrative career of it. My company was acquired in 2015 but I still operate it, although I'm trying to get back into the cockpit professionally.
There are a few established companies that do the big stuff in industries like energy (oil&gas, power, petrochemical), power distribution, wind, and film. Outside of that it's a lot of very small opportunities and it's a hustle. Opportunities that are widely available are low margin and competitive since the aircraft are dead simple to operate now. What is happening now is companies who do inspection, survey, real estate, are bringing in their own capability.
I am on the inspection side within the energy industry. We used to take drone pilots and make them inspectors. Now we take inspectors and make them drone pilots. The deliverable (the inspection) is what we're after, not the drone flight specifically. The drone tech has allowed us to make this pivot and it was a pretty big turning point it how the tech is adopted now by end users of the data, our clients.