r/freelanceuk • u/wordsbyrachael • 10d ago
Freelancing future
How has your freelance journey been in 2026? Have you had plenty of work or has it been a struggle? I’m wondering if the freelance space has been disrupted beyond repair and whether there’s any coming back from it. Clients seem to take forever to make a decision, they stay in touch for months and then suddenly put the project on pause, take it in house or say they are no longer going ahead at all. When you do get a client they drag projects out for months. A 30 day project runs into six months or more because they are slow to review, slow to give feedback and even slower to approve. No matter how many clauses you add to a contract for payments and turnaround for feedback, they don’t stick to them. I’ve freelanced for 15 years and have never experienced anything like it. It’s just not a sustainable way to continue. I keep thinking things will improve but they haven’t. Is there a future in freelancing as a full time career?
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u/greenmonkeyglove 10d ago
I started freelancing last spring and have had to put my rates up three times because of increasing demand - as with everything I think it depends on your industry. Im in CRM and automation.
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u/Guilty_Prune_8624 9d ago
Started freelancing this year, walked straight into a 6 month project. Just starting a new 6 month project.
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u/JohnCasey3306 10d ago
I started freelancing around 2005 and in my experience the pattern has always been a modest increase in new leads every time the economic outlook takes a downturn. I'm seeing that increase in demand rising for the last ~18 months or so.
I work primarily for agencies, and medium-sized businesses (I target orgs that are large enough to have a marketing director, but small enough to not have an in-house team, usually circa 25–75 employees is the sweet spot).
In my experience, those businesses spook very easily -- they're quick to scale down their payroll commitments, but don't want to lose capacity (particularly agencies), so they shift to freelancers. Even though a freelancer is double the equivalent cost 'per hour' vs an employee, they favour that agility of being able to up and down size resource very quickly per-project, and (frankly) being able to pay a few weeks late is better for their cash flow than a monthly wage bill! Their strategy is to take a short-medium-term margin hit to their cost of sale, in the belief that at least they can retain their clients long enough to get through until things improve ... Once the economy is looking up they go back to employing designers/devs to being their costs down and recoup some of those losses.
Focus on securing retainers and the kinds of clients who reliably need repeat work. Become indispensable to them. Be available and prepared to bend over backwards for ridiculous deadlines (make sure your daily rate is set high enough to make it bearable!)
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u/ZestycloseCamel5791 10d ago
I would encourage most people not to fall into the trap of social media induced AI fear psychosis.
Yes, the landscape is changing regarding tech and other factors (economy etc) but there is still huge amounts of opportunity out there.
I own multiple businesses and hire many freelancers for coding (yes still), photography/video/editing/acting. I also see inside lots of other businesses (friends/clients) who are still doing the same.
I think the best freelancers now are busier than ever and doing more than ever with the help of new tools.
Sure the good old days of picking up easy gigs for big paychecks with low competition may be gone but such is life…
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u/irishesteban 3d ago
I’m in the website/digital/consulting space. Been freelancing since long before it was called freelancing; c.25yrs. Before that always ran my own businesses, so very used to the insecurities it brings.
Business boomed over lockdown to the point I had to step back or burn out. It was then in slow decline to a considerably lower level than it was before lockdown. To the point this time last year I figured it was time to bow out and retire early (I’m 60).
So I figured I might as well double my prices to speed up the decline. However the opposite happened. This year it boomed again. I’ve added a handful of bigger than usual clients who have shifted a lot of their work to me. (I’ve typically worked with micro to small businesses).
Looking back I suspect they used to see my prices and think I was too cheap (lesson here; maybe my own marketing wasn’t as good as the work I did for clients!).
I’ve asked them why (they’ve shifted work to me) and the reply has been identical; they used to use bigger agencies, but these guys were shifting more and more to AI, the output was becoming more generic and they stopped having a single point of contact.
The irony here is that I’m using AI more and more (for the creation process not the creative process, that’s still all me). To the point now I’ve cut my working hours by 30%. So these clients are still getting largely AI produced products but I’m a human manager/filter, so they’re happy.
I’m presently losing quite a few of my micro clients, like owner operators and those with less than 5 employees. Cus they themselves are now using AI so feel they don’t need me. Some are nailing it but some are just getting the usual AI “slop”.
I’m no longer adding new clients. I figure what I have will see me thru the next few years and well into retirement.
I’m not going to pontificate about any lessons here for newbies. There might be some, you decide. All I will say is that I think I was too cheap for too long. Ironically, what saved me was doubling prices as lots of others have been lowering theirs.
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u/LewisDEnglish 4d ago
Agree with picking a niche. The step that gets skipped is being able to say it. If the people you want can’t tell in a sentence what you do for them and what’s different after, being the go-to never quite happens.
What’s your niche at the moment, or are you still taking whatever comes in?