The problem with being a freelancer in today’s gig economy.

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I’ve been a freelancer for over ten years, and now started a company that hires freelancers, too, so I’ve seen both sides of this market.

Freelancing comes with its challenges, but this won’t be an article about our problems managing time, doing our own taxes, or any of that stuff.

Instead, I’ll share some of the industry’s uglier truths.

The biggest issue with today’s freelancing landscape is the toxic financial relationship between clients and freelancers.

Clients think they own freelancers, and they couldn’t be more wrong.

Some clients think we should sit in their pockets until they need to pull us out. Some believe we’re just twisting our thumbs and desperately waiting for the client to drop us a few breadcrumbs in the form of paid work. Some assume they’re doing us a huge favor and we’ll never make ends meet without their help.

Even worse, some clients believe they can do the job themselves and do it better than we can, but they hire a freelancer because “their time is so much more valuable.”

To those clients, the whole concept of freelancing distorts into one of delegating the ‘less mission-critical’ tasks.

This mindset devalues freelancers and misses the whole point of freelancing!

How many freelancers chose this lifestyle because they valued independence? How many freelancers got so fed up with toxic, micromanaging bosses that they chose this path for the breathing room? How many freelancers started freelancing because they were confident and skilled enough to do it?

‘But AL … it’s not a big deal … Can’t you just walk away and find a new client on any platform?’

In a perfect world, yes. But most freelancing platforms have a problem that’s whittling their credibility away.