A cruel watershed in the AI era: Why has the income of 95% of freelance workers been cut in half, while the income of 5% has doubled?
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When “not bad” becomes the new standard: AI is rewriting the rules of the game as we know it
Three months ago, after a lecture on [Content Marketing] (https://copywriting.vista.tw/evergreen-content/) held for professionals, I met a young copywriter with red eyes. She told me: “Teacher Vista, I spent two years honing my copywriting skills, but now customers say that it only takes three minutes to generate similar content using ChatGPT. They ask me: Why do I still have to pay the original price? Can I get a discount?”
I saw her expression, a little reluctant. To be honest, this problem is the cruel reality that every knowledge worker must face today. As we are about to enter 2026, it is not difficult to imagine that this situation will become more and more dangerous…
Let’s look at the data to see how serious the matter is! According to research from the University of Washington, the number of writing-related cases on the Upwork platform has plummeted since the advent of ChatGPT in 2022. 2% doesn’t sound like much? But monthly revenue fell an average of 5.2%. And those designers, editors and artists who are engaged in video work are in an even more difficult situation! Not only did the caseload drop by 3.7%, revenue also shrank by 9.4%.
But the most surprising finding is that those most affected are not workers with mediocre skills, but those professionals who have historically quoted higher prices and have the best execution capabilities.
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Why is this happening? The answer lies in the “levelling effect” brought about by AI.
Horizontal leveling effect (also known as horizontal effect, leveling effect), originally refers to a phenomenon in which acids or bases of different strengths will be “levelled” to the same acid-base strength in a specific solvent. For example, in water, all acids that are more acidic than hydronium ions (such as hydrochloric acid, nitric acid) will exhibit similar acid strengths because water will accept the protons they release, leveling their acidity to the level of hydronium ions.
In the past, the distribution of worker abilities in the market was as follows: some people could only achieve 3 points, some could achieve 6 points, and top professional workers could achieve 9 or even 10 points. Typically, customers are willing to pay a corresponding price for this difference.
But the advent of AI changed everything instantly. It raised everyone’s baseline to 6 points in an instant. Well, it seems to be of a pretty good standard.
But here comes the problem! A novice who originally only had a 3-point ability can now use AI to quickly produce 6-point results; and a worker who originally had a 6-point ability may improve it to a 7-point ability; but what about the top experts who could originally achieve a 9-point or even 10-point ability? Their room for progress has become very limited in comparison, and they have even begun to find that their differentiation advantages have been greatly compressed.
Even worse, when the market is flooded with 6-point products, customers will inevitably start to think again: Do I really need to pay 5 times the price to get that extra 3-point difference?
Frankly speaking, for many small and medium-sized enterprises and individual entrepreneurs, it is naturally not necessary!
Well, this is the dilemma mentioned earlier: AI on the one hand raises the bottom line, but also lowers the ceiling. When the barriers to entry are lowered, it becomes harder to stand out.
Indeed, this revolution has brought about three profound market shifts, each of which seems to be redefining the meaning of professionalism.
The first transformation: professional disenchantment
In the past, majors were valuable because they had a certain sense of magic attached to them. Customers don’t know how you do it, so they are willing to pay for this invisible value. But since the advent of ChatGPT in November 2022, when customers discovered that the original copywriting and logo design could be produced using AI tools, it disrupted the freelancing market.
A well-known marketing consultant complained to me privately on a social occasion: “Customers now ask when they see the quotation: ‘Did you use AI to do these tasks?’ And then, of course, they ask for a discount.”
The second transformation: efficiency becomes punishment
Well, I know this all sounds ridiculous, but it’s actually what happened. When you use AI to triple work efficiency, the customer’s reaction is not “Great”, but “Since you only need one-third of the time, the cost should also be reduced to one-third, right?”
Well, if you are still using hourly wages, the efficiency improvements brought by AI will probably cause your income to plummet. Yes, this can be said to be some kind of efficiency paradox.
The third transformation: the tsunami of homogeneity
Please close your eyes and imagine: when everyone uses similar AI tools and similar prompt words, the content produced will naturally tend to be similar. A creator who usually sells mind-body and soul courses and products on Instagram put it very bluntly: “I am not afraid of competition, but everything on the platform now looks the same! I am not defeated by my opponents, but I am likely to be defeated by AI!”
What’s even more ironic is that in order to stand out in this sea of homogeneity, you need to invest more time in creating truly unique content. But this goes back to the efficiency paradox. When you spend more time creating, the cost of time rises, while the price customers are willing to pay plummets…
Heck, this is the reality we face now: AI seems to make it easier to take on cases or develop slashes, but it also makes survival harder!
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Those who live better in the AI era, what have they done right?
However, there is another side to the story.
While most people are struggling to survive, I have also seen some freelance workers not only survive, but live better than before. Their income has not declined, but has grown; the number of cases they have received has not increased, but the unit price has increased; they have not been replaced by AI, but have become AI experts.
What did this group of people do right? After in-depth interviews and observations, I found that they all had one thing in common: they had redefined their own value.
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Strategy 1: Upgrade from executor to strategic partner
I know Ann, a brand consultant whose experience with transformation is inspiring.
Two years ago, a client asked her to write brand copy, and her charging standard was based on the number of words. But now, she no longer just takes copywriting cases, but provides solutions for brand communication strategies. In such a one-stop service, copywriting is only the final output, and the previous steps also include: brand positioning, target audience analysis, competitor research, communication strategy planning, channel planning and deployment suggestions.
Ann’s fees have gone from a few thousand yuan per transaction to tens of thousands of yuan for a set of services, or even into six figures.
“AI can write copy,” she said, “but AI is not a human being. It cannot deeply understand the difficulties a brand encounters, cannot keenly capture market changes, and it is even more difficult to give strategic suggestions based on years of experience. Therefore, what I sell is no longer just copywriting, but professional judgment and strategic thinking accumulated from years of experience.”
That’s the first key, try to move upstream. In other words, don’t stop at the execution level, but enter the strategic and planning levels. When you can solve more upstream problems for customers, your value is not just the output calculated by word count, but insight and judgment.
Strategy 2: Build a personal brand moat
In a market filled with “okay” works, how do people choose? The obvious answer is: trust.
In other words, when everyone can easily produce 6-level work, who are customers willing to pay more? The answer is simple, naturally it is people they trust, know and have a good reputation.
It’s a bit embarrassing to say it, but I am a living example. Before I left my job in the media, I had already started thinking about changing careers. As I continue to operate the “Content Hacker” website, publish special books on copywriting and content marketing, and share professional knowledge on various social platforms, people gradually began to ask me to teach or serve as a consultant.
Nowadays, many customers seek cooperation with me, not because I am “the cheapest”, but because they “know Vista”, “have read my articles” and “know my accumulation in this field”. This kind of trust allows me to gain a foothold in a highly competitive market.
But I have to be honest, building a personal brand requires long-term accumulation and is difficult to achieve overnight. It requires:
- Continuously produce valuable content: not only share how to do it, but also share why and case stories. Because what you do is easy to be copied by AI, but your thinking process, judgment logic and practical experience are difficult to replace. These are the real value.
- Build a professional reputation in a specific area: Don’t try to be a jack of all trades, but specialize in a specific area. Rather than saying that you are a designer, it is better to say that you are a visual designer focusing on people’s livelihood consumer brands. Use specialized keywords to make it easier for you to be remembered.
- Carefully collect and display social proof: such as customer testimonials, case studies and media reports, which strengthen credibility social proof. Proactively ask for recommendations from satisfied customers and tell a story about how you helped them solve their problem.
Strategy Three: Strengthen AI’s capabilities that can never be replicated
Another key strategy is to invest in things that AI will never be able to do.
As we all know, AI is powerful, but it has fundamental limitations, at least in the short term: it lacks true empathy, emotional connection, and wisdom based on life experience. Having said that, this is our chance.
- Deep listening and demand insight: Many times, customers themselves don’t know their real needs. They say they want an engaging website, but the real question might be how to build customer trust? Excellent professionals can help customers clarify the real problems through in-depth dialogue. This ability is difficult for AI to replicate.
- Emotional connection and storytelling: Content that truly touches people’s hearts relies not just on the accumulation of information, but on stories that are warm, emotional and resonant. AI can certainly generate text, but it cannot truly understand the complexity and subtleties of human nature. If you can inject real emotion and humanity into your work, that’s a difference that AI can’t replicate.
- Management of long-term relationships: AI can produce results quickly, but it cannot establish long-term trusting relationships. The most successful freelancers are often not the ones with the largest caseload, but the ones with the most long-term clients. Having said that, when customers trust you and are accustomed to working with you, price is no longer the only consideration.
Devin is a designer with ten years of experience. We met in a Facebook group. Once at a dinner party, after a good meal, he told me confidently: “Brother Vista, do you know? My greatest asset is not actually the few design awards I have won by chance, but the relationship between me and my customers. Customers know that I understand their brand and know that I will think about the sustainable development of their business. This kind of trust should be something that AI can never give!”
Strategy 4: Change the pricing model and escape the efficiency trap
Whether you are a community editor, advertising pitcher or designer, if you are still using hourly wages or piece-by-piece pricing, that is fine, but the efficiency improvements brought by AI are likely to be of limited help to you, and may even reduce your income.
Well, what to do? I think maybe we can try to slowly shift from traditional time-based pricing to value-based pricing.
A friend of mine, May, has been working in events and public relations since graduating from college. In the past, she charged an hourly rate. For example, if an event planning required three hours, she would charge the other party three hours. Now that she has started using AI assistance, problems have arisen! Because the same nature of work may only take one hour, does she only charge for one hour?
Interestingly, she did not lower the price or charge less because of this. She quickly repackaged the service into an AI-enhanced version of the event planning solution, and charged even more! Well, why is this? The reason is simple, because what she sells is not working time, but knowing how to host a successful event. It’s right to think about it carefully, because most customers care about the final result, not how much time you spent?
Therefore, the following pricing models can be considered:
- Project pricing: Set a fixed price for the entire project, and the focus of communication with customers turns to the results rather than the process. So when your efficiency increases, it doesn’t hurt revenue.
- Value profit sharing: If your work is likely to directly affect the customer’s revenue, you have the opportunity to compete with the other party for a share of the increased revenue. Of course, in addition to showing your professional confidence, this also involves negotiation skills and understanding of market conditions.
- Package plan: Provide different levels of service packages so that customers can choose according to their needs and budget. In this way, not only can customers be given more choices, but the unit price per customer can also be increased.
- Consulting fee model: For long-term customers, you can consider adopting a monthly or annual fee system. When income becomes more stable, deeper customer relationships can often be established.
The key is to learn to sell your results and value, not just your time and output.
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Become an expert empowered by AI, not a tool replaced by AI
Everyone’s time is valuable, thank you for reading this. But keep reading because the most critical strategy has yet to be mentioned. That is, we have to learn to dance with AI.
In the past two or three years, I have taught classes in many public sectors and companies, and I have found that although everyone is generally curious about AI, there are also many people who are hostile to AI and believe that it will replace us. But I want to tell my friends that many truly successful professionals in the world have long regarded AI as a leverage tool - using it to amplify their abilities instead of worrying about being replaced by it.
Let’s look at some familiar scenarios, with some key differences.
The situation replaced by AI is as follows:
- The client requested to write an article
- You directly send your requirements to ChatGPT
- AI generated content
- Submit it after you slightly revise it
In a process such as this, your value is naturally low because the customer can do the same thing themselves.
The scenario empowered by AI is similar to:
- The client requested to write a copywriting
- You first have a deep understanding of brand positioning and target audience
- Use AI for market research and competitor analysis
- Plan content strategy based on insights
- Then use AI to quickly produce the first draft
- Substantial rewriting and optimization based on professional judgment *Finally check language expression and readability through AI
- The final output is content that combines strategic thinking, professional insights and refined expressions
Hey, do you see the difference? In the second scenario, AI is just your assistant, helping you complete research, produce first drafts, and optimize expression more quickly. But the core of the entire process, such as strategic thinking, professional judgment and value creation, is still dominated by you.
Build your AI-enabled workflow
Successful professionals do not blindly follow, reject, or occasionally use AI, but are able to establish a complete set of “AI-empowered workflows.”
My own workflow in content creation is roughly this:
- Use AI for topic research and trend analysis
- Use mind mapping tools (with AI) to plan content structure
- Personally write core arguments and key paragraphs
- Use AI to help expand details and cases
- Personally reorganize content and unify style
- Check readability and SEO optimization with AI *Final personal review and polishing
I believe it is not difficult for you to see that in this process, AI is responsible for improving work efficiency, while I am responsible for developing strategies and controlling quality. The combination of the two allows me to produce better content faster than in the past.
A senior UX designer once shared his experience with me: “The biggest help of AI to me is not that I no longer have to deal with tedious prototype design, but that it allows me to have more time to think about touch points, user portraits and user journeys, and test different solutions. AI has made me even more powerful. Not only has the output speed increased, but more importantly, the design quality has also improved, just like a plug-in! Because I have more time to focus on the parts that really require creativity and insight.”
Are these words very attractive to you? I think the key point is: AI is indeed a lever, but it is not a substitute. If used well, it can amplify your professional value; but if used improperly, it may gradually marginalize you and even turn you into a dispensable middleman.
Three levels of capability reconstruction
Now that we understand the strategy, let’s talk about specific capability building. In the AI era, freelance workers need to rebuild capabilities on three levels.
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Level One: Technical Literacy—Master the Art of AI Collaboration
First, you must have basic AI literacy. This doesn’t mean you need to become an AI expert, but it does mean understanding what AI can and cannot do, and how to use it effectively.
AI literacy refers to the knowledge, skills and concepts to understand and use artificial intelligence (AI). It not only includes operations, but more importantly, the ability to critically evaluate the application of AI, understand its ethical implications, and use it responsibly in life.
There is no doubt that prompt engineering is a key. Good prompt words allow AI to produce high-quality content, while poor prompt words will only waste time. Some basic skills include: providing clear background information, giving specific examples, guiding AI to think step by step and requiring specific style output, etc.
I teach AI applications in many companies, public sectors, and universities, and I tell my students: It is not enough to be familiar with the design of prompt words. What is more important is to critically evaluate them. Because AI will occasionally make mistakes, often with confidence. Therefore, we need to cultivate the ability to identify the quality of AI output, such as: fact checking, logic inspection, style consistency and originality inspection… etc. Please remember that AI is our assistant, but the final quality control is still your and my responsibility.
Second level: Professional deepening - establishing irreplaceable insights
The second level of ability is your professional depth. I think this is the hardest part of AI to replicate in the short term, and it’s also your real moat.
Domain expertise is fundamental. In your professional field, you need to know something deeper, newer, and more practical than AI. After all, AI knowledge comes from training data, but it may not be deep enough, the data may be outdated, and it also lacks the nuance of practical experience.
Your advantage lies in: continuous learning of the latest industry trends, accumulation of real case experience, and understanding of the gap between theory and practice. Therefore, I recommend that you spend at least 5 hours a week on in-depth learning and track opinion leaders and the latest research in your field.
The ability to think strategically is actually even more critical at this point in time. Although AI can provide people with many options, it cannot truly understand strategy. Strategic thinking includes: understanding business goals and constraints, analyzing market opportunities and threats, evaluating the pros and cons of different options, and making trade-offs. It is not difficult to imagine that these require not only knowledge, but also experience, judgment and understanding of the overall situation.
The third level: meta-ability—continuously evolving learning ability
The third level, which is also the highest level of ability, is what I call “meta-ability”, which is the ability to continuously learn and adapt.
In an era of rapid AI evolution, some traditional skills may quickly become obsolete, but the ability to learn is always valuable.
From my point of view, it is very important to establish a learning system. Don’t rely on sporadic or fragmented learning, but establish a systematic learning mechanism. Taking me as an example, my own habits are: spending 30 minutes every morning reading industry news, choosing a new tool to experiment with every week, writing a deep learning note every month, and reviewing and updating my knowledge structure every quarter.
Of course, cultivating reflection ability is equally important. Not just learning new things, but also reflecting on your own practice: What methods work? Why? Which strategies fail? Why? Develop the habit of writing notes or work diary to record your experiences and reflections on each case. These accumulations may seem like hard work, but they will become your most valuable assets.
Practical advice for those with anxiety
If you’re feeling anxious right now and aren’t sure what to do, let me give you some advice you can take action right now.
Short term action (next 1-3 months)
Action 1: Assess your positioning
Sit down and think carefully about three questions:
- In your profession, what is difficult for AI to do?
- What more upstream problems can you solve for your customers?
- What is your unique value proposition?
Don’t worry, please write down your answers on paper and “correct the answers” later. Don’t underestimate this move, it will become the basis for your future transformation.
Action 2: Learn AI tools
Don’t be too greedy, just choose 2-3 AI tools related to your major first, and take the time to study them carefully. It’s not about using it superficially, but about deeply understanding its capabilities and limitations, and establishing your workflow.
Action 3: Start building your personal brand
Choose a platform (LinkedIn, a personal blog, Medium, or Square will work) and start sharing your expertise. Don’t wait for perfection before you start, please remember to “ask for good before you get good”. Even if you only publish one short article per week, as long as you can continue it for three months, you will see changes in yourself.
Medium-term strategy (next 3-12 months)
Strategy 1: Repackage your services
Don’t just sell the output of your execution, sell your solution. Think about how to expand a single skill into a complete service (if you have any questions, please feel free to [make an appointment for consultation] with me (mailto:iamvista@gmail.com)). For example, if you are a copywriter, you can provide content strategy; if you are a graphic designer, you can provide brand visual system.
Strategy Two: Choose a Niche Market
Rather than serving everyone, focus on serving a specific type of customer. It is more valuable to be an “expert in a certain field” than to be a “generalist”.
Strategy Three: Change the Pricing Model
Start trying different [pricing strategies] (https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/%E5%AE%9A%E4%BB%B7%E7%AD%96%E7%95%A5) such as project system, package system or consulting system, and gradually get rid of the fate of hourly wages. Of course, these will take time to adapt to, but they are necessary in the long run.
Long-term investment (ongoing)
Investment 1: Deepening professional capabilities
Invest at least 5 hours a week in deep learning, tracking industry trends, and hoping to accumulate practical experience. I think professional depth is the most important moat for you and me.
Investment 2: Build a network of trust
It is also very important to establish cooperative relationships with other professionals, participate in industry communities, and maintain continuous customer relationships. In the long run, these relationships are often more important than any skill.
Investment 3: Maintain learning flexibility
AI is still evolving rapidly, and the market continues to change. Keep an open mind, be willing to learn new things, and be willing to adjust your strategies. Adaptability is the most critical ability.
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Find our own position in the changing situation, let us keep pace with the times
As I write this, I am reminded of a media gathering I attended at the end of last year. During the dinner, a young photographer said frustratedly: “Now that AI image generation technology is so powerful, do we who hold cameras still have a future?”
The answer of a senior senior impressed me deeply: “When digital cameras appeared, many people said that photographers who took pictures with single-lens cameras would be unemployed… Indeed, some people were unemployed, but some people transformed and even did better. The key is not the technology itself, but what value do you provide?”
If you just keep pressing the shutter, it can indeed be replaced. But if you can capture emotion, tell a story, and create a unique perspective, your value will always be remembered.
It is true that the advent of generative AI has changed the rules of the game in this world, making many originally valuable skills become extremely common in an instant. But we cannot deny that it also makes those truly outstanding, warm and insightful works more precious!
🚀 In an era when AI makes “good” easy, only the pursuit of “excellence” has become the best strategy.
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When I teach at universities, I often tell college students: You can choose to lie down or resist change, but you will eventually be eliminated; or you can choose to follow the trend and endure the price war; but you also have a third option: embrace change, redefine your value, and find your place in the new era.
I know that this road is not easy. It requires continuous learning, the courage to try, and the accumulation of patience. But I believe that those who are willing to invest in themselves and establish real competitive advantages will not only survive in the AI era, but also have the opportunity to thrive.
It is said that only about 5% of freelance workers are better off after the AI onslaught than before. But it’s not because they were lucky, it’s because they made the right choice.
Now, it’s your turn to make a choice. Think about it carefully, do you want to be the 5% who survive, or the other 95% who feel the hardship?
I often feel that perhaps the AI era is an opportunity given to us by God, but it is not just for those who can use AI, but for all those who know how to use AI to create unique value.
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May you find your own path to excellence in this changing era.
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If you are also looking for ways and opportunities to upgrade yourself, welcome to learn more about courses and services.
Further reading
- If time is fair, why can some people live more calmly? Take 3 minutes a day to activate your atomic habits with “micro-discussions”
- Dont let your efforts be forgotten, skillfully use AI to create a second brain for your career
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