[JimDabell]

> This was not the case even 5 years ago.

People were saying exactly the same thing in relation to FrontPage 20 years ago. After that it was Dreamweaver. WordPress. Wix. etc.

The tools for people to go off and do it themselves have been with us for a very long time, and they've only ever squeezed out the very bottom of the market. The types of organisations that DIY appeals to aren't in the market and don't have the budget for an average developer, and the organisations that spend money on developers wouldn't consider DIY.

[jonesb6]

But the tools, and the marketing of those tools, have vastly improved in the last ~5 years. Or are you telling me dreamweaver's wysiwyg editor was the pinnacle of development..

[JimDabell]

Yes, the tools have vastly improved over the past five years – but the whole industry has. The tools a freelancer uses have improved dramatically as well. What a freelancer can achieve in a given amount of time has improved dramatically too. And clients' expectations are growing correspondingly.

The whole industry is moving forward. The bottom of the freelance market 20 years ago was plain static pages and that's what FrontPage competed with. The bottom of the freelance market now is a content-managed dynamic site and that's what Facebook pages compete with.

[jonesb6]

You just made my point. Not all freelancers choose to improve their tool-set. Therefore they fall behind where, like you said, the whole industry moves forward.

[JimDabell]

If all you are arguing is that people who don't make any effort to improve their work will struggle to keep up with the rest of the industry, then yes, I agree with that. But that doesn't seem to have been your point until now.

[jonesb6]

Fair point, I probably jumped the gun with that statement.

[pjlegato]

I think the fact that we are posting this on a thread about how freelance web designers have had increasing difficulty finding work over the past few years is evidence to the contrary. It's no longer just the very bottom of the market that uses these tools. They're now mainstream and have captured the mid-market.

[JimDabell]

> It's no longer just the very bottom of the market that uses these tools. They're now mainstream and have captured the mid-market.

I don't see this. Take a look at the Wix testimonials, for instance: http://www.wix.com/stories/ – they are individuals and tiny businesses, not the mid-market.

[lugg]

I think what has changed is that now there is less work, not that there is none, what the article was trying to point out, and what I'm seeing in all these comments if you read through the lines is that a lot of the work has been moved in house.

Previously you contracted a freelancer to put together your website piece by piece, now, thanks to improvements to the tools available you contract a freelancer to customise a cms for you. You then hire a marketer to manage it going forward.

The work is still there, it's just the freelance work has dried up because you no longer need them to put copy on the site.