He's not a freelancer, he's a consultant. Freelancers are hungry and pressed for money. They are commodities competing for jobs around the world which go to the lowest bidder. They are the opposite of free, they are always on the hunt.
I'm a freelancer, I eat very well, and I compete for the highest bidder. I'm free, and recruiters hunt for me, not the other way around.
Good freelancers tend to be well paid. Even mediocre freelancers seem to make more money than employees.
Of course it depends on the kind of industry you work in. In art and writing, things seem to be pretty bad. In software development, however, the market is great. In Amsterdam for people with my experience, at least.
I'm not so sure. I don't market at all; recruiters just have my CV, which looks pretty good apparently. Writing a good CV is absolutely a valuable skill to have. Maybe more marketing improves my rate or gets me more opportunities, but it also sounds like a lot of overhead that's not the kind of work I want to spend my time on.
That's one dream. That is the pathway to a self-funded startup which is a different type of business. There are also excellent resources to help learn how to do customer discovery and product development in that path.