Whatever Happened To Freelancing?

Fraud, causing 3rd-parties to insert themselves between companies and freelancers. And then, of course, comes the VC attempt to monopolize this arbitrage, giving way to fewer and fewer options for freelancers to work through.

The entire world is undergoing a shift because of the internet, but I don't see people talking about it. We've had a social system of personal ethics and credibility up till now, but "platforms" create this many-to-many relationship between everyone, none of whom know anything about the other, really. So everyone hides behind legal protections that are becoming more and more onerous. All of this only favors the bigger pockets. So it's a trend right up and past the point the OP is talking about, and will -- can -- only get worse.

I'm sure there's a term for all of the de-personalization, but I don't know what it is. I'm also sure that it's responsible for massive, widespread decline of mental health in society, but I digress.

And I say all of this after having dipped my toe into the consulting racket 25 years ago, working with a boss of a friend who turned out to be a giant asshat. (To wit: He embezzled all the company money on boats and trips.) I have ideas on some software that would greatly benefit some big companies in a particular market, but I know I'd have to work through someone else to make it happen, and I just don't have the energy to do that.

Just create a company for yourself.

When that sort of situation arose for me, it seemed mostly just that companies I wanted to work with weren't really set up to handle individual freelancers. They weren't trying to scam me or let their buddies skim off the top. So, I made an S-Corp. Haven't had a problem since.

Also makes it easier to do stuff like get project insurance, which some clients have also required. It's not expensive or time-consuming, you just have to jump through the hoops the bureaucracy wants you to jump through sometimes. And if that makes you uncomfortable, then you don't have to go after or take those kinds of gigs.

I contracted for a company once and know another guy who does a lot of freelancing. I was W2 for the contracting company but the company did a lot of work with contractors.

GET AN LLC. Companies are a lot more willing to work Corp to Corp. An S-corp along with the LLC will allow you to pay yourself a salary. Even these middlemen are a lot happier working Corp to Corp, and should give you more wiggle room. Nobody likes a 1098-T worker. If you're concerned about anonymity, getting a corporation in New Mexico allows you to create a corporation relatively anonymously.

UK web dev freelancer here. I think it very much depends on the kind of organisations you want to work for. I went solo in 2016 as a self-employed person and never had any trouble accessing clients, who in my case are typically a mix of small digital agencies and small non-technical businesses with no in-house technical resource. I incorporated a company last year in order to firewall my work from my personal affairs, and you may find some companies that will only work with limited companies, but I haven't had that problem so far. If you want to work for big corporations I expect you will run into such issues or the problem you describe yourself. However it's definitely worth approaching different shapes/sizes of business. As another commenter mentioned, you should definitely be aware of the ramifications of the IR35 regulation as this will probably shape the sort of work available to you. Some people work with "umbrella companies" in order to be able to fit better within the constraints of IR35.

All told I've never looked back after ~7 years of doing this, and while job security can obviously be an issue, the comparative flexibility and freedom over your work/life balance etc more than makes up for it. Good luck!

The UK/IE market is skewed due to the legislation that essentially ignores intermediaries and considers whether a freelancer is under management supervision and control, in effect an employee (using an unfavourable tax definition of such working practices). The poison pill is the end hirer is passed liability for ensuring the worker is classed properly for tax. The game dynamics that result is that any large corporation cannot hire freelancers directly anymore for 'knowledge worker' type jobs as the taxman would just do a bulk audit and penalise in one go (rather than in the old days of individually pursuing contractors separately which is not scaleable).

So freelancing only is a reality if you just serve small companies; e.g. do word press and web site updates for a bunch of local businesses, and other ad hoc tech support type work. Big money contracts with large corporations is all done via service provider companies paying contractors through Umbrella or on their payroll.

Get a copy of this book:

https://amzn.eu/d/4pq5X0M

And you'll gain an understanding as to why companies are doing it. The companies are covering their arses as much as possible because there have been instances where they've also been stung when the contractor has been caught out by the tax man. The middleman company is basically playing the role of insurance for the corporation.

The author also runs this website which you might find useful:

https://www.contractorcalculator.co.uk

UK HMRC wants to eliminate non-PAYE employment and has been trying to do so since around 2003. This has proved difficult for them since contractors/consultants are often not just working as contractors to try and reduce tax, some of them are, y’know, trying to build a business and gain freedom from the 9-5. The most successful strategy for HMRC has been to fine employers for employing people as indy consultants who would otherwise be classed as on the payroll/PAYE types. These umbrella companies/3rd companies insulate the employer from some of the “risks” invented by HMRC to them.

I’ve heard the issue in the US historically has been tax related. Some freelancers didn’t pay their taxes and the government went after the hiring company. Also business insurance is another line item that certain freelancers never invested in and companies seem to want to have that from all their vendors. Get a LLC / S-Corp if you’re serious about wanting to freelance

IR35. This is a UK-specific problem. I can't speak about the Republic. HMRC (the tax office) has a rule that was intended to stop people gaining the tax advantages of being self-employed while actually being permanently employed on repeating contracts. Over the years it has expanded in scope, and a change a few years back meant that the company employing a freelance was responsible for determining if they were actually self-employed or not. If they are later found to have wrongly determined that someone was self-employed, they are responsible for the back income tax. This pushes them heavily in to passing on the responsibility to someone else, in this case the middleman company. There are other complications, but that's the basic story. And no, setting up your own personal services company is not a solution.

- Incorporate. In theory, if still an issue, get a bit of liability insurance and whatever else to boost your internal + external reliability ratings...

- .... But I'm guessing that's not the problem. It can be you and they are being polite, or more likely...

- A LOT of companies have hiring freezes & budget cutting they don't want to announce -- even if they are publicizing open roles -- so new expenditures only happen in very special areas. And indeed, UK is indeed particularly bad right now: Brexit + the war. OTOH, freelancing can be your in to other teams who can't otherwise get headcount, so some finesse may work too.

UK has some misc panic around IR35 still.

I found companies were much more willing to be invoiced by a limited company than by an individual, though setting up and maintaining that company is a hassle.

I started off as a soloist in the government contracting space which is a bit of a different beast.

But, I would focus on business development efforts where you have a good existing relationship with the customer and if possible, the person who had enough pull to make the admin weenies and middle management bring you on.

In government consulting, that would be the program manager for the contractor.

I’d also focus my efforts on companies that have previously brought on independent consultants. In your case maybe web development agencies. They will take a cut, but you can use that to get relationships with the end clients too.

You might want to do a little business admin like form an LLC and such but prioritize getting leverage via relationship building with potential clients and identifying companies that you know work with soloists.

If you happen to get in the government contracting world I wrote a book on the topic. A few people who are not I. The industry have found it useful for general freelancing/consulting advice as well.

https://1099fedhub.com/

I don't know the reason in UK/IE, but in the US sometimes they want me to have at least an LLC so that it is clear legally that they are not just pretending I'm a contractor in order to avoid labor rules. If it's a contract between companies, even if one of them is a company of one (me), that satisfies their legal department that I won't come back in a year or two and say "hey, I was actually an employee and you owe me stock options that you gave to other employees", or whatever.

So, I have an LLC, and if the company wants to use that, they do. Not everybody requires it, but I notice that the ones with a legal department are more likely to.

Not saying that's the issue in UK/IE, but it may be something analogous. To prove (to them and the gov't) that you're actually a freelancer, perhaps you need to make your own company? IANAL, just an idea to check into.

There are plenty of gigs out there but finding them when you're first starting out is difficult.

I've freelanced about half of my career and ~80% of my gigs have come through my network. Sometimes I'm referred by friends and acquaintances and sometimes by people I've done work for in the past.

I've grabbed a few off of the monthly HN "who's hiring" thread, there are often a ton of freelance gigs in there.

I work primarily in startups, though, so YMMV at larger organizations.

If you have questions, feel free to E-Mail me.

This might be related to the legal change for IR35, which is intended to prevent companies pretending that their employees are freelancers and thus making their situation more precarious against their interest. A bunch of companies got the wind up about the legal and tax liability and so are dealing with contractors in a more restrictive way. Others are still using contractors and just need to make sure that the legal situation is clear.

Have a look at https://www.gov.uk/guidance/check-employment-status-for-tax

Suspect it's more a case of "we're not interested in your unsolicited offer" than any absolute refusal to contract with individuals (or Ltd company representing an individual) ever. Companies aren't exactly short of people contacting them offering them development or marketing work

Smaller customers are often happy to hire a freelancer directly without the overhead of going through a middleman - as long as they trust the freelancer. Larger organizations tend to prefer hiring consultants through agencies since it is simpler and reduce risk.

I worked as a freelancer for years and liked it, but in the end I decided to get attached to an agency because there is a lot of footwork in finding your own clients and negotiate, and I didn't particularly like this part of my job. Now the agency finds the project and I just say yes or no and start working. I also earn more even after the agency cut because they are better negotiators than I was.

I wouldn't accept a contract which said I should be on-call for support after the project finish. I only accept full-time contracts, and when it is finished, it is finished. Otherwise you go crazy supporting old projects while at the same time working full-time on a new project.

Some level of non-compete is reasonable. Like don't get hired directly by a client which know you through an agency. This would be undercutting the business model of the agency.

I think it's like any job (or practically everything in life). It's about who you know.

I'm a game dev who's been freelancing for years. All the work I've done has been through friends and acquaintances and people I've met at industry events n stuff.

One: I freelance and have for my whole career. However, I work for small companies. I have largely supported myself that way for a long, long time. Companies that are twenty or thirty million bucks need software. They do not have the 'only work with corps' mentality.

Two: Get yourself an LLC anyway. I recently had a tax situation that requires incorporating. I'm kicking myself up and down. There are meaningful tax benefits to using one. Also, it creates a 'corporate veil'. In principle, a true freelance can be sued over the work that is done. If a corporation is involved, you can't. Creating an LLC with a small town accountant costs a few hundred dollars and is easy.

This is my experience too in the Netherlands. I do sporadically hear stories of people initially being hired through a recruiter, then leaving, then coming back as a true freelancer. It's a sad state of affairs because these recruiters add very limited value. They basically try to match every freelancer with every position and leave all but the most basic filtering to the recruiting process. All while extracting a hefty percentage, often for the whole duration of the contract. Supply-demand matching could be done more effectively through a web application, but recruiters seem to be thoroughly entrenched.

IR35 scared a lot of employers away from individual freelancers. The fear is that HMRC could audit you, retroactively declare you a worker and then demand national insurance contributions from the employer. They're happier working with a company that [supposedly] insulates them from this.

And cover. I know the companies I have long term contracts with are petrified of the day they might have to find a replacement. It might not be true in practice but they believe a third party management layer gives them cover, and at a lower cost than hiring two of me at once.

I can't quite tell if companies you're trying to work with are locked into some exclusive provider contract with a firm or not, in which case there might be no way for you to work directly with them.

But you might have better luck approaching companies as a consulting firm rather than a freelancer.

Create a website for yourself to use for business as a small consulting firm.

Then approach the same companies offering the same exact service: you instantly seem more credible.

Make it clear if asked that you're not the freelancer. In fact, you can tell them you have a pool of expert freelancers and consultants ready to go for their own projects.

Mostly it's a way for their HR team to have fewer vendors to deal with. That means less administrative overhead and potential risk compliance issues for them to deal with. I agree, as a worker, it sucks.

I’ve not had this experience in the U.S. I’m a platform engineer providing consulting services. Folks have said they see a clear ROI on my services and I haven’t experienced a shortage of customers yet, certainly nobody turning me away because of my sole proprietorship LLC. Freelancing appears to be alive and well here.

Sometimes my “employer of record” is a 3rd party strictly for their administrative services. In these cases the company I’m consulting for isn’t setup to pay consultants and offloads the legal and administrative work to a 3rd party. But other than the name on the check, the experience has been the same for me and I’ve negotiated the statement of work and contracts directly with a member of the hiring company, the employer of record just verifies everything is on the up-and-up.

From my understanding this isn’t true everywhere in the U.S. though. I’ve been told by a few clients that California and a few other states have locked down contracting. From my understanding a contractor can be a liability in those states because the work performed can be reclassified as “employment” down the road. Not sure if this just results in fines, backpay, or lawsuits, but I’ve had many CA companies flat out tell me “no” until they learned I was incorporated and living in AZ. This is all second hand though - I just know me being in AZ has been the turning point in closing contracts with CA companies.

Go through the third party still but ask for flow through rate. This typically is ballpark about 5%. Whenever I find the work or it finds me without the help of a recruiter I demand this.

What incentive do these companies have to circumvent their standard hiring procedures for you? I freelanced for nearly a decade. My guess is that they’re just not that interested in you. If you bring something valuable to the table, they will go out of their way to hire you as a freelancer directly on your terms. If you go to them and say “hire me, except FYI I’m working on my own time, schedule, and fee structure” but don’t bring much much more to the table than their FT folks, why should they?

Why are you against platforms? They give both sides some trust.

I work with a few freelancers: a friend of mine, a guy i met on a platform (and we decided it's not necessary to do follow up business through that platform) and freelancers on a platform.

If I get a cold email no matter how warm and personal they're trying to make it sound I'm assuming it's from someone who emails 1000s of companies and the email goes to spam, even if I need such service because spam shouldn't pay off.

As a hiring manager who has a number of contractors, having a handful of vendors we work with, with a limited number of timesheet approval systems, invoicing, etc makes life easier for me. If we can bring another contractor on the same terms as the last one (so we don’t need to get legal involved), same payment systems, knowing that insurance is adequate takes a bunch of work out of my day.

It doesn’t have to be a big body shop - most recruiters have a contractor management platform with timesheets and invoices. At the start of last year one of my QA team moved overseas with her family, and we were keen to keep her on, so we hooked her up with one of her favourite recruiters to sign her on as a contractor. The overhead we pay recruiters for contractors is considerably less than a bodyshop.

Onboarding new vendors is a massive pain in the bum for enterprise-grade companies - there’s a bunch of work that needs to happen around proving bank accounts, business credit checks, etc - it makes sense to avoid that by using known vendors when all else is equal.

Generally bigger companies have requirements surrounding things like insurance, etc.

Sometimes if you push hard enough and the people want you, they'll tell you the requirements etc. You'll need to talk to the finance group etc. to make sure you comply with any requirements. VMWare wanted $30M in cybersecurity insurance. It wasn't cheap to buy, but worthwhile based on the size of the contract.

I have worked with several US & European companies as freelance / outsourced resource. Had to sign some documents confirming that I am not the resident of clients' countries. There were no issues whatsoever in payments or anything else.

Maybe it is your tax status that's causing the issue. Have you considered forming an LLC (or equivalent in your location) and applying through it?

It is like buying Oracle or IBM. Companies really like to hire companies like Tata. Why? Because managers are like this. I don't have a better explanation. Best advise I got for you is to find a 3rd party (or couple of 3rd parties) that have good clients. It worked out very well for me. Working with 5 of these and I have a continuous stream of consulting work.

> "No. We cannot hire freelancers directly. You must go through a third company (consulting firm/body shop) which we work with."

But why the heck would I even consider doing that? The whole point of freelancing (at least IMO) is being _free_ from the middlemen.

So(at least in Ireland, where I'm based) this is an issue with the taxation authority. I'm currently fake contracting (company has no EU based entity), but the reason that they generally want a legal entity is to ensure that all your tax gets paid, as otherwise the company can be held liable for the unpaid tax.

I currently work with fenero.ie, and pay them 130 per month (which comes off pre-tax income) to use an umbrella company which deals with accounts, registration and taxation for me.

I _think_ that you could set up a company yourself, but if you're just getting started I'd recommend using a middleman for now.

I think the body-shop approach through a middleman is where most people start, but figuring out how and when to move on from that is trickier.

Look at it from the other perspective. The point of hiring freelancers is usually either,

1. Not going through the full hiring process, especially culturally.

2. Hiring someone who wouldn't want to stay at the company.

Point 2 is where your typical definition of freelancing fits in - you're a superstar who can't fit on their payroll.

For point 1, most companies just rather pay a company to do the vetting, onboarding, offboarding, managing, HR. It's often just throwing money for manpower.

The more well-placed a company is, the less likely point 2 will happen. These companies can afford whatever prices and benefits the superstar wants. Hey, I gave up freelancing to settle at a company.

So you end up freelancing for small and mid-tier companies, or something like Fortune 500 corporates who have good money but end up dead end jobs.

In the past I found freelancing in the UK highly dependant on personal network. I believe it is possible to find work if you know enough folk who are happy to work with freelancers. I built my network by attending interest/tech based events and networking.

An alternative might be contracting but these usually require setting up as a LTD, getting insurance, etc. you’ll also have to deal with corporation tax and other admin. The work you’ll get is more or less the same as perm work but with more risks (usually 3 or 6 month contracts, you’re the first to get fired if things get tough)

However day rates in excess of £500 are normal outside of London (£750 in London) so if you can deal with all that it can be lucrative. I use 220 as the number of working days in a year which can put your income north of £100k (ymmv).

Hope that helps, and hope you work it out.

Lots of already good answers (get an llc/incorporate). To answer your question, yes there is still freelancing going on! But you should know and understand that the atmosphere and general (as a business) outlook towards freelancing has largely turned sour over the last 15+(?) years with the rise of the gig economy and the increase in remote freelancers from ALL over the world.

From your story, I think you're best bet is to incorporate and do work under a company name to freelance, yes its ironic in a way but the game is the game and guess what? That's the game you'll have to play in this day and age. Plus not even mentioning the numerous benefits to incorporation (although I speak as a US-centric). Anyway good luck! No better time to freelance tbh

After reviewing a number of freelancing sites, I decided to build brainpick.co.uk a Stackoverflow for Enterprise. This is a Q&A platform, where you are asked to submit your answers and you get paid when the customer accepts your answer. Now the why part. First of all, there are many experts with no marketing and sales skills. These skills are essential with standard freelancing sites. On the other hand, customers get access to a pool of experts, they may not afford to hire. The pricing is fixed, so this might be another positive feature for customers. As the workspaces are private, I am thinking about to require signing only NDA. Let me know your thoughts.

"No. We cannot hire freelancers directly. You must go through a third company (consulting firm/body shop) which we work with."

I was told the same. Try reaching out to smaller companies or find a connection either with executives or who can introduce you to them.

> You must go through a third company

Pardon me if I'm ignorant about the situation, but could this simply mean that they just want a business entity and not an individual? It makes it easier for them since they don't need to deal with verifying your employment eligibility, issue you 1099s, IRS reporting, worrying about hiring discrimination lawsuits, gig worker lawsuits, and all that mess. Paying a company for services doesn't require anything other than wiring money and getting a receipt from that company.

Figuring out the expense record-keeping and tax stuff becomes your responsibility (rightly so).

If this is the case, you can register a LLC and be a 1-person business, and that would solve their problem.

The real reason that only a couple have touched upon, at least in the US, is because in the last 20 years the tax rules changed. The IRS put the onus on the hiring company to pay taxes if the contractor didn't pay their taxes. That's a huge burden, which is why most larger companies will go with well known companies that can take on that liability. 20 years ago, this didn't happen so it was easier to hire a single contractor but now the tax liability has forced many companies to change their policies permanently to only hiring from larger contracting companies that can ensure that taxes are paid.

Just as a data point... I work with an independent contractor in Europe (one-person business) who is directly hired by the U.S. software company (large, but much smaller than FAANG) that I work for. The contractor is paid directly via wire transfers from the company's accounting department.

I also have a friend in the U.S. who has been running a one-person consulting business for decades.

Both of these people operate as their own businesses and negotiate their own contracts. So freelancing does still exist out there.

California's AB-5 [1] is one issue. It basically says the independent contractors that are working on your core business are employees not independent contractors. This makes California companies very hesitant to use one person shops.

[1] - https://www.ftb.ca.gov/file/business/industries/worker-class...

In the US, the correct answer is to create an LLC and contract through that. It simplifies the tax relationship and reinforces the distinction between contractor and employee. But the LLC needs to have more than a paper existence. You need to have a separate bank account and bigger contracts/companies may require "errors & omissions" insurance but that's later down the road.

I'm not sure what the UK/IE equivalent is but I'd recommend looking into it.

One approach that works: offer your time to those in need for free. Your natural talent (and time management) will present itself without financial strings attached. Those people you help turn into potential clients and word-of-mouth advertising for your abilities. It's networking 101, but in my experience the most fruitful path to freelance consulting, advising startups, part time or moonlighting work that balances against a full time gig, etc.

The bigger companies don't want to deal with freelancers directly. It's too much work to vet every freelancer's company, go over the contract etc. That's why they buy freelancers in bulk from their list of approved middlemen companies, such as Manpower. Startups, on the other hand, usually hire firelancers directly - they're too small to have a streamlined, heavy procurement process in place yet.

i never heard the purpose of freelancing being free of middlemen, its being free of a direct employee relationship and having a middleman does not mean you have to be employed by them, only that the contracts, accounting, invoicing, and payments go through them. in my experience this is mostly a function of how big the company is you want to work for, startups to mid size companies are completely fine and possible to do directly as long as you trust their payments be reliable, certain clients might make sense to take the 10% to 20% cut just to not be in risk of running after your money, but usually its better to just not work with such clients. companies after maybe a few 100 employees and 10+ freelancers don’t want to deal with individual contracts and outsource ramping up and down, freelance recruiting etc. at this size they still pay so much more than small startups that freelancers get a significant extra. the only exception i know are absolute superstar consultants with an own brand around their name, personal friendships to the relevant managers or niche skills that are so specific that the agency they use cannot provide them.

A former employer had to comply with a variety of federal hiring compliance rules. Any contractor they hired also had to comply with these rules. Thus we could only hire contractors from pre-vetted contracting companies as it was seen to be too much risk otherwise.

Exceptions were made for very unique skillsets, but unless one is in the range of several K/hr, it is unlikely they'd fall in that bucket.

Having been a recruiter in a previous life, I know that some companies specifically force third parties into the relationship because it helps managers weed out other recruiters. Instead of having a dozen people blowing up your phone on a daily basis, you can simply tell them that we're not gonna work with you because we're contracted with this other party for staffing purposes.

I've done a ton of freelancing with US companies over the last decade (I'm in the US) and have literally never had anyone ask for this.

You'll find almost no big companies are going to deal directly with a one person shop. I used to be able to do it all the time, now they a) don't want the hassle of dealing with a 1-person company, and 2) they don't want the risk of having you reclassified as an employee after they have been paying you as a contractor - you can thank the IRS (in the USA) for that one.

I found my current job on Upwork, and after a couple of months we moved to a direct arrangement. Not ideal, but it can work.

Open your own shop. Start sending sales letters and networking. Hire a sales copywriter to pen your letter and call everyone who received a letter. You will get clients if your approach / proposal are aligned with their interests and goals. And you can repeat this every month to grow.

we can't/won't onboard individual contributors and it is a pain. If you can set up a company, like a LLC or something, we can onboard. It sucks and costs us way more in overhead but these are them rules.

But as other said, only hiring companies instead of individuals protects you from potential lawsuits around social fraud.

The government changed IR35 so that the onus is on companies to suffer the consequences if they make an incorrect status determination.

Some places will hire you directly as a contracter, but it will be PAYE or under an umbrella company.

I've been a freelance marketer (I do google ads) for 8 years now. The thing that made all the difference for me was building a good website for myself and then buying google ads on keywords that indicate people are looking for somebody like me.

I have gotten all my clients that way.

I cant speak to europe, but in the US yes you can freelance still. It helps to setup an LLC to work under for various reasons, and it takes a lot of time to build out your network, but theres definitely enough work to go around in terms of agencies vs independents.

They want to avoid you having personal relationships, which could transfer into you working around accounting, resulting in good offers and fair prices. What they want for you is to be the lowest bidder, with no horse directly in the company you run with.

In my experience, if what you can provide to a prospective client is genuinely valuable or even unique, arrangements can usually be made. Having an LLC is very handy though, as it simplifies procurement for your client.

I would never work for company that wants middle man in communication. Actually its one of reasons why I'm a freelancer. To reduce wasting of time to get job done.

It works in art/design/film industry.

How is it in California/Bay Area? Anyone still does 1099 directly? What do you do for one-off short term gigs? Form an LLC with all the fees and paperwork that entails? Give a cut to a middleman?

in my experience, small local mom'n'pop business are fine hiring an unincorporated freelancer for cash - big box brands want to work with other businesses, not with individuals.

doing little bits of work for local businesses is essentially the same as mowing lawns over the summer for cash - yes you can make bank doing it if you're smart and diligent, but no it's not really in the same league as working with a professional landscaping outfit.

Still very active in France - in fact I get calls on a regular basis, specifically asking for freelancers. Much more than CDI (which is their FTE).

I know many freelancer own their one-person-company just for the tax / contact purpose. The overhead is quite low, and you don't need a middle-man

In the US most freelancers have their own LLC and technically that company is contracted and pays them as an employee to do the work. Not sure what the equivalent in UK is, but that's maybe what these companies are looking for?

TLDR be your own third party/middleman

Yes, there always has been and there always will be. It's a fundamental part of doing business,

USA. I planned on freelancing my whole career. The cost of health insurance ended that about 15 years ago.

Start an LLC. Now you're a company

DE and US are pretty open to just hiring people directly as consultants. Must be an UK thing.

Start a consulting company. There's no law against having a one person company.

I'm a UK contractor. I'm going to use the word contracting henceforth, but feel free to swap it our for freelancing or consulting, or whatever you think sounds better.

Most companies will want you contracting through a limited company in the UK. The main reason for this is so that the client can sue you if you screw something up. You'll also notice that most companies will ask you have business insurance as well, this again is so that in the event they need to sue you, you're fully covered for it.

The other reason you might need to contract through a limited company or an "umbrella company" these days is because of IR35 regulations. Basically employers can now get screwed by HMRC if they're paying people as contractors who are working in effect as employees. The reason for this regulation is that it's more tax efficient for both you and the client if you work as contractor as you can claim expenses, they don't need to worry about paying you severance / sick pay / etc, and both you and your employer don't need to pay NI contributions on your salary. As you might imagine the government would prefer only the wealthy had access to such privileges so they introduced IR35.

In effect this now means it's too risky for a company to pay an individual for an extended period of time without ensuring things are done correctly. IR35 basically gives companies two options: 1, pay a company for work with no hard requirements on who does the work, the time they do the work, or where they do the work – this is an "outside IR35 contract" and this will require you set up a LLC to contract through. Or 2, pay an umbrella company for the work and that umbrella company will employ you so you can get screwed by the taxman in the same way everyone else does without the benefits of a real employment contract (it's lose, lose) – this is an "inside IR35 contract".

On top of this, companies will often have contracts with recruitment agencies allowing that agency to be the sole recruiter for said company. This means even if they're willing to risk paying you for your services without going through all the IR35 nonsense, they contractually can't because they have agreements in place with recruitment agencies preventing it. I've personally ran into this issue when a client I was contracting for changed their preferred recruitment agency and I was unable to continue contracting with the client without the client first paying off my recruiter due to a non-solicitation clause.

If you want a company to pay you directly (as a self-employed sole trader) you would probably need them to pay you for a product and not for your labour, because if they're paying for labour they need to go through all the regulatory hoops.

Imo there's very little reason to be a contractor in the UK anymore. With all the extra tax headaches, the government constantly finding new ways to screw you and job insecurity, it's honestly not worth it.

What’s stopping you from forming your own “body shop” corporation?

death by paperwork. The reason they are doing this is to minimize paperwork. i.e. only having to pay a bill to a single entity instead of dozens.

I live off of consulting with small businesses. The sweet spot is any company large enough to have regular, ongoing IT/Data needs, but not large enough to have a full-time staff dedicated to the role. This conveniently means that I also work directly with the owners and decision makers, which cuts out a tremendous amount of friction. I don't make as much as someone at a FAANG by a long shot. But I am not starving, either, and I have much more control over my day to day, which is a valuable tradeoff for me.

The tl;dr is you need to focus on smaller businesses first. There is plenty of opportunity there.

Consider them as a Union, Lawyer, and a Agent.

I freelanced periodically over the last 20 years or so, mostly a decade ago doing mobile app dev when it was elance.com/odesk.com/freelancer.com. Some observations:

1) Each freelance service is uniquely terrible. Most are winner-take-all, require excessive effort from both clients and contractors to get onboarded, and push skills tests onto people with years of experience. It looks like it all went to upwork.com, which is fine, but a highly-consolidated service like that will always cater to clients first, because they have the money.

2) Freelancing is the antithesis of setting boundaries. Being an army of one is hard. Each client adds perhaps a 10% chance of you getting called with an emergency months or years down the road. For business types who thrive on sales, that creates a wealth of new opportunities. But for maker types who just want to do important work, the feeling of obligation can quickly become overwhelming.

3) Incentives work against both client and contractor. Clients are willing to pay 3-4 times more for some kind of guarantee that their vision will be realized. Contractors are willing to charge 3-4 times less than the going rate to achieve some semblance of autonomy. These are both contrary to what economics teaches. The result is a race to the bottom on price with increasing marginalization of the contractor's time. The client goes broke over multiple attempts while the contractor becomes an irreplaceable.. commodity.

The market is so saturated now that it's hard to see how things could get better. Then again, google was once the dominant search engine that could never be dethroned. So here are some ways to fix the above dysfunctions, respectively:

1) Contractor-first freelancing. Joining dev teams or getting added to existing contracts should be frictionless. Less vetting, more letting track records speak for themselves. Better ways of breaking down projects into smaller, easily completable subtasks.

2) Anonymous by default. Direct lines of contact are opt-in only. Middlemen would be other contractors performing matchmaking duties, never gatekeeping.

3) Freelancers choose clients (opportunistic matchmaking). Rather than appealing to the sensibilities of the client, who is generally nontechnical, contractors would look for work that's most appealing to them. Completing task A results in payment B, period. No more waiting around for negotiation or money to transfer to bank accounts, just get real work done now and get paid immediately.

I've barely scratched the tip of the iceberg here. Personally, most of the paying work I do revolves around fixing other people's mistakes that I would never make. Psychologically, that takes a toll. It trains the mind to see problems rather than solutions, gradually wearing away one's creativity and motivation. To the point where I've had a gaming PC and Unity all set up and ready to go for years now, but when I go to turn it on to make something to earn a little residual income, I get so demoralized that I just turn it off in disgust. Competition has gotten too fierce. Quality of life is suffering as a consequence. Maybe that's just me.

Anyway, most of the really great contracts in my life have come from dumb luck. The first gig with my old partner came from hanging up flyers with tear-off contact info at the bottom around the local college. I worked at an agency I loved for 4 years because of a Craigslist ad. Right now I'm contracting for someone who found me on a local tech Slack for my city. It kinda stinks to be at the whim of serendipity, but truthfully that's the stuff that life is made of. You just gotta put yourself out there and keep a positive attitude and take what comes along. Just don't let yourself get taken advantage of early on like I did. Learn to communicate and set boundaries before getting burned out (exploited).

So the question remains - is there any real freelancing still on? (I'm not talking platforms here - I wouldn't go there for several reasons).

Sorry I just saw that after writing this, but I agree with you, so I'll go ahead and post this to illustrate what some of those reasons are, for me.

I hear this from companies that are 1) too big to bother with or 2) do not want to hire an external person.

In the first case, the client has some workforce deficiency, and, if they're a tech company, they're probably hiring this "middleman" to temporarily scale. Once this happens, they've probably had tons of billable hours extracted from them, get sour, and swear off contractors, or double down because of sunk cost / devil you know. These are complex sales deals, even for experience service business, I'd avoid.

In the second case, it's just an excuse, and I think it falls into a category of similar excuses ("We don't have the time to spec work", "We don't want to work with someone new to freelancing", etc etc) and almost always these people either want an employee, or a someone to boss around, not results. Also best to avoid.

My guess is you're new to qualifying leads, and it's really hard when you start, so keep trying. Chances are you'll be tapping your professional network for leads, or pitching strangers if you happen to get on a call with them via cold email. I wrote a guide, based on my experiences, to closing deals here: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/crush-it-stop-it-profit-th... (sorry for the self-promo). This can work for a while, maybe get your first recurring clients. After a few sales calls for clients, You may realize getting leads to come to you is best, or at minimum people should have a reason to answer your emails like having some kind of branding or marketing, so start writing, coding, tweeting, or whatever regularly to get attention. Keep at it. It's hard work.

You already dislike middlemen, so I don't have to give you spiel. While I don't like it either, people have kickstarted successful freelancing businesses by using them temporarily. My first freelance gig was with a consultancy as a sub-contractor, of course I got fired after two weeks, but it gave me the hunger to find more clients and find my niche to pursue. I'm still freelancing/consulting after two years.

On top of everything, you will fuck up, and that's okay, so give yourself some breathing room financially and mentally.

If you have any questions about freelancing/consulting, I'd be happy to try and answer them.

Btw, I looked into IR35 regulation, and I'm not a lawyer/barrister/esquire and this is not legal advice, but the IR35 regulation people keep talking about in this thread is very similar to the contractor self-employed definition in US/Canada, so i think that is a load of bull shit too. You might have to jump right to fixed rate work then so you do not qualify as "Off-payroll Worker". UK government has a cute little tool for determining this: https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/check-employment-status-for-t...