Smart tools replace freelancers.

I often delegate various tasks to Upwork freelancers. There are so many talented people around the world who can do things much better than I can.

But more and more, I choose smart tools that get the job done.

For example, I needed to design a poster for a conference. I’m not a designer. I tend to delegate these tasks, so I planned to find someone on Upwork to do it.

However, I ended up creating the poster on Canva. I liked one of the templates and it was super easy to customize it for my poster.

It usually takes about an hour to create a job, find a freelancer and coordinate with them. It took the same amount of time to create the poster in Canva. I would pay a freelancer $30-50. With Canva, I paid $0 because I already had a subscription.

The same thing happens with proofreading (DeepL Write proofread this post for me) and many other jobs.

The freelance market is changing drastically, for better or worse.