# Why Creative Freelancers Hit an Income Ceiling (And What's Actually on the Other Side) [00:00:00] **Tiana Ned:** I wanted to go back to something I said in the earlier episode from June. it's called AI for Freelancers, The Math Nobody Warned You About. I recommend listening to that one first, [00:00:12] But you don't have to. You can absolutely go back to it after this one. So the short version of that episode is I had a 2:00 AM moment where I did the math on my own freelance income after AI supposedly made everything faster and more efficient, and the number was basically similar as before. [00:00:26] Like, I was doing more work for roughly the same money, and [00:00:39] my quality [00:00:44] [00:00:46] **Tiana Ned:** So that was the episode in a nutshell. And near the end of it, I remember saying this, and I immediately felt a little exposed because I mentioned that I'm thinking about upskilling into something different, [00:01:00] something closer to where the client's revenue lives. And I said I'd come back to it once I had more clarity, and now it's a month later. I don't necessarily have a lot more clarity, but I've been thinking about it constantly, and I figured the way I do things on this show is I think out loud, right? [00:01:21] That's kind of the whole thing. So here I am thinking out loud with you. Let's get into it [00:01:28] [00:01:45] **Tiana Ned:** Hi there. Welcome back to AI for Creative Professionals. I'm Tiana, and this is where we talk honestly about what it looks like to use AI as a working creative in 2026 and beyond. today is a [00:02:01] follow-up episode of me figuring things out In public, which is a bit uncomfortable, but also kind of the whole point of this show. And I wanna talk about why creative freelancers specifically hit income ceilings, and what it really means to get closer to the money and how AI fits into all of it, and where it doesn't [00:02:26] So I wanna give you some context first because I think the career arc matters here in this story. [00:02:34] Basically, I started freelancing in 2018, and my very first gig, the first thing anyone paid me, online money for Was making graphics and simple motion clips for Facebook and Instagram ads. [00:02:51] So a media buyer or a strategist would brief me and tell me exactly what they needed, and I'd go and make the whole thing. So that was my job, to make the thing. And after that gig, I did Instagram content, some simple web design branding work, e-book design then came video. I was doing some YouTube edits, also short-form content. [00:03:16] And I found a client on Upwork who ran an agency doing video ads for DTC brands. He already spent a good chunk of time in that world. And then three years ago, in 2023, podcasting found me, or I found it. I don't really know. and that clicked for me in a way nothing had before, to be quite honest with you. I fell in love with podcast editing, production, the whole thing. And I learned that I'm pretty good at it, and it's definitely my niche. [00:03:46] But here is a thing I didn't clock for a long time Every single one of the roles I had throughout the years, the motion graphics, video ads, the podcast editing, I was always, yeah, pretty much always the person at the end of the chain. I was the one who got briefed, went away, made a thing, made a deliverable, and handed it back to either a client or a media specialist, depending on whether I was working in an agency setting or directly with clients. [00:04:22] in all of those cases, someone else wrote the strategy. Someone else decided what would run and how much money was behind it. Also, someone else looked at whether it worked. But I made the thing. And for years I thought that, yeah, that's pretty much how freelancing works, right? You get better at the execution, [00:04:44] You get better at the skills of video editing or graphic design, and you charge more for the execution. So that's the progression, right? Except I started noticing something. It is that people I was working for, essentially, the strategists, the media buyers, the people writing the briefs, they were not necessarily working harder than me. [00:05:09] a lot of them were in fact working less, but they were getting paid significantly more. [00:05:18] And that bugged me for the longest time before I understood why [00:05:23] [00:05:24] **Tiana Ned:** I went to a webinar a few weeks before, uh, or, uh, I don't think it was maybe a few weeks, maybe it was a week before I recorded that, episode, about the pricing math. it was a webinar about creative strategy, specifically direct response marketing. And the presenter made this point that I keep coming back to. [00:05:47] She said this: "The closer your work is to a measurable business outcome, the more you get paid." And this wasn't something revolutionary for me that I haven't heard before or that I didn't know, but I was just in the back of my mind thinking, "Well, I don't have that skill," right? [00:06:06] "I will stick to my own lane, do what I'm good at," you know? It never really crossed my mind that I can upskill and charge more. Because here's the thing, in direct response, which is the world I'd been working adjacent to for years without really understanding it, everything has a number attached. [00:06:31] some of the questions are, did this ad bring in revenue? did this email get opened and clicked? And if so, how many times? Did this video make people buy something? So there's data and there's a result. Either it moved or it didn't. Creative strategists in that world are paid well. Why? Because they are the people who understand why something works, not just what looks or sounds good, but what makes someone stop scrolling and what makes a headline land well. [00:07:15] What do the first three seconds of a video need to do for the product to actually sell? So they are in the room where the numbers get tracked, and they can point to a campaign and say, "That brought in X, and I'm the reason this happened, and it existed in the first place." Versus me, who made the video that the media buyer ran based on the brief that the strategist wrote. [00:07:44] You see what I'm saying? Like, I was three steps away from the outcome And okay, I wanna say this clearly 'cause I'm not trying to be down on production work. Being good at production is a skill in itself, [00:07:58] It takes years to develop the skills. The people who are excellent at it are not that easy to replace, and I'll get into that in a minute. But if you are hitting a ceiling on rates, this structural thing is probably part of why. [00:08:17] Because from the client side, you are a cost. but a strategist is an investment, okay? and those two things get priced somewhat differently [00:08:32] uh, and I'll mention what I said in the episode the pricing math nobody warns you about. The client can see that you got faster, but what they cannot see is why that means they should pay you more. [00:08:43] Because you're not billing for what changed in their business, you're billing for the labor, and the labor got cheaper to produce for you, not for them, while the deliverable looked somewhat the same. And that's what the June episode was really about [00:08:59] I've been doing more work for basically the same money, and that's the math of being steps removed from the revenue line. AI made it more visible, okay? But it didn't create it so essentially that's the problem as clearly as I can name it And the obvious question, the one I've been sitting with for weeks now, is what can you [00:09:22] do about it? Which is where I wanna spend the rest of this episode, 'cause honestly, I'm still in the process of working it out. So here's where AI comes in, and I wanna be upfront about this 'cause I think the conversation can get somewhat simplified really fast As we can tell by now, AI is good at production, okay? [00:09:42] A copywriter can get first drafts, headline variations, and research done way faster than before. A photographer or a videographer can do storyboards, shot lists, rough mood boards, and editing workflows that used to take hours, and now are way faster. A graphic designer can explore layouts, generate mock-ups, iterate on options. [00:10:11] A podcast producer, that's me, can do show notes, transcripts, clip ideas, repurpose content, all of it way faster than before. I use AI basically in every part of my workflow now. But this is where-- the part where I think doesn't get said enough. AI is really good at producing the shape of good work the structure orthe skeleton, and it can write something that looks like a high-converting headline, right? [00:10:43] It can produce something that has the rhythm of strong video pacing, and it can generate a shot list that sounds pretty competent. But the problem lies here. If you don't actually know what makes people click, buy, engage, and stay, you cannot really tell the difference between an AI output that works and one that just looks like it should work, right? [00:11:12] Do, do you see what I'm saying? Those are not the same thing. [00:11:15] And that's the gap where people with real-life experience live. so the creative strategist who can look at an AI-generated ad set of ad concepts and say, "No, that hook won't convert. Here's why, and here's what I think will." That person, if you think about it, is not being replaced. [00:11:36] They are faster maybe, surely. But your own judgment and the understanding of what moves a number [00:11:44] AI can only amplify it if it's already there. and this is what I think is the real risk for creative producers right now. AI, as we figured, amplifies skill. Okay. But if what you're amplifying is execution without any understanding of why things work the way they work, you just get faster execution without understanding, [00:12:07] Which in all common sense makes you easier to replace because the execution layer is getting cheaper for everyone, which means the rate pressure on execution keeps going up. But the strategy layer, that's what's getting more valuable as execution gets commoditized. I think about it a lot because on one hand, I'm really good at podcast production, but, hmm, am I good at knowing why a podcast grows or why it doesn't grow? Why a specific episode structure holds retention? What makes someone subscribe versus listen to one episode and leave? I know some of it. Sure, I've picked things up along the way, but I haven't deliberately built that knowledge, and that's the difference Okay, so what does any of this look like in practice for me specifically right now? [00:13:03] I'm not blowing anything up at the moment. I am still doing podcast production. I'm still doing client work. None of that is going anywhere tomorrow. [00:13:13] But I've been having conversations with myself, how I want to approach my future clients, and how I wanna structure my packages. So it's not gonna be just, "Hey, here are the deliverables. Here's what I offer: the edited episode, the repurposed clips, the show notes, the transcripts, all of that. [00:13:34] Here's the final folder link." I want my packages to include more like " Here's what I noticed about your retention drop-off at minute 22, and here's what I think is happening, and here's what I would try in the next one." [00:13:53] Or here is how I think we should title this podcast episode and why. And here is why I think your content pillars should be this, this, and this. And that's definitely a different kind of value. That is not necessarily billable by hour, right? I'm building on it slowly, and I'm infusing it in the work I'm already doing. So that's my current version of testing that out. But the bigger move, and the thing I mentioned in the previous episode, And I'm still thinking through it, is moving toward creative strategy, specifically the kind where you understand what makes things convert. [00:14:36] so it's the direct response side of things. I'm super early in this. I've been reading and watching, and I'll probably apply for a course in creative strategy, but I don't have a clean story and timeline, regarding it, which is why I'm not definitely anywhere near packaging it up as, offering. [00:14:56] But what I can say is, and the question I'm asking myself is, what do I need to understand that I don't understand yet? [00:15:05] Not necessarily what skill do I need to add on top of what I already do, but what do I need to know about why things work? And that question hits different than I should just upskill and charge more, because this one is more specific and it's a bit uncomfortable to sit with, honestly, [00:15:25] Because you have to be aware of your own knowledge gaps. I said at the start of this episode That I still don't have more clarity than I did a month ago. That part is true. [00:15:40] But I think there's something in the act of saying this out loud on a podcast that makes it more real for me. Like, I told you in June that I'm thinking about this, [00:15:51] And now I have to actually think about it publicly with witnesses that don't include my two cats. And if you are somewhere similar, and if you've been doing really good work for the last couple of years, you've been stacking skills and getting faster with AI, and you still feel like the ceiling is not moving, I hope some of this was useful. [00:16:17] maybe it's a thing to think about. what would it mean to get one step closer to the outcome your clients care about? Not the deliverable, the outcome, okay? That's the question I'm asking myself, and you can have it too if you want it. All right, that's it for this episode. [00:16:37] I'd love to know if any of this landed for you, especially if you made a move like this in the past, or you are in the middle of figuring it out, and you have no idea where to start either, come find me on Instagram or Substack, and we can talk about it there. [00:16:54] And I will talk to you next week. Not really sure about what, 'Cause my head is in the clouds. On Sunday I'm going to a Godsmack concert, And my 15-year-old self has been restless for the last couple of days. [00:17:10] So anyways... If this episode was useful for you, leaving a rating on Spotify or Apple Podcasts would really help me and help other people find the show. [00:17:21] It takes less than 30 seconds, and I appreciate it so much every time. I will talk to you next week [00:17:27] Thank you so much for listening.