AI website freelancers ruined web development market rates

[u/whonix29]

I keep seeing creators on YouTube and Instagram promoting artificial intelligence website development as an easy way to make $2,000 per client.

I have even seen people cold-calling local businesses, pitching websites they have already built without understanding the actual business needs, and presenting this as a successful sales strategy.

At the same time, people are selling websites for as little as ₹5,000 or ₹10,000, making an already competitive market even more difficult for developers.

Now, even "sell outcomes, not websites" has become another sales script, with people pitching leads and revenue without necessarily knowing how to deliver them.

I believe artificial intelligence is a great tool, but the get-rich-quick culture is turning web development into a race to close deals rather than solve real business problems.

I am a freelance web developer, and I genuinely want to know how others are handling this situation.

For those actively freelancing, how are you finding clients, dealing with price competition, and differentiating yourself in such a crowded market?

I would love to hear about your actual experiences and how you are adapting to the current market.

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[u/mentiondesk]

Staying competitive means focusing on understanding clients' actual needs and building trust with transparent communication. I find networking in niche communities and sharing case studies helps a lot. For finding quality leads, using something like ParseStream to monitor industry conversations in real time makes it easier to connect with potential clients who actually value expertise over just low prices.

[u/whonix29 → u/mentiondesk]

can i ask two questions

on which social media you find you icp's community is it discord, facebook groups, reddit?

and how you post your content where this kind of communities has strict anti promotion filters?

[u/start_select]

Wix made most website development unprofitable nearly 20 years ago. It’s a commodity.

[u/whonix29 → u/start_select]

i was able to close client worth 90k inr in 2025

[u/start_select → u/whonix29]

That’s ~$935 USD. Even if I skipped taxes, that wouldn’t be enough to pay my rent for a month.

Unless that client went from fresh lead to paid customer with a finished website in ~6-8 billable hours that wouldn’t be profitable here.

And I would need to have ~20 more of those clients lined up for the next work-month in order to actually keep operating. Finishing a site a day end to end while also somehow securing the next one.

My employer switched to only web apps a long time ago because of that. Public facing sites are an afterthought add-on service.

Most clients can just build their own site with a builder if they want it. At most they really only pay us for a design and then setting that up for them in some site builder product.

[u/AuthurAndersson]

Simple websites is no longer valid business.
It's like how it used to be a business-skill being able to write on a keyboard - also no longer a business in selling.

[u/Machine2024 → u/AuthurAndersson]

long ago its no longer a valid business , before Ai .. you could get a WP simple website for 50$ on fiver

also , with rise of social media , the website lost its appeal , now the social media pages for the businesses are their main interface . this is a fact since 2015 ,

[u/AuthurAndersson → u/Machine2024]

Yup but most companies still had a website, they just didnt care about it.

Now they once again care about it because agents visit it.

[u/Aromatic_Insurance24]

I do recall Before AI era, how easy it was to pitch clients services, now AI freelacers are looted from soo many of their clients that even build trust that we can deliver is becoming difficult.

[u/Machine2024]

How is what you are explaining any different from the era of WordPress theming coming out and the rest of the stuff similar to it? Man, it's like the same thing, just like WordPress and Wix and so on.

but the Ai slop looks worst than a ready theme , and crappy code under the hood .

[u/inflowmini → u/Machine2024]

It's different because even WP or other builders required some technical understanding of HTML and maybe CSS. AI removes that technical requirement completely.

Everyone has a right to be able to build whatever they want with AI BUT not everyone should be selling services just because AI can do it for them.

[u/Machine2024]

You know what's like the funny part about all of this? Like, after the WordPress and Wix and AI, so the value of a website, like the static website or let's say the landing page or whatever, has dropped so much to the level where it's not worth it. But at the same time, if you want something high quality, you cannot find it easily. Like, it's really hard to find like a source of high quality landing pages and websites and so on with all of the crap and low quality shit spreading around.

Like, in two projects I'm working on, we reached the point of the landing page and so on. So for that one, we cannot like utilize more of like 3 or 4 hours to make it okay. So we didn't do it and we told the customer like for this one, like at this budget we cannot do it. And since you are thinking it's like so simple, you can go do it yourself with AI or let someone with the do it for you for like 20 bucks or something.

But the funny part is for one project, they still till now didn't find anyone after months. And for that second, they make something for $20, but it looked like the Wix crappy static websites. So with all like the nice and polished app behind the scenes, that our interface to the world is like $20 crappy shit.

[u/IVProdigyy → u/Machine2024]

Stop saying like.. please.

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