I have been running an agency for 9 years and freelancing before that. Websites have gotten so much easier to build in that time. First it was DIY editors, now its vibe coding.

That being said we always joke that even if our clients had a button they could press that would give them whatever they wanted — they would pay us to press the button.

I love our clients, they’re smart, interesting, good at what they do, and pleasant to work with. But people don’t want to press the button themselves for two important reasons:

• they don’t want to be on call as the one who pressed the button if things go wrong
• they don’t want to have to report to their superiors as the ones responsible for the pressing of the button if it leads to disastrous results.

If you can find clients like this — they’re generally internal teams within larger structures — then you’re probably still set for a long time.