A guide for freelancers with difficult clients How to navigate the complex creative market of 2026

Within the complex ecosystem of jobs in the cultural sphere, a large portion of practitioners are freelancers. And perhaps, before reaching burnout, we should learn how to educate clients. Especially in Italy, where one often collaborates with commissioners who belong to two or even three generations before our own. It’s not really their fault if they struggle to understand what we do; the complexity needs to be explained. Just look at the testimonials easily found on Instagram and TikTok, with desperate social media managers because they are underpaid in huge companies that, even in 2025, still struggle to understand the strategic value of their profession.

Between generational resistance and a lack of digital culture, frustration grows, but perhaps the central issue is another: are we sure we have truly made explicit the value - often immaterial - of our work? What’s needed is a practical guide for freelancers negotiating with different worlds and conflicting languages - so here it is.

Creative work is still work

Let’s start by saying that creative work is no different from any other type of work. The qualities that shape it - talent, ambition, vision, and personal taste - are conditions we find in virtually any other professional field. The only differences that emerge are two: on one hand, the absence of barriers between the playful side of life and the working one, since even a party becomes a networking opportunity; on the other, the nomadic aspect.

As we now see even in Italy, the urban layout of cities tells this story well: outside office hours and in areas not traditionally dedicated to productive activity, it’s common to see bars full of people on their laptops at any time of day. In fact, even though the numbers are declining - as confirmed by data from the finance portal indicating a drop in newly opened VAT numbers in 2025 of -3.6% - our country still stands out as one of the countries with the highest number of self-employed workers in Europe.

Recognizing your own value

Negotiation is a fundamental aspect that is certainly not taught in Italian schools and is learned through life, but you don’t always have to accept the first offer proposed for a project. Often, as freelancers, we make the mistake of putting ourselves in the client’s shoes, reasoning about what kind of revenue volume they have or what period the company or organization is going through in order to accommodate their needs. Instead, you need to think about your own needs: negotiating your value also means realizing that it’s you who are useful to the company, not the other way around.

Document everything, including research

Another piece of advice we consider essential is to ask your client for the time needed to explain the complexity of the work you are doing. The creative class is asked to be constantly brilliant in order to bring freshness and cultural value through new ideas and insights that contribute to the visual and economic growth of a project. In the creative process, solutions are never just around the corner: alongside execution, research itself takes up a large portion of time. All of this should be documented for clients, both to keep them informed about your activity and to help them understand that even behind the choice of a single image for Instagram there are preparation and knowledge.

Plan your work strategically

Sometimes you enter a perfect workflow that allows you to operate at very high levels for hours, but it’s important not to get distracted. Typically, a freelancer is involved in several projects at the same time and, regardless of who pays more, each one is important. You need to balance your efforts in order to move forward strategically and maintain control over your business, without getting trapped by the personalities of more demanding clients. There is no first-tier client or second-tier client: in a job market that has now lost any kind of barrier (incredibly, even in Italy), for a freelancer anything can become the main job tomorrow. In this profession, you are constantly an entrepreneur - even if a precarious one - so no path should ever be closed.

Don’t be afraid to ask for upfront payments

The final practical tip concerns upfront payment during the research phases of a project. Even a proposal should be paid for, since producing even a single introductory PDF takes time - and you have also indirectly provided creative input to the client and their team. It’s not guaranteed that they will decide to consider you after that phase, but the initial proposal also represents a creative contribution that, if unpaid, could turn into free labor.

In general, the advice is always to share as much information as possible with your client in advance, in order to be clear about the terms of the collaboration. The equation that forces only results in the shortest possible time is over: complexity today makes the difference between a human professional and a machine. After all, educating clients on how to work with a freelancer - and distinguishing that relationship from one with an employee - is also part of creative work. And it probably represents the first form of care for one’s own work.