Yes. There is the game changing nature of CSS Grid that makes it possible for the freelancer clued up on how to write HTML5 properly to compete against agencies

Yes. There is the game changing nature of CSS Grid that makes it possible for the freelancer clued up on how to write HTML5 properly to compete against agencies that are still using layout hacks and frameworks to make a website look okay. It comes down to cost. With a conventional visual design process it takes time for some visual mockups to be made, approved and then sent on to the programmers for them to make in a paint-by-numbers process. By then you have a team of ten and all of them have rent/mortgages to pay. Before you know it the client have a six figure bill. It is actually very difficult to make money if you own an agency and have these UX people, UI people, SEO people, marketing people, sales staff, micro-managers, team leads, test engineers, backend developers, frontend developers, devops people, accounting and admin staff to pay for. The actual job as brought in might actually only have two programmers doing the work that actually gets delivered. Everything else is meeting room hot-air. This agency team is not going to be able to move quickly to use CSS Grid as everyone is specialised and the process that goes with it is rigid. However, CSS Grid enables frontend web development to be done in a fraction of the time. Getting a team to us it though? Not easy when people know what they know and are used to doing things the way they have always done them. Everyone has had a website already in the world of business. They know how much it costs and how tedious the process is. They have established their branding along the way. The UX of the web has also settled. But what they don't know is that for the first time ever the web has a decent layout engine - CSS Grid - so what they see as the website no longer has to be built with hacks and more hacks. Even if these hacks are professionalised and given fancy words like 'responsive' it is still a world of hacks and code that is a nightmare to maintain. For this reason - the game changing nature of CSS Grid - I believe that freelance web development is not only viable it is a veritable gold mine. The only thing holding you back being the realities of running your own business, charging people and getting paid as well as doing the actual work. CSS Grid is a new skill set. There is no horde of developers up to speed with it. The benefits can be sold to clients as it is quicker, results in pages that download quicker and it can be maintained. Accessibility comes into the bargain too as for CSS Grid there is no need for HTML to be a mix of div elements and class attributes, it can use the proper HTML5 elements and have the accessibility benefits that these elements bring. There is no point competing in the world of 'naive HTML'. You can make qualitatively better web pages for people and command a premium for it that no agency can pay you for.