So I just started to freelance as a web developer and I have my first client contacting me and they are asking me how much I'll be charging for the website. What I'm struggling with is that I don't want to give a fixed price as I might overprice or underprice my work.
I am really not sure what approach to take in presenting my price should it be a fixed price($1000) or a detailed list? and if providing a list is better what are the items that need to be listed there?
There is always a constant tension between a developer and a client over pricing. You have to charge enough to cover your business expenses. But clients want the least expense and want assurances of price.
When you have not done such before, you don't know what your costs are. However, in the field of website development, you can look at what other people in your area are charging and charge a similar rate. Websites can be simple or very complex. It helps to go over the client's expectations in as much detail as you can before you give a price. The business aspect is that you need to get your costs down far less than what you can charge.
There are many aspects that you should remember on or while dealing with the customer.
Before dealing out with the client, you should always remember what is the budget and requirement of the client, as these will be the threshold on which you will be stacking your expense.
You can consider things like distribute your website work into tasks like -
I have purposely mentioned about UI/Backend as selecting appropriate language may increase/decrease the cost as well.
If you are choosing Wordpress you may need very least handling of deployments. For Python (Django/Flask), some web hosting servers provides in build support for running it. For Java (SpringBoot or any other framework), you may need to have a server to deploy it for which you may additionaly need root access on command line on the hosting webservers.
Client may also ask for good UI themes which may add another cost.
