u/MomentCute1181

I've gone down this rabbit hole for ongoing 2-3months and i gotta hear an outside pov instead of me or social media.

If God has perfect knowledge of the past, present, and future, then before I was even born he already knew every decision I would make. If I make a different decision than what God knew, then God was wrong. But if I cannot make a different decision, how was that decision actually free?

Edit: I did not expect this many different perspectives. I AM ENJOYING THESE DISCUSSIONS 😂

Final Edit: Thank you everyone for all the responses. I genuinely did not expect this many different perspectives when I posted this. I ended up using this discussion to write a full article about the question and everything I learned from reading and responding to you guys. I'll be posting it sooner than later. Appreciate everyone who took the time to explain their view, even if we disagreed. Hope to bring another mind bending question soon!

So I somehow landed my first actual freelance web dev project lol.

It's a small local TCG/card shop and they already have a website made through Hostinger Website Builder. The site works, but it's pretty basic and they want to do a lot more with it. I met with the owner and also talked to the guy who originally made the site. The old dev is basically cool with passing the project over to me since what they want now is getting outside of what the current site was made for.

From what I understand so far, they want stuff like:

• Redesign most of the website
• Customer accounts/sign in
• Events/calendar
• Event registration/booking
• Party/private event booking
• Admin dashboard for the owner/staff
• Some vendor stuff
• Emails/notifications
• Integration with the new POS system they're getting
• Possibly showing products/inventory from the POS on the website
• Hosting/deployment
• Maintenance after everything is done

I'm still waiting for them to tell me the exact POS system they're switching to. I'm not promising anything with the POS until I know what it is and what API/integration options it actually gives me.

For inventory my thought process right now is basically:

POS = source of truth

POS API/webhooks → my backend → website

I REALLY don't want to build them a whole separate inventory system just for the website if they're already paying for a POS that does it. That just sounds like I'm asking for the POS to say they have 5 of something while my database says 7 lol.

If the POS supports it, I'm thinking I could cache some of the inventory/product data on my side and use webhooks to keep it updated, then have a scheduled sync every once in a while to catch anything that got missed.

The other thing I'm trying to figure out is singles. Since it's a TCG shop, a single card could have the same card but different condition, foil, printing, etc. So I'm waiting to see how their POS handles all of that before I even touch that part.

For stuff the POS isn't responsible for like events, bookings, accounts, admin tools, etc. I'm assuming I'm gonna have my own backend/database for all of that.

The main thing I'm trying NOT to do is accidentally scope creep myself into hell on my first client lol.

My current plan is:

1. Paid design/discovery first, probably $150 to $200

I'll make one design direction with around 4 of the main pages/flows so we can actually agree on what the website is gonna look like before I start building everything. Limited revisions too. If they decide to go forward with the full website, I'll deduct that money from the development price.

1. Figure out exactly what V1 is

Before I give them the actual development price I want everything written down. What accounts can do, how booking works, what the admin can do, what the POS actually needs to connect to, etc.

1. Contract + 50% upfront

Right now I'm thinking 50% of the remaining development cost before I start coding and the other 50% before launch/handoff.

1. Build

I told them around 1 to 2 months, but that was assuming the scope stays reasonable. I'm definitely gonna make the actual timeline based on whatever we agree V1 is.

1. Maintenance

I mentioned around $75 to $100/month depending on what I'm actually maintaining. That would be updates, minor fixes/changes, keeping stuff working, etc. If they randomly ask me to build a whole new feature 3 months later I'm not counting that as "maintenance" lol.

Originally I threw around $2k in my head for the build, but the more I actually talk to them the more I'm realizing I should probably shut up about the final number until I know the full scope lol. If they really want accounts + bookings + admin + POS/inventory integration this could obviously turn into way more work than just redesigning a small business website.

I'm also working on getting an actual reusable web dev contract made/reviewed. I want scope changes, payments, client provided copyrighted stuff, reusable code, third party APIs/POS problems, maintenance, portfolio rights, termination, etc. actually written down instead of just hoping nobody gets mad at each other lol.

Coding the individual parts isn't really what I'm worried about. My bigger concern is architecting and pricing this correctly since it's my first project this big. I don't wanna say "$2k sounds good" and then 3 weeks later realize I basically agreed to build this man's entire business software for $2k.

So for anyone that's done freelance projects around this size:

• Am I going about this the right way?
• What am I probably underestimating?
• What would you 100% figure out before giving them a final price?
• How would you handle the POS/inventory setup?
• Does the paid design phase make sense?
• Would you do 50/50 payment or something different?
• What would you include for $75 to $100/month maintenance?
• Anything specific I NEED in the contract/SOW?
• What did you screw up on your first bigger client that I should avoid?
• Is there anything here you'd tell me not to build myself?

Mainly just trying to find out where the landmines are before I step on one lol.

Any advice is appreciated.