I start off by asking the client what they would like to achieve with their website. Who would they like to visit their website. Do they plan to make money from their website? If so how? With advertising or through promoting existing services? How do they intend visitors to reach their websites?
I also like to try to wrestle a budget out of the client, if I know what they have to spend I can better present options to them. For example.. if they have 10k to spend on a website I will tell them how they could best spend that if they wanted to spend their entire budget. I would then go on to explain what less would get them.
Also finding out the client's budget also tells you a lot about their expectations, if they want to spend $500 then they probably have fairly low expectations. $5k... probably fairly high.
In 3 years I have not made a single brochure website. If you cannot do much when it comes to programming then it would be best to partner with a developer. A developer can set up a CMS for you, add any extras which your clients require. You can then focus on working with clients and doing the design work.Question 2: What if the client wants to edit the content of their websites themselves? Is that common? Or is more common that any changes to the website go through the freelancer? And if the client does want to edit their own sites, how do I set that up for them for a fairly simple website?
I do not host websites, I am a developer and managing hosting is a pain. If some thing goes wrong with my reseller account, clients will be in touch with me.. I can only contact my hosting company and hope for the best.Question 3: I have never hosted more than a personal site a few years ago. Do web hosting companies make it easy for one freelancer to manage a large number of websites? How would you suggest I go about setting up the three websites listed above?
Instead I have an affiliate account with my web host. I recommend my web host to clients, I set up a developer ftp account and mysql access. I then let the client manage their own hosting. Been working well so far.