Coming from a different angle than the “time equals money” approach others might suggest. Find out how much VALUE you provide by doing your work for this particular client. Base your fee on that instead of some made up hourly/daily rate. Let me explain:

Early in the process, even before beginning to work you need to find out what they really want and WHY. What goals do they want to reach? From that you can make an educated guess how much value it will generate aka how much it is worth to them.

Wow thanks @lusbuab for a great advice! For this client, he's just starting a business for the first time, and he's making a website because other businesses have one, without good understanding of 'WHY'.

For the cost, I'll do day-rate for ease of communication, but I definitely think the exercises of building a better understanding about the goal, why and what a good result would look like are essential.

I always find a day rate the easiest. Generally you can ball park how many days something takes and it’s easy for the client to understand time=money. Also highly recommend half upfront, half at the end. Keeps everyone invested in getting it done.

Thanks @altair! This sounds like a good starting point as my client is not familiar with how the cost works.

Pick a yearly salary / 260 = Your Day Rate 260 = Total days worked in a year, usually 260. Estimate a Low–High amount of time it would take you to do the project and tell your client the range. Lower amount = easy client. Higher amount = difficult client.

Some people would even add a bit extra (+ 50%–200%) to their day rate since you are working freelance and not receiving the benefits of a salaried job. Alternative would be, to give a Project Rate in which case it could be a flat rate - based on how much time/effort required.