Putting together a website proposal with my freelance partner — who writes what, and how should we split it?

Don't show up looking divided. Pick one of you to be the project manager. Use a single logo or brand name on the proposal cover. If the client asks who to bill, whoever is the main contractor invoices the client and the other bills the main contractor as a subcontractor. Bringing your internal accounting to the client looks amateur.

Define your development scope boundaries strictly in the proposal. Instead of saying 'Product catalog will be added', write 'We will input a maximum of 50 products; remaining data must be bulk imported via Excel template.' Otherwise, design is done, dev is done, but the client takes months to supply content and you never get paid.

We teamed up on a similar B2B project last year. The quote was 140.000 TL. We agreed on 60.000 TL for design and 80.000 TL for development. We issued two separate invoices, but the proposal was a single document. The client was fine with two invoices as long as there was only one communication channel, so I handled all client comms.

Who is going to sign the contract? If you are having the client sign a single contract with two separate sole proprietorships does the client's accounting department approve of that? Some corporate companies flat out refuse to deal with two separate vendors for the same project.

The revision limit is where two freelancers teaming up on a project crash and burn most often. The designer gets the design approved and steps aside; while the developer is writing the code, the client wants changes to the UI. The developer waits, the designer says "my job is done." If you haven't sorted this out in an agreement between yourselves, don't even send that proposal.

definitely put a limit of 2 revision rounds for the design part. tell them anything beyond that gets billed at an hourly consulting rate. if the client thinks revisions are unlimited they'll make you redesign the whole homepage from scratch even during the dev phase.

The proposal submitted to the client should explicitly define force majeure events for which neither party can be held liable, as well as the approval mechanisms. The rights of recourse between the two independent contractors should be governed by an ordinary partnership agreement under the Borçlar Kanunu.

do you think this works at any scale? btw the biggest time-waster for us was not knowing who had the final say.

hasty decisions become decisions you have to fix six months later.

I was thinking the same thing. Partnership isn't a decision to make without working together first.

Of course, it varies if your situation is different.

I agree with this. When you try to change everything at once, nothing settles.

When making decisions, write down the worst-case scenario too not just the best. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I'll try it.

If I understood correctly, you're saying: If it's your first time, start small; scaling comes later.

I went through the same thing.

I agree, and I'd like to emphasize that. People defend habits, not processes. Resistance comes from there.

When making a decision, first look at what data you have on hand. If I were you, I'd go this route.

Timely topic.

We got stuck at the same point for a while. Solutions that work at a small scale collapse when you grow; I learned this late.

following. the answer varies greatly by industry; thhere is no one-size-fits-all rule.

that's all, sorry if I went on too long.

To get into the details: The harder it is to reverse a decision, the slower you should make it.

If you post the result here, it will help others too.