At a minimum, you should be able to put a complete site together using a popular CMS/framework like Wordpress, Drupal, or Laravel. This should include basic (but common) features, like: editable pages with images, blog, contact form, search, homepage with editable content and at least one or two custom features which will be specific to each business. The site should be responsive, with every feature styled and functional in at least mobile and desktop sizes.
There are also non-development skills that you will need. You will need to gather requirements, possibly even produce wireframes. You'll need to be organised around tasks and deadlines. I suggest using a task-tracking tool that both you and the client have access to. Your clients may need design. If you're not capable of doing this yourself, you'll need to find them someone who is, or at a minimum give them a set of options of pre-built themes from a paid theme site, which you're skilled enough to adapt to their requirements.
Also don't forget that you'll be deploying their site to the hosting, which you may need to purchase and/or set up. I would also recommend a staging environment (even if it's on the same server as live) for testing and previewing changes and new features to the client before they are pushed to live.
Development sometimes ends up being less than half of the time you spend on the project. When you're a freelancer, there is no one else to do those tasks but you! It's all valuable experience though, even if you take a corporate dev job later in life, it will give you insight into the business decisions that get made around your "strictly development" tasks.
There are also non-development skills that you will need. You will need to gather requirements, possibly even produce wireframes. You'll need to be organised around tasks and deadlines. I suggest using a task-tracking tool that both you and the client have access to. Your clients may need design. If you're not capable of doing this yourself, you'll need to find them someone who is, or at a minimum give them a set of options of pre-built themes from a paid theme site, which you're skilled enough to adapt to their requirements.
Also don't forget that you'll be deploying their site to the hosting, which you may need to purchase and/or set up. I would also recommend a staging environment (even if it's on the same server as live) for testing and previewing changes and new features to the client before they are pushed to live.
Development sometimes ends up being less than half of the time you spend on the project. When you're a freelancer, there is no one else to do those tasks but you! It's all valuable experience though, even if you take a corporate dev job later in life, it will give you insight into the business decisions that get made around your "strictly development" tasks.