I charged $18,000 for a Static HTML Page (2019)

Summary

Not too long ago, I made a living working as a contractor where I would hop from project to project. Some were short term where I would work for a week and quickly deliver my service. Others lasted a couple months where I would make enough money to take some time off. I preferred the short ones because they allowed me to charge a much higher rate for a quick job. Not only I felt like my own boss, but I also felt like I didn't have to work too hard to make a decent living. My highest rates were still reasonable, and I always delivered high quality service. That was until I landed a gig with a large company. This company contacted me in urgency and the manager told me they needed someone right away. Someone who required minimum training for maximum performance. For better or worse, that was my motto. This project was exactly the type of work I liked. It was short, fast, and it paid well. After negotiating a decent rate, I received an email with the instructions. They gave me more context for the urgency. Their developer left without prior warning and never updated anyone on the status of his project. We need your full undivided attention to complete this project. For the duration of the contract, you will work exclusively with us to deliver result in a timely manner. We plan to compensate you for the trouble. The instructions were simple: Read the requirements then come up with an estimate of how long it would take to complete the project. This was one of the easier projects I have encountered in my career. It was an HTML page with some minor animations and a few embedded videos. I spent the evening studying the requirements and simulating the implementation in my head. Over the years, I've learned not to write any code for a client until I have a guarantee of pay. I determined that this project would be a day's worth of work. But to be cautious, I quoted 20 hours with a rough total of $1500. It was a single HTML page after all, and I can only charge them so much. The...