For what is almost certainly a few cosmetic touches to an existing app (that is likely only a couple hundred lines of code to start with) that would take probably 15 minutes to do, you'd charge $150k without any warranty of working, and then basically charge enough to nearly dedicate one reasonable (entry level) full time employee to an app that probably isn't used at all about 11 months out of the year?
Yes ... and I'd like to point out a few key phrases in your statement that prove why I'd do this...
that would take probably 15 minutes to do
Booting up my computer and logging into all my various apps would take longer than that so...
charge enough to nearly dedicate one reasonable (entry level) full time employee
Entry level people can't debug code. They make bugs, they don't fix them. You want someone to create new accounts for you? That's what this person can do. Debug a production website while the president of the company is on the phone screaming in your ear that they'll eat your children for breakfast if this isn't up NOW I charge a lot for that.
without any warranty of working
It would meet their needs at the time of release. that would be in the contract. In 6 months, when they install their new single signon app that wasn't in the original design specs and it breaks... I should fix that for free? You have to keep in mind, I have to be available now to fix it. They aren't going to be ok with calling me, saying its broken in the middle of their peak signup time, and have me say "Well, I'm at my real job... you know the one that pays the bills, I'll get to this next Saturday" No, they wont. So if I'm going to drop my life to fix this, I need money to cover that.
isn't used at all about 11 months out of the year
and the amount a webpage is used is relevant how? and how do you know it's used that much? I'd be willing to charge for support per month. $10k/month. How's that?
I've seen quotes from a very good development company that has always delivered come in at about $10k for work significantly harder than this subject.
Congratulations. Just so you know how that works, that place already has the site built. They change a few things here and there... likely have widgets or whatever depending on what they use. Great. So your $10k quote was to modify an existing codebase that they already have a team of people intimately familiar with. But this clients already flat out rejected that. They want volunteers to write a webapp from the ground up that they own and maintain. That's an entirely different ballgame. That's a Major, enterprise level effort. The sort of thing companies like Google, IBM, Apple pull off over periods of months or years. A team of 4 volunteers in a basement? Good luck.
I'm sorry, but you clearly have no idea how enterprise projects work. I once saw a company pay $22,000 for a single line of code. This included 1yr of support and it was considered a steal. This was years ago, my managers and said "I cold write that in 10min!!!" My boss laughed at me and asked me the following:
1. In 6 months from now, will you still be here? You can't leave for a year... period, and have to sign a contract stating as such. Even if we fire you, you still have to fix it.
2. Are you insured? You need a minimum of a $1million liability policy in case we need to sue you.
3. Do you have a track record of completed work? We need this done, and should you fail and I have to go to shareholders to tell them we took this key project to "some guy" to save $22k, and he screwed up so we lost $100k in sales... what do you think is going to happen to me? In other words, we're not paying $20k for the code, we're paying $20k for peace of mind. We wont have to worry about this. We would have to worry about you.
Now, I know your arguments going to be "Well, it's not that big of a site" or "They wont be that harsh"
B.S.
Their existing site is worthless to an incoming developer. It would take you longer to parse and understand his code than it would to start from scratch. And their expectations? Everyone's expectations change once they've written a check. It's all smiles and hugs until the sites down. You paid some random local guy $10k to throw up a Joomla site for you? That's nice... I'm happy that's worked out for you so far. But when that site goes down 2 days before Christmas, the guys on vacation in italy with your $10k and doesn't answer the phone... you lose so much business you're on the verge of bankruptcy and find out he's been working out of his moms basement, and you can't even sue him? You might start to see what I'm talking about.