How I charged a company $18,000 for a single page and got away with it. My impostor syndrom kicked in.

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A contractor shares their experience being hired for what should have been a simple one-day HTML page project. Due to organizational dysfunction, delayed responses, missing assets, and endless email chains, the project stretched from an estimated 20 hours to 7 weeks of on-site work. Despite feeling like an impostor for charging so much for minimal actual coding, the contractor invoiced for their time. The company not only accepted the $18,000 invoice but recalculated it to $21,000, acknowledging the contractor had been available and ready to work throughout the extended timeline.

I charged $18,000 for a Static HTML Page

That should be the default. It shouldn’t make anyone feel like an impostor, but it’s sad, that we are conditioned to feel that way with too much corporate propaganda over more than a century.

You didn’t get paid for the HTML page; you got paid for your time.

I’ve seen one-page promotional static pages quoted at much much more, 20 years ago.