I’ve been freelancing in recent months, and it has shocked me how… well, yes, ignorant people really are. I’ve had a lot of people start talking to me about crafting their site, and we’d start talking about what they want. I’d do some figuring in my head for a rough estimate of what it would cost to produce something along the lines of what they want, and be floored when their enthusiasm for the project would die, and they’d just respond “Oh… well, I didn’t think it would cost that much…” Upon asking what they expected, I would nearly always hear the same thing (and this is for some sort of CMS driven site with forums and the like): “Oh, at most a few hundred bucks…”
I can’t even pay my car payment with that after taxes, people… and that is a lot of work.
I won’t even go into the bid we (an old company of mine) gave to a local club… *shudder*