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Another job I've got is about installing a PHP webapp into a new server. The client mentioned that the webapp cost him an insignificant sum of money (I would have taken twice the money for doing something like that I guess). It turned out that, neither the app create its database on the fly nor provided a script that created db/user and tables. And, certainly, no documentation. It turned out, the database consisted of many tables and I had to either deduce from the code what the tables/fields were or take the existing (thankfully!) database from the old server. But, after spending almost two hours moving it, it still didn't work.

Also, I've made another mistake on charging, which is, I thought I'd finish it in 1-2 hours, so I said it'll cost $30-60. Too bad. In such cases, there's really no way to estimate how long it'll take. I should have gone for hourly job instead of fixed price. Anyway, I'm not going to continue it unless I'm paid per hour. Either that or I'm happy to take $35 and leave it to be finished by somebody else.

It's ironic how it costs so much even to move the webapp to another server when it cost so little to develop it. But, if the original developer made a better effort to create documentation, database creation script, even installer, it would cost more in the first place, but it would cost less now (and in the consequent installations).