$1k for an image slider strikes me as completely reasonable. As csomar relates, lots of work goes into something as "simple" as an image slider. That's why (as I mention in a separate comment) non-tech folks will always struggle with the cost of development. If it were easy/fast/cheap, they would do it themselves.
$1k also sounds cheap for an image slider, assuming that it was made from scratch, tailored for the client's specific purposes and had all the related issues (cross browser, graceful fallback, etc etc) taken care of.
If the task could've been solved by configuring any of the 9000 free image sliders out there (I've opened sourced a dojo-powered one too), then $1k is really expensive.
The slider is certainly not a typical one or the one you can find in free/open source. That's not what makes it expensive, though. I bill hourly. There is a lot of overhead
- Writing the right HTML structure.
- Doing CSS work
- Solving some math. equations (fun time)
- JavaScript coding (around 600 lines of code)
- Cross-Browser issues (IE8+) (not so fun)
- Integrating with the client back-end
- Communication (charge for that too)
I can't show you the project as it's private and I'll need his permission, but you get the picture. I'm very comfortable with HTML/CSS/JavaScript. I have a lot of skills and use the best tools available there, and yet, I can't find a way faster.
May I ask how many hours you put into it and what the requirements were? I've done quite a bit of custom development but have never had to bill $1k for something as (seemingly) simple as an image slider. Perhaps I'm not charging enough!
While I bill/quote hourly, I usually do my estimate with how many days this will take me. It took me around 2 days to finish this slider. The requirements are not long, and some sliders will take weeks to finish (if not months).
