CGameProgrammer said:
PHP programmers are "deadly expensive"? Hard to believe; PHP is a very simple language, and all web scripts are ultimately just string formatters, since what you're doing is nothing more than coughing up the HTML to render.
Well, they are and it isn't simple either. I used to feel the same as you, then I had to get off my ass one day and try to get something fixed, and I found out differently. If you think it is easy for you, this would be a good way for you to make some money. I can tell you that for sure!
I worked on a very popular tech site as a volunteer with ~400,000 members. We had some glitches here and there with our code. For example, one was for a situation where the script ate numbers up if you used a dollar sign when writing news articles. When you got to looking on PHP boards, other people were having issues and they were looking too. We spent years trying to overcome this annoyance, until one day one of our admins, who is pretty handy, discovered the solution on a message board somewhere and installed the new code that someone wrote that was good enough to share. At least we didn't have to write it, none of us could.
The owners searched for a long time too, at the same time, to find a GOOD PHP programmer. They said when they would find someone, they were deadly expensive (this is where I got that comment) and they could not afford them. And these guys were straight shooters, they didn't ever lie to me. After all, they wanted this stuff fixed as it pissed them off too!
They finally hired an outfit that did the webpage for a major imported beer. (who I can't mention the name of but you know the brand - I would say this beer is in the top ten of all imported beers) The owners hired them to do a re-vamp of the entire website, they said "no problemo". They were expensive, but the owners said to hell with it, they wanted a new site. Then the programming team got their asses kicked as they discovered they could not handle the complexity of the project and were subjected to fines of 350 dollars a day as they went past the deadline. So, you can see if they agreed to such a contract, they were getting well paid up front and they thought they were good - they were confident. In the meantime, other customers projects got behind and everything got ugly.
Finally, they were let off the hook, since they agreed to let the owners keep what was done at a reduced cost (free) . With the pages incomplete, an in-house programmer was hired full time to complete the job and is still there to this day.