[thelist] freelance feedback

Here's the scenario:

I have submitted a proposal on a freelance job. I'm to design and build 15
templates which will then be used to serve pages from a database (back-end
being done by another contractor) for an extranet site. The templates would
be pretty straight-forward, largely based on the design they have on their
current site...which itself is pretty simple. So I wrote up my proposal,
estimated 12 days of work (padded by the requisite 20%), and bid $5600 for
the job.

That $5600 is roughly based on double what I make on my salaried day job
(at $30/hr...so ~$60/hr freelance). The doubling is to account for taxes,
overhead, etc.

So now I've heard back from the company (a start-up). They are still
interested in me, but they want me to lower my price by almost half. They
wouldn't exactly tell me what their budget is, but she hinted that they
were hoping for something in the $3000 price range. She tried to reduce the
job by saying that they'd only need two initial general designs instead of
three to choose from. She said it's not as much of a rush as I thought,
meaning I wouldn't have to charge for working weekend days. And she
reminded me that I'm not doing any content, just the design converted to
HTML with dummy text (Lorem Ipsum). Well, I already understood that.

<sigh> The only reason I'm still considering it is that the start-up I'm
currently working for will probably cease to exist on Monday, due to
funding woes. So I'll probably be out of a job, and while I live in
Northern Virginia and won't have too much trouble finding something else
soon, having the extra padding wouldn't hurt either.

But I was already charging a reasonable rate (at least I thought so), and
now they're asking for dirt cheap.

Opinions?

Thanks,
Marlene