I've been 'struggling' with this lately. I have app dev experience but not really anything to show in public so I have been offering to do apps at $2k-ish as a portfolio building exercise. Maybe I anchored it too low or this is just how it is, but I received a fair few messages asking if I'd go sub $1000 or work on a pay-if-we-like-it/if we make money basis.
You are going to have very painful projects at that price range. The customers will be entirely out of touch with reality, if they think below $1000 is "fair" for an app (or really any kind of custom software). Expect such projects to drag on and on, and be very sure to get at least some payment upfront, as these kinds of customers also tend to forget or be "too busy" to pay their bills.
Also, stay far, far away from the pay-if-we-like-it, pay-if-we-make-money schemes.
Unless you are desperate for the cash can't you do some simple but nice utilities to put in the app store as your portfolio. If they are good enough to charge for you might get a trickle of revenue and if not you still have the portfolio.
You also get to choose what you demonstrate rather than what a client wants you to do and you won't be stuck implementing someone else's design mistakes and putting them in your portfolio.
If company building app for 2000 and it's not one page. Company should recognize it will be piece of junk.2000 it's just 20 hours of work. What you can build in 3 day?
When dev guy building his portfolio that mean this guy doesn't have experience. So he will make 1000 bugs. And it's normal later he will be good (maybe).
So question is are do you ready to pay money to teach someone? Or you just need good app
