I considered being a gigster between jobs, and when I realized most people made between $5-10k/mo working full time I turned off my account.

How did you realize that? Most people on there were making ~10k/month full time last I was on there(a couple months ago).

I did one small project, about a week's worth of time, and was paid $3k.

Are you saying it's too low? That seems to be in range with average developer salary.

I imagine it's the same companies hiring freelancers off Upwork and other such sites. They're looking for the cheapest possible labor, and quality comes second.

well, there are tons of active projects all the time. Scope, size and quality of those projects vary a lot, but they do exists.

I must be sheltered in my corporate job, but I can't imagine companies shelling out half a years programming wages for yet another messaging app. I can't think of the use case for a one off messaging app that isn't fulfilled by the plethora of existing options.

Two things:

1. Their app demo pricing is a guideline for the cost of a typical app in that space. People aren't all going to Gigster for the next Snapchat or Yelp clone. They have specific problems and Gigster makes specific solutions.

2. I've also worked in a corporate job, and 40-50k is not a lot of money. We spend that sort of money on software license requests without blinking. 50k for a fully baked, semi-functionally software project is a bargain.