wondering how much I have to invest to setup a website?

[SeeBen21]

This is what I think, if there is a resource for a well done website designer for innkeepers for under $1000 then it is WRONG for someone to be on this forum and not spill their beans! SPILL EM.
How can you talk about it and not share who or where these people are? That is the whole point of this thread - so many saying they cannot afford $5-10k and other saying they can get it for under $1k. Spill em. Spill them beans..

Try this for a starting place:
http://www.guru.com/emp/index.aspx
It'll give you thousands of different names, links to their sites, min. budgets, etc.
This one came up on the first page and stuck out to me. $400 min. budget, http://www.84colors.com/3.html
Just look around and see what's what. You'll do fine with a budget of $1000. Communicate your needs with whomever you choose and everything will be fine.
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Guru has a nice feature where you can see the results and the ballpark for the final costs
guru search for B & B sites
People can judge for themselves whether they can spot the differences between the sub-$1000 and the $1000 plus sites. And then compare them to a multi-thousand site by pros that speciailize in our industry.
...this one came up on the first page and stuck out to me. $400 min. budget, ...
Just because they have a minimum budget doesn't mean that is anything close to the actual budget. A $400 minimum budget just means, don't bother me with a small rinky-dink request.
(Added:got interupted here) The designer you identify as liking the looks of has an hourly rate of $50 per hour (same as mine). So in order for that person to turn out a site for under $1000 they would have do it in 20 hours. There is no way, no matter how talented they are that they will develop a competitive B&B site in 2 and a half days worth of work. And looking at her work (its quite attractive, I am pretty sure she would agree.) Even if she took 5 days it would still be a $2000 site....my bet is she would need more time than that to do the level of quality shown in her portfolio.
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I have to disagree. Two days is plenty of time if communication is constant, and clear, and if the extras such as photos, are on hand already.
SeeBen, if you'd like I'd be more than happy to create a site for you for free. SEO, the blog and the like are no problem. If you can supply the photos, I'll supply the coding. If you like it, by all means use it, no credit link on your site to me is needed, nor is payment. If you don't like it, that's fine, too, you won't hurt my feelings if you don't use it.
I have no problem showing just how easy and quickily a professional site can be done.
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Mr. Design,
Thank you very much for your generous offer.
[FONT= 'Times New Roman']If your offer still standing. Please contact me off forum, so we can discuss the details.[/FONT]
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I sent you an e-mail with a lot of questions in it. Whenever you answer those and add in anything else you want I can get the ball rolling. It shouldn't take more than two days to complete, provided communication is constant
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Ok, I'm in the game.