How much to design a website?

My website (which I desperately need to update) was commissioned in trade for animals - at an agreed upon value of $1200.

Sadly - or maybe not sadly? I've never used the For Sale/Available page. Most of my animals are spoken for as soon as they hatch and I post pictures of them, so I've never needed to use that page. Good problem to have, I suppose.

I knew exactly what I wanted my site to look like, and I spend a few days working with my web designer just on tweaking the colors until they were exactly what I wanted.

I was an early customer of his, he's since worked on many well recognized ball python breeder's websites.

People need to be careful with their responses here - this is not the place to offer your services (which is basically advertising, and is not allowed in the discussion areas).

This is not a question with a numerical answer... at least not given the information you've offered about what you want. ANYONE that gives you a price based on nothing more than "what does it cost to build a website" is too desperate for business to be trusted. The $20-unlimited-domain-renewal-for-life-plus-hosting-plus-the-moon-and-stars guy from earlier in this thread is a perfect example. No one does that much work for $20. No one that actually "does" this kind of work, anyway. He's either desperate for portfolio work (creating free or discounted websites so he has work to show people), or setting you up for a scam later.

If you're not paying at least $5 a month for hosting and at least $800-$2000 on a custom-developed, content-based website... you are going to be disappointed with your results. You're asking for being up-sold later, having your website covered in Google ads, or being a cookie-cutter site as part of a hosting sharing "web ring" that you may or may not have any say in. I've seen all of these happen to people that were sold "too good to be true" websites. If you want the results of a professional site, you need to pay a professional to do them.

So no, $50 or $100 will get you a crap site that will look like 5 million other sites out there at best, and like a copy-and-pasted high school project at worst. If someone can't show you work they've done, or walk you through determining what your needs actually are before giving you a quote, you are setting yourself up to pay more down the road, or get a crappy product for the lowball price you do pay. Even a Yahoo Store will cost you $30 a month, and that's for a cookie-cutter business template that will look like most of the other stores on there.

If you absolutely must use a free service, I second the Weebly recommendation.

Sorry, I get a bit fired up about this, I've been watching people get taken advantage of by shyster "web designers" for 15 years now, and I've gotten tired of it. It's why I got back into the business, and I always enjoy helping people avoid making these mistakes when I can. Best of luck to you, hope this helped!

i saw a response of $20 for a complete designed website with FREE DOMAIN AND UPDATED YEARLY FREE OF CHARGE? i honestly have never seen that before and ive been designing sites for years.... something like my own site turtlemorphs.com would cost anywhere between $1000+ for all of the coding and shopping cart preferences...so $20, that is crazy and i would pay you to do it if it in fact came out looking professional like my example.

I realize this thread is kinda old, but I wanted to add to it since I finally got my website started. I was looking for something affordable...while I would love to pay someone to design a site for me, spending that kind of money isn't really something I can justify right now. I started out with trying to use godaddy, but I found it really frustrating (I have no experience with website design, really). I ended up using a company called PageBuzz based on a recommendation from a friend of my dad. I have had it for a month now, and so far I like it.

It costs me $20 a month for hosting, and I just go to their homepage and login to work on the website so I can edit it from any computer. I have also bewn able to do some minor things from my smartphone, which has come in handy when someone made a purchase by emailing me instead of thru the cart on the site. I just removed the animal from the site on my phone since I was away from the computer at the time. I think I could pay a graphic designer to make me a custom template if I ever want to as well, but I am just using theirs for now. Anyways, just wanted to toss this out there as an option since I know this question,pops up from time to time. I have spent a very limited amount of time on my site, but feel free to check it out as an example. Here is the link to the hosting company: PageBuzz Web Hosting