Quote:
Originally Posted by ceire
What about if I put another $800 aside for a design on designs99, then get someone to do the required work for $1000 once I have a design. Would this be more realistic or am i still way off?
One other thing, with the payment gateways, is there one that lets you keep people details so you can charge them at a later date if they don't return the book? (this could be a problem)
I'm going to save you a lot of time and effort here. If you are short on cash, big on ideas and want to get something looking schmick.
Find someone on 99 designs that you like, look at all their portfolios and find someone who specializes in the kind of look you are wanting. Find someone from a poor european country preferably Serbia or something along these lines.
Send them a message say you would maybe like to work off 99 designs on a project. They will snap call because then they aren't getting juiced the 50% commission on 99 designs. Let them know exactly what you want and tell them you want to do numerous iterations until you like what you get.
These guys are incredibly cheap and can produce good quality work, you just have to keep pushing until you get what you want. I can tell you right now that $800-$1000 will really go along way and you can get a lot of value out of them. Most these guys will work for $8-$10 per hour so you could almost get 100 hours of design work. Even if you got a solid 75 hours you're doing good. You probably only need 4-5 pages done and 20 hours per page is plenty especially if you know what you want.
Make it easy on everyone though. Find exactly what you want for every aspect. Fonts, Headers, Footers, Backgrounds, Layouts. You'll probbaly change your mind unless you have a 100% crystal clear vision of what you want. So try accommodate the designer for anything you feel is going above the call of duty.
It;'s a bit like finding a needle in a haystack. But I had a site built that would have cost me $50,000+ from an Australian firm done by one guy in 3 months for $3,500. So it is possible to get what you want done, but you're goign to have to have som patience. God knows you need it with web people.