I think you can most likely get a professional grade website for as little as $200-$250 Yep that's right, and when I say professional, I mean it. Here's how...
Firstly you'll need a domain name and host for your small business website so if you don't already have them read this...
Got that? Great! Let's now to get that professional website on your small budget.
To find the right designer for your website you'll need to invest bit of time and effort. Our criteria for decision is pretty straight forward: We want them to be both very good and very cheap. Ideally a whizz without a portfolio. Follow me? Good, read on...
Yahoo! is probably your best bet here, get onto your local version and follow the directory links under the main heading of Computers & Internet to the web design section and if given the opportunity, narrow it down to your local region. If you live in a country without a local version of Yahoo! try your local search engine.
You may find as many as a couple of hundred sites listed even if you've broken the results down by region. This is a good thing, a little time taken over selection can pay off big time here. Make a folder in your favorites and call it 'Short-list' or something and click through all of the links in the list.
You don't want to be worrying to much about detail here just put those websites you immediately know are good (even if you're not sure why) into your favorites. Spend no more than two seconds on each site. Gut instinct is what we need here.
That's right, go make a cup of tea and don't come back till you've sat down away from the computer for 20mins or so.
Your small business is the most important thing here right? Good. So take your time over this bit. Go have a proper look at each of those websites you've short listed, you need to do some further weeding. Get rid of any that have more than 7 or 8 examples of their work with real companies (as opposed to personal sites)
Your list should be considerably thinner by now, these are your target designers. If you have more than 10, weed a little further by having a peek at the code. You can do this in internet explorer by choosing view -> source at the top of the browser. What you're looking for is something similar to this:
<meta type="generator" content="some_crappy_editor" >
See anything like that? Ditch 'em. HTML editors are great for amateurs but skilled designers code web pages by hand
This is actually the easy bit. Be honest, Ring them and ask if they are an experienced company with references or just starting out. If they are just starting out then tell them how you found them and on what basis you would be prepared to talk to them about making a site for you. If you did your 'weeding' well you should have a handful of aspiring, talented designers to talk to that will be happy to do quality work at low cost in order to build a portfolio!