[johnm]

Well, to play devil's advocate (since I gave the same advice :-)...

No, those sites still cost you in terms of your time both directly and in terms of opportunity cost.

Particularly in startups, one must always be asking: WITMVTICBDRN. :-)

[snagwag12]

Thanks to everyone for their advice!! The reason I'm not designing it myself is because I'm not a CS major. I am majoring in marketing with a minor in economics. My job in this whole mess is to market, advertise, organize, and implement. If I could just get the technical stuff worked out (even at a bloated price), I think it'd be worth it. My mindset is... what's the worst that could happen? If I blow it, I'll have one hell of a story to tell at job interviews.

[johnm]

What does being a CS major (or not) have to do with creating a web site? That's a false dichotomy.

More importantly, given that you're a marketing+economics person and want to be an entrepreneur, you should want to learn how to build at least the first few versions of your site yourself. Otherwise you'll never deeply understand how hard/easy it really is, won't have the ability to tweak things for yourself in the future, etc. so as to be able to effectively and quickly adapt to the realities of your market. No offense but that is precisely the job that you're professing to take on as a founder of your first, small startup.