point me in the right direction

[mac451]

Ok heres the deal. I am in need of a website for my photography buisness. Basicly it needs to be able to handle purchases and credit card verification. It also needs to hold all of my pictures in a gallery with photomarks on them. I will probably get a rush of visitors to the website during events, but very few in between them. The think is I need this website by memorial day and I know very little about creating a website. How much would it cost to do it myself, or should I get a professional to do it? Please give me some advice. Thanks

[kstatefan40]

What kind of stuff are you looking at selling? Public photos for anyone to buy or private ones for groups that you have taken photos for?

You could make a site yourself, which would cost between $3 and 12 per year for the domain name and $60 per year for the webspace, and develop the site using tools freely available. I use Yahoo for the domain registration, and surpasshosting.com for the web space.

If you aren't comfortable doing that, I would be happy to help you with it.

[Statica]

If you dont know too much about website building & configuration, and if having an ecommerce website is vital for your business, you'd be much better of getting a professional to build it for you.

It's not that hard getting a website together, as kstatefan40 mentioned
* you need a domain name
* you need a Webhost .. again a professional will be able to assess how much of webspace you need if you aren't able to estimate your server needs. There are also various tiers of service that a webhost can command - are you willing to be on a shared server, do you need a dedicated server? are some of the questions that you should be able to answer. It all comes down to how critical this website going to be for your revenue! It also comes down to how much you are willing to spend, obviously spending more than you will estimate in earnings is foolhardy.
* the next step is the website design itself. Believe it or not, this is could actually be quite easy. Again, there are answers that you should have in mind - do I have a set of clients who need a web interface to order my products or am I taking my shop to the internet to wow people and get them to buy my stuff. If you are going to search for people then you not only need a very functional website, but you also need something that is rich in its interfaces. (I am not advocating having a pretty site that lacks function .. there are too many sites that have a lot of flash but go nowhere; a good user interface is one that allows you to put your products with ease, allow for efficient browsing/purchasing and yet doesn't look like it was put together as an afterthought)
There are also ready to use image galleries like Gallery 2, that come ready to use, including everything you have stated - shopping cart, watermarks, variable resolutions - all you would need to do is upload your images/categories.
You also need to be setup with a credit card processor for online use; or you can use 3rd party services like 2checkout.com or paypal.com to process CC's on your behalf.
* Finally, and this is often overlooked, having a website isn't enough, you need to have a good Search engine strategy to get people in; often it requires you to spend something additionally on marketting. The WWW is large enough that a good visibility would help you get people from all over the place, however it is also large enough that your store could be lost into oblivion.