Normally, if you want a professionally designed, custom-built website for your new virtual assistant business, you should be prepared to spend at least a few hundred dollars.

But, all that can change if you know where to find the best deals and the best designs for the lowest price.

First, it costs more to have a brick-and-mortar company design a website for you. Have you seen those newspaper ads that offer a 5-page website for $500? These are probably companies with physical locations. They have to charge more simply to pay for their overhead: office rent, designers' wages, advertising costs and so on.

Therefore, it would be wise to use a virtual assistant (VA) instead! As you already know, VAs often work from home so they do not have high operating costs like a big company does. On the other hand, a VA will be able to design images with quality similar to (or better than!) those of designers from big companies.

However, choose your VA with care. The best way to find the right VA for your project would be to go to visit the website of a VA association. There you can post your RFP (request for proposal) and have hundreds of talented VAs bid on your project, so you will get the best deal. You will also be able to choose your designer based on her experience, past transactions and client testimonials, so your value for money is secured.

Another route you can take is to purchase the Virtual Business Startup System, created by Tawnya Sutherland. It comes with several beautiful, easy to use templates, perfectly suited for a new VA. The templates are easy to edit wth the help of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) programs such as Microsoft Frontpage, Macromedia Dreamweaver and so on.

There are many factors that you need to consider when hiring a webmaster, you need to ensure that you will get customer satisfaction as well as good value for money. You would hate to choose an inexperienced webmaster who cannot meet your requirements because you would have to go through the whole process again to get the job done. It means if you made any partial payment you may lose that which will then lower your budget when looking for another webmaster.

Firstly you have to identify the places that you can find these talented webmasters who have the skills to complete you job. There are many relevant forums such as DigitalPoint, WickerFire and Web Talk Forums where you will be able to post exactly what you need and people who are capable will get in contact stating a price if you haven't set a maximum budget. Aside from the forums there are specific websites that aims to connect freelances with clients so that you can get all your work done much easier and in a timely manner. You could also ask your friends and family to see if they have been in the market in the past for something similar and found a reliable good webmaster, this will also take a lot of the risks out because you know that they are here to make a living and not out to scam unsuspecting people.

If you are going to search the forums or websites for a webmaster you should be very cautious about what you state in your thread and make sure you don't miss any important information out that may prolong the process.

This is the kind of information you should always state when creating a project on a forum or freelance website:

• Exactly what you need doing, try to include as much detail as possible as it will make it easier for the webmaster to quote you an accurate price. It will also prevent the conversation in between telling the webmaster what they need to do. If you can do this successfully they should have everything they have to get started as soon as you accept the quote.
• Deadline, one of the most important things for a webmaster is to know the maximum deadline. This will also remove the factor of them having to rush a job to get it done to an unexpected deadline because if the webmaster was to miss any deadlines it will look bad from their side which may deter many other people from using them in the future.
• Maximum budget, this is quite important in the fact that it will eliminate any webmasters that charge over your budget so is well worth putting into the pitch somewhere.
• Any additional information that you feel will be beneficial to the chosen webmaster.

After you have set your project up you will get overwhelmed with responses and quotes from people who believe they are capable of meeting your requirements. You then have to go through the responses one by one to see if anyone stands out from the crowd, your budget will be a major deciding point at this stage because if anyone has quoted an amount over your budget you can discard that right away.

You should always ask for samples of previous work so that you will be confident in your decision and don't choose anyone that is simply after your money. Any reputable webmaster will have a portfolio showcasing their talents and strengths ready for you to take a look at. Each forum or website will have a rating system in place so you can see how successful they have been since starting as a freelance webmaster. Take a look at their history and feedback to see what comments past customers have left as this will be the only information you can rate them on.

When you have found the webmaster you want to take on, the next step is to arrange payment. Many people will require a 50% upfront or a deposit of some sort to show the webmaster that you are serious about this and want the working doing. If you are new to the freelance website/forum you will not have built any reputation or feedback so they may request full payment upfront to secure the job. Check their feedback before you make any payments but if it seems to be 100% positive then everything should run smooth.

You can use payment methods such as escrow or paypal to make things a little safer as if you don't get what was promised you can file a charge back and have a good chance to get some, if not all of your money back. Try to build a good reputation on these websites so that in future if you need any work doing it will be a lot easier to have a smooth transaction.

Here are the simple ABC's of web development.

A. Graphics

Graphics is very essential in web development because this is what visitors gauze your site if it is worthy of their time.

So what really makes a graphic to be effective?

First, the graphic should be small. Consider using images that are 10 to 12 KB per image because if you will use larger images, it will slow down your site.

Visitors to your site will likely to leave if your site takes too long to display so it is better that you use images that are attractive and easy to load.

Second, when it comes to graphics, you have to use images that have direct relation to your site. You would not display an image of Hollywood artist to promote the product you are selling, as this will cause confusion to your visitors.

Lastly, blinking graphics are not ideal in web development because blinking objects are really annoying and distract readers. More often readers leave web sites with excessive flash or blinking objects most especially when these objects hinder them from reading the whole web page.

B. Advertising

Advertising is lifeline of web sites and you have to handle them effectively to ensure success of your site.

When in comes to advertising, you have to remember two things, the number of ads and how related it is to your site.

The number of ads should be just enough to give room to other contents of your site. If they are overlapping contents of your site, then maybe that is why your site lags behind in web searches.

Next, you should only post ads that related to products or services offered. If they are related, your readers will likely to open the links to your ads but if they are not related the ads might not be opened.

In the end ads generate income but if they are driving your visitors away, then maybe its time to remove some of your ads and just stick the ones that are related to the content of your site.

C. Web Content

Content is also another essential factor in success of your site. It will be better if you have articles that your visitors can read on a daily or almost weekly basis.

Informative content will likely to increase your visitors as they will bookmark your site and then send your links to other friends and family members to invite them to visit your site as well. But for others to recommend your site, you really have to offer not just ads or graphics but rich and informative content.

For example, you are selling a product, it will be better if the site not just offer the products but also give tips on "how to-" like how to choose, how to use and where to buy.

Meanwhile, if you are maintaining a web blog, make sure that the site is readable and the topics being discussed are really interesting.