Repost: Creating e-commerce site: $500? $15,000? (Long)?

[Kim]

I'm trying to determine the cost of paying someone to build a website for my business, based on the description below. I need to pay someone, please don't suggest I build it myself. Thanks in advance. Website must be able to:

--> Sell products. Paypal, credit. 10 different items.
--> Run contests/sweepstakes. It must track entries made in the following ways:

1) When you make purchases, you can be automatically entered.
2) "Free" option. Requires a submission of contact info online & mailed letter.
3) "Contest codes". People login & enter "codes" for an entry. I want to be able to customize when (time/date) certain codes are valid, & customize how many entries each code is worth when used in conjunction with another code.

I need to easily access all contest entries & which method was used to enter. Along with member registration & 3-4 pages of text (FAQ page, Contest Rules, etc), that's all I need. No fancy graphics.

Optional (done only if inexpensive): social media integration, SEOs, Adsense Integration, and site searching.

I've been told this will cost as little as $150 to create plus $50/ month, & as high as $15k plus $5k/month. Most estimates are 2k-5k to create.

So, questions:

- Excluding automatic transactions % fees (like on Paypal) which I've included into other costs, what will this cost to create? Please suggest a reasonable range.
- What are expected maintenance costs?
- Which e-commerce services do you recommend for this kind of customization?

BQ: What can I do to keep bookkeeping costs down with website structure?

[Jelly]

When I was looking to build an e-Commerce website, the lowest quote I had was $900 for a decent website. To keep costs down, I would suggest you have someone build you the full website instead of taking a service, i.e. paying a monthly fee every month.

My friend suggested me this website: http://www.freelancer.com/
You can advertise your needs and criteria, then people will pretty much have a bid of prices they can offer you to make the website.

I ended up doing the website on my own as I was interested in building it and keeping costs down (I also work in IT, so it'd look good on my resume ;-) ). Your website seems quite simple, so I would estimate maybe a minimum $500-$1500 depending on how robust you want it to be. Anything above that will obviously be more professional with graphics included and so on.