When I was looking for a designer, I called many firms. The end result - expect to pay 5k-10k for a small site (~10 pages). This was outside my budget.... So

When I was looking for a designer, I called many firms. The end result - expect to pay 5k-10k for a small site (~10 pages). This was outside my budget.... So then I tried craigslist. I received a lot of interest, but found only one good candidate. But this candidate found another contract before I could get back to them. Craigslist is cool for simpler things like company logos, but didn't work for me on the web designer front. So, I contacted a prof who taught a project course at a design school (university) in my area. I asked this professor to ask his best student to contact me. I looked over the student's portfolio and was really impressed. This design student turned out very good work for a very reasonable price.