My designer is inexpensive enough that I now budget professional design in as one of the first steps in all my projects, whether hobby or otherwise. Then again,

My designer is inexpensive enough that I now budget professional design in as one of the first steps in all my projects, whether hobby or otherwise. Then again, I'm pretty handy with front-end and CSS, so that allows me to save a lot of money; their final output is simply a PSD file and I take it from there. The design part is usually in the $500-$1000 range. Then it takes me maybe 10-20 hours to slice and implement for an entire site (not counting full IE6/IE7 tweaking, though it will be at least usable and decent). Now, I'm sure $10k will net you a $10k design, but it should be an investment, not an expense. In other words, if a $10k design will not generate more than $10k in additional revenue, don't do it. I met my designer by networking and asking others who they use and recommend. If you'd like to ping me, I can connect you with my designer.