Making your own website and getting the idea on what you are after isnt as hard as it seems, there are lots of easy ways to get there and lots of hard ways.
I have to say when I first started I thought it would be like opening a shop where once you are done and open people would come in and buy, but wow how wrong was I there are 1000's of websites starting up every day and they give up within the first week as people just dont relise what hard work is involved in running a website.
Sorry to say but any one can get a website up and running whether it is in a day or within a year, but its when it is up and running where the skills have to come in. Me my self have really spent the min on all my websites but there are lots of people that spend lots of cash on there website and still get no where.
To me you dont have to spend a masive amout of cash to get some where all you have to do is make a pro looking website have good customer service and make sure you learn stuff like marketing and to me SEO is a big help.
There are lots of ways to advertise, but they dont all work and at the end of the day people will not tell you what worked for them and what didnt the main reson for this is because they worked hard to find this out for them selfs, one good tip is this
Need rankings but cant get them look here
I find yes thay work hard and take all the work from you, thus giving you alot of time to work on other things.
Any questions about SEO I will help you and any one else that is intrested, if you dead set on getting a website off the ground then you are at the right place as I will let out what I think is good and not and what works and what doesnt.