How do you know when its time to build a new website, buy out an existing site owner or remodel the one you have that’s not preforming? Is it just about the cost, the return on investment or how much time it will take to master the necessary skills to make it work?{++++}

That is the decision I was faced with October 2008. I had built one site that was already producing a part time income but I wanted to expand into new income streams. I had an idea of what I wanted which included a blog and a community but that was beyond my current skill level.

I was going to have to get professional help or bunker down for a STEEP learning curve. My brain was till smoking from having to learn FTP and I was not excited about having to learn css and xtml so I was seriously considering out sourcing. I never even considered buying an existing site, until…

A Day On Twitter Led Me To Another Twitter Relative

I found and joined a new social network called www.twittermoms.com . I had only been a member for about 2 days when I was faced with the answer to my dilemma.

I immediately joined a group called savvybusinessmoms because… well, that’s what I consider myself . The next day or so, I noticed the creator of the group posted a discussion titled "Bad News".

What Was The Bad News?

Her husband got fired that same day and she decided that it would be in her best interest to go find a job instead of continuing to build the brand. She was looking for someone to take over the moderation of the savvy business moms group on twittermoms and/or the corresponding savvybusinessmoms.info website.

That may have been ‘bad news’ for her but it spelled opportunity to whomever was up to the task. So, I asked her for the stats: Start/launch date of group and site, number of unique visitors, revenue, PageRank etc.

With the exception of subscribers (17 at the time) and the fact that I am technologically challenged (FTP, PHP, MySQL ????) and had only recently started learning about the wordpress platform the site was built on, everything else said, "buy, buy, buy".

So, true to my ‘ready, aim, shoot, tweak later’ nature, I did!

My first Challenge: How the heck do I log in to the website hosting ‘back office’? and How do I upgrade to wordpress version 2.6.2? So here’s what I did:

I immediately went to a site created by my tech-geek friend Cenay (I love her!) it’s called: www.videos.bycenay.com . There you will find "I can do it myself" videos galore for almost every techie marketing thing a newbie or intermediate do it yourself-er could need.

Realizing it would take me more time to learn the things I didn’t know I decide to visit an outsourcing site called www.elance.com . I put in a bid and in a week I got back 4 replies ranging in price from $100 to $1500 to build this membership site.

I choose the one company who had the patience to answer all of my questions before they got started. Others were just sending me to portfolios. Any designer could put up a pretty site but not many can do it and encompass your entire vision.

Or, at least not make you feel like an idiot when you don’t even know the right questions to ask!

These guys are really hard workers and I feel much better about outsourcing, using elance.com and giving up having to control every aspect of my business.

Are you considering building your own website, buying an existing site or remodeling your current one? My guys can help! Click here website building , buying and remodeling help.

Malika Duke