I just saw a post about this just a few minutes ago on a Facebook group. One of the respondents commented that she found WordPress easy to learn, and that you sometimes pay hundreds if not thousands for someone to build a WordPress site for you.
As you can imagine, I feel strongly about this.
No, I don’t think everyone needs to pay a ton of money for a website.
Yes, I’m one of those people who charges thousands to build a WP site.
I agree that technically it is rather simple to build a site these days. I think that WP works a lot like Microsoft Word in a way – if you can figure out Word it’s not hard to figure out WordPress. So if you don’t have technical skills or are uncomfortable setting up web hosting et cetera then outsourcing to Odesk or Fiverr may be fine.
When a business DOES need to hire an expert like me is when they need more than technical skills – it’s when they need marketing skills. Someone who’s studied web usability and online copywriting and SEO and conversion optimization and who knows about Adwords and media buying etc etc.
Most web designers are techies or graphics people – they’re not marketers.
A profitable website is about putting the right message in front of the right people. If your livelihood depends on that you need an expert and it is entirely appropriate to spend thousands of dollars.
I’ll get off my soapbox now.