You got someone to make you a website or did you get help with something else?
Lately I've been doing my own programming. But back in 08 I used eLance to build a custom website from the ground up.
It was something to be used internally by a company. A product would come in, the products details and pics would be shot out to 20 blackberrys. THe blackberry users would place a bid on that product within 15 min. The backend managed all of it, each user has a dashboard, each item had its own page. It was built using LAMP tech and came out pretty well.
About $5k for something like that. I did probably 90% of the UI. So that may or may have not saved us a little money. We went with a newer American company (they did admit to outsourcing too) and probably could have saved even more if we went overseas.
My tips would be to be extremely specific with your milestones. Be thorough with what you need. Get it all detailed. You don't want the developer coming back for more money. Make sure that they include all work in their estimate to you.