If you know how much you’re wanting to spend, don’t be scared to tell a designer when they ask what your budget is.  They’re not trying to get the most money out of you as they can, they’re just trying to figure out a plan that will work best within your budget. For example, if you had R12,000 to spend on a design and wanted something just like Facebook, it probably wouldn’t be the easiest thing to do since there is a mountain of programming that would need to be done.  Since the designer knows your budget and has an idea of what you want, they can put together a package that will work for you, but it might not have everything included since you want a clone of Facebook and that would cost much more than R10,000.  They can, however, put together a design and get some custom scripting done for you that would get you on your way to having a unique social network, which would get you on your way to having a finished product down the road. We regularly ask people what their budgets are because we, just like the example above, are trying to figure out exactly how we can get as much done for you within your budget so you’re as happy as possible.