Based on my experience, I have reason to believe that about 90% of you who just saw my prices thought, “Gosh, that’s awfully expensive!”
Well, you’re right, but actually, you’re wrong too.
You’re right because $3500 is a decent chunk of change - for an individual.
You’re wrong because companies throw this kind of bread around all the time. They do so because they understand that crafting a brand holds a value that is often times hard to measure in dollars and cents alone. On top of that, companies typically have a monetary objective behind the launch of a new design, so to them, there’s a foreseeable payoff. Individuals, on the other hand, are often times unable to see things in such a positive light. Let’s face it - most people don’t make a sustainable (or even decent) income off of their website.
Everybody wants a killer design, especially after seeing one that they lust over. Problem is, nobody wants to pay for it.
For instance, some Web Design Firms will charge any where from $5000-$10000 for a web design and some people think this is quite high.
Let's break things down into their individual elements to explain pricing more thoroughly.

The major elements of a web design include:

•     Client sessions for fact finding requirements.
•     Research competitor demographics and SEO results.
•     Time spent being creative and unique.
•     Graphical comps produced in Photoshop
•     Graphical splicing for optimal CSS/XHTML structure
•     CSS/XHTML production in standards-compliant fashion
•     Unique CSS/XHTML adaptation to web platform of choice
•     Bell-and-whistle functionality to meet client requirements

All of the steps highlighted above require a certain degree of time and expertise to be completed in professional fashion. Notice also that the subject of SEO Marketing hasn't reached the table yet. Unfortunately, people who want designs are often times unfamiliar with the amount of knowledge required to pull all this off in seamless fashion. Sometimes I think people see a design and think it’s all just a matter of applying a “look” to stuff that’s already there. In reality, that’s basically what’s going on. In practice, however, things are intensely more complicated.