New to the forum and just ran across this thread, but what blows my mind is who in the world priced you 3k - 15k for a site? I could understand if it was an ecommerce site, but from what I can tell your basically wanting a portfolio style site to just demo your work, correct? As stated by few, make sure your site focuses on SEO (search engine optimization) meta tags have their place but having a custom built site would indeed help you get up the ladder on google searches. I would also advise on integrating facebook and twitter through your site, which also helps with people finding you. My apologies to you for so called web developers doing that.