Time to market vs. sweat equity

I've got an idea on the table I'm putting together. I'd like to get the site up and running fully functional fairly quickly. I've been a computer guy for the past 10 years so I know I could piece something together that would work great, but that would take a goooood amount of time. I could also buy a piece of software in the language I want, and just tailor it to my needs and industry. However, this would take away from my advertising funds but I'm starting to think it might be the better route just to save the time and get the site up. Also these software packages aren't really reviewed anywhere and I don't know how buggy they'd be and so forth but the foundation would be there.

Any advice or comments? Thanks!!

Nathan

If you have the knowledge and skills to do it yourself, do. If you don't, 9 times out of ten it works out better to contract it out (elance or similar) to get it done in a decent time frame, and decent quality, than trying to build as you learn yourself. Just my view anyway.

How are you paying for your advertising or software?

I'm not sure I can give specific advice, but just some thoughts to think about. The sooner you get the site up, the sooner you can start advertising. However, the longer you take to code the site yourself, the more money you will have for advertising LATER, but you may lose interest in the interim and the project will fall to the wayside.

Do you think you'll keep a long term interest in this idea even if you don't get any returns on this right away? If the answer is yes, then maybe you can do it yourself. If the answer is no, consider buying the software.