I'm currently considering building an advertising network. How long would it take a professional programmer/team of programmers to code one, with different types of advert, and budgets that can be set by advertisers? I wouldn't mind it being a modification of an existing script, but it would need to be a bit different. If hourly rate isn't the best route for this, how much would a total job cost be, roughly? Thanks!!
For real professional work, I'd estimate you to spend $2k+ accomplishing this from the ground up. Even then (at 2k) I doubt it would be very feature rich. You may want to trying finding someone that can customize OpenX for you. That may be cheaper as far as startup $ (OpenX is Free)