I'm actually up to help you. Tho, it's true that you can just make yourself a character. I mean, my first character was created by me, based in my own likes, and I've had him for nearly, i don't know, like 9 years or so.
You can also ask for something called a custom, that's when you pay someone to make a character for you, either giving details about what you'd like to see or not. Price always depends on the designer and the complexity of the design, I mean I'm not too fond of customs, because I'd prefer to see the character and be sure about the use I can give to it, but that's decision of each of us.
About prices of premade characters, well, that also depends on complexity and designer, but also depends on the rest of the art they have, tho that's really irregular. I've got characters with 100+ drawings for less than 100C$, but I've also got characters with just 1 drawing for nearly $30, so that depends pretty much on the seller.
Best you could do is organize yourself and your priorities, so you see if you want to design, commission, or directly buy a character.
It's my personal experience actually, but I kinda know what I'm saying, I'm owner of almost 300 characters that I've bought/traded for (Other Characters/CS pets or items/c$/$$$/Other currencies. Character market is huge actually) or simply designed myself. You can PM me if you want me to explain something with more detail.
I left this site. I'm still active on toyhou.se and such, but not here. Never found anything good about this site to begin with.
DON'T CONTACT ME. I KNOW I'LL BE IGNORED AS SOON AS I ANSWER AND THERE'S BETTER THINGS TO WASTE MY TIME ON INSTEAD OF NON-EXISTENT OFFERS.