You'll baffle yourself learning software, and you'll get nowhere fast.
Start with a pencil and paper:
Write down what your business does and what you want your customers to know about it.
Make a note of the 'feeling' of your logo, fun, retro, corporate etc.
Intricate of simple?
Do you want the logo to portray the business? eg British Cycling with it's winning cyclist.
Do you want the logo to portray the brand? eg SRAM just with it's name.
Keep a folder of ideas you like and colours you like, but you don't want to be copying ideas you just want overall ideas of style and feeling.
Once you have those you'll move to design:
Still making notes, where will the logo be used? Web, stationery, decals, mugs, keyrings etc.
A logo like Apple or a logotype like Facebook, or both like Specialized font and S.
Then, start doodling, scanning, vector (Inkscape/Illustrator) graphics, printing, tweaking, sizing, colour palette, looks good in B&W? narrow it down to a couple of designs, test again, narrow it down to one, test again, try a couple of revisons, test how it would place in situ on products. Consider if it will date well too.
Then use it, trademark it, promote the hell out of the business with it.
As for cost it depends on how much of that lot you want the designer to do, and how quickly the designer could do it as opposed to you learning it. You'll pay for the experience of a decent designer, research, branding, the position of the company in the market, execution of the design etc. £50 an hour maybe, 30 hours for a logo? It is your brand identity after all and the first thing many people will see.
But, if you just want something bikey whizzing up there's plenty of £99 logo deals.
But as we're all friends on RB an I'm no designer I'll help you out if you need it.
