Man, guys! Are you for real?

A site like Amazon can take a whole team of developers months to complete, and I don't know any web designer/programer who would work for $1,500 or even $5,000 for a few months of work.  A site with much of the complexity of Amazon could easily range in the $100,000+.
I do web sites for a living. For a company, and a little on my own. Sure, I charge a lot less than the company cause I don't have all the overheads, but at work, our contracts range around $10,000 to $20,000, WITHOUT any e-commerce features. For a BASIC, yet professional, e-com web site, expect to pay $15,000 and more. If you want more fancy stuff, like a complex databse with a lot of categories, sub categories, order tacking, customer cros-reference, etc, or if you want some flash animation, the price goes up quite rapidly.  We charge $100/hour.
When I do it myself, on my own free time, I charge between $50 and $60 depending on the client and the contract.  But still, don't expect anything under 7 or 8 thousands for something rather basic for e-commerce.

Well, there are always cheap ways, just not a custom fit.
If your friend has a low budget for a small e-commerce web site, he can get some scripts from hotscripts.com, a gui from GUIStuff.com, and hire an average programmer to put it together for probably the budget he has ($3,000).

A tip though. If I were him, I'd hire a programer from a country with a currency rate lower than the US. A Canadian or Australian developer for example. If a Canadian developer charges $50/hour canadian, the American customer is really paying about $35/hour or less.