Hi webspinner89. I'll do my best to answer.
1. The annual salray varies a lot depending on experience and skill. I work for myself so my salaray depends a lot on how well I market myself and how much work I can get over the course of the year. I do other things besides design and development though and it all gets bunched together sometimes.
I found this at
salary.com which might help.
2. I'm probably not typical in my work day since I work for myself, but here goes. I wake up hopefully about 7:30 and spend an hour or so wkaing up. Coffee and reading the paper sort of thing. Since I'm in front of my laptop while I do it isn't long before I start reading my email and seeing if any of my clients needs anything right away. They usually don't, but I like to check. There's not really a lot of website emergencies though. I may also check into a few forums like this one.
Sometime around 9:00 or so I start working on whatever project I happen to be doing at the moment. Sometimes I may be working on a design in Photoshop sometimes I may be developing one of my designs into a site with HTML, CSS, and Javscript or helping someone debug something on their site. I may be helping optimize a site for search engines or writing an application in PHP. It varies a lot, but it involves spending a lot of time in front of a computer as you'd probably guess.
Some days I don't have any work to do for a client (or just don't want to. Shh. don't tell my clients) and I spend the day working on my own site. I also have a blog and I write articles for it a few times a week. Being home while I work means I often have the stereo or tv going while I work and have to deal with the phone ringing.
Sometimes the phone is one of my clients and I have a meeting with them. Most of my clients don't live in the same area I do so our meetings are usually on the phone and we also communicate though instant messeneger or email. I get a lot of email throughout the day.
I really get to do a lot of different things which is one of the reasons I like what I do. It's always a challenge and there's always something new to learn. Oh yeah I read a lot too to keep up with new technology and just to improve my current skills and add new ones.
The other thing I like about my job (being that I work for myself) is that I can really work whenever I want. Some days I really don't start at 9:00. i may wait till 10:30 or even noon. Sometimes I'll work at night instead of the day. It lets me do the other things in my life when I want to instead of having to be someplace at the same time every day.
I can even take the day completely off.
3. None are needed. I did get a couple of certificates from the University of Colorado before I knew better and realized how meaningless the certificates were. I think most designers/developers are self taught and I'm not aware of any certificates that are highly regarded in the industry though there might be some. Even with the certificates I consider myself self taught. I read a lot of books and tutorials online to learn what I have and I continue to read both to learn more. I also read a variety of magzines every month.
It's obviously a good idea to know something about either design or computers or ideally both. Most people in this business either start out on the creative side putting their artistic talents into design or their computer and programming skills into development. I kind of use a little of both and hopefully enough of both to please my clients. I kind of came into it from the middle having spent time previously working with computers and pursuing various arts.
4. Have I supplied enough additional information in numbers 1-3?
Hope that helps.
