Salary
Average Salary: $62,500
Expected Lifetime Earnings: $2,609,000
Earnings for web designers are all over the place. You could earn a little. You could earn a lot. You could earn something in the middle. It all depends on who you work for, where you work, and how much and what kind of work you do.
Say you're a senior web designer for a start-up in Silicon Valley. That's a $100,000-a-year job, which means, if you're single, you can afford a tiny apartment (this is California, after all, where rent is ridiculous), a decent car, shopping expeditions to Whole Foods, and paying off your student loans (source).
Say you're a junior web designer for a web design firm in the Midwest. That's a $60,000-a-year job, which means you can afford a nice apartment, a decent car, shopping expeditions to Safeway, and paying off your student loans (source).
Now, say you're a freelance web designer who's just starting out in your hometown of Albany, Georgia. While experienced freelancers can charge up to $100 an hour, you're not anywhere near that level yet. You're probably doing gigs—liking building a new website for a local bakery—for a couple of hundred dollars total.
While $200 will get you further in rural Georgia than in San Francisco, that's still isn't a lot of money, especially when you're earning it in dribs and drabs. With the money you're making, you're probably living in a house with three other people, driving your dad's ancient Ford Taurus, eating rice and beans, and praying that those student loan jerks never find you.