How to get out of Web Design/Development NOW!!!!?

Ironic that the first two... sorry, THREE... answers are link-farm spam... now *there's* a career opportunity. If you have web *development* skills, you can set them to use in other areas that require development skills... analytical jobs, reporting jobs, hell... programming jobs. On the other hand, if the skillset you carry is mostly web *design*, I don't know what to tell you... advertising is an option. Or maybe - for a short period - settle for something unrelated, and set aside some money to take up a course in whatever else it is that can rouse your interest. Me, I started out doing customer service. My web development skills helped me get noticed, and now I'm part of the support staff at our company, doing programming, reporting and analyzing. Sometimes opportunity knocks, sometimes you need to lead the way for her. :-) Good luck.

No, you are not the only one! First sensible question seen here for a very long time! Makes a change from "How do I make my own FREE website?". But this last sentence resumes the problem. Unless you can find a steady job, relatively well paid, for a larger company, "Web Design" has no real future: the market is crowded with Amateurs using WYSIWYG editors without a clue on how to program. These is not "Design" effort, since there are millions of free (but not working) templates. There is a "Pro" for every 20,000 "Web designers". The economic situation does not help either: every one wants a site... for free. Working as a free lancer, I have seen many, many times, requests for very complex sites ("Like YA!"), with a "maximum offer" of 500$. Sometimes, Clients are prepared to pay 2000$, but it is rare. The only way is to get into "Application Design": complex programs that just happen to run on a server, and accessible by anyone through the web. This, unfortunalety, means very high skills in many languages and, often several MONTHs of full time work! Getting a Client to accept that the cost of his/her "YA! type forum" is going to take 3 months and will cost 6 to 9000$ IS the hurdle we have to face: They will go to rentacoder, get a programmer from the Emerging Economies that promise to do the job for 500$, waste months in doing little, never supplies anything but a garbage coding. The Client then returns to you and asks to "just finish" the application... for peanuts. Surprise! Your answer is "The source you gave me is unworkable. I have to start from scratch, and it will STILL cost you 9000$..." I DO have a lot of skills and many years of experience, and I have found "a" way to get out of this: - I work with a few graphic designers who can design nice pages, but can't code. I code for them, but they know that, once I touch a site, my fee will be 3000Euros/month: they find clients, I deal only with them. This gives me two-three interesting sites per year. - When asked to design a site, IF it interests me, the fee is a fixed 5000Euros for two months work, with half paid in front, monthly payment afterwards, additional invoice for every single change they request. No money? Get someone else. This gives me one or two jobs per year, but on a continuous basis, and log term projects. - Finally, based on some client's ideas, I made commercial sites FOR ME! I do the coding for free, but the income of the sites is also for me! This gives me a small, but steady income, and I do not have to deal with these demanding and ignorant clients: I am the boss of these! On skills? Actually, appart from old fashion programming like C, VB and others, I only have HTML, javascript, Php, MySQL and AJAX. I do NOT work on any window server: "if you don't understand the differences, don't ask me: you made the wrong choice or you have too much money to throw away". With these skills, you can do WHATEVER you want on the web. I work from home, have clients in every corner of the globe, but I will not work for dreamers or tight people. It takes a year to be "known" as serious and reliable. If you can get into that field, then, do so! If not, and you are good at graphics, search jobs with printers of advertisers (catalogues, leaflets, logos). If not, become a good plumber (No joke: they are well paid!) Good luck!