How long?

How long did it take you guys/gals to become proficient enough to market your skills?

This seems like a load of information to learn.

Depends on how quickly you learn....It is surprisingly easy once you get the basic formating down. A good step by step tutorial is your best bet. Oh, and once you learn, lots of practice helps. For me, since I am self taught, it has been a case of stoping and starting as my knowledge increased. I would consider myself now a midlevel apprentice. (about 3 years on and off)

I started learning in February of this year, and I had no intention of marketing my skills until I was much more proficient, but then at the end of April I think it was, 2 people asked me to do their websites for them, and then I had a referral from one of them, and since then a couple of others have asked me to do theirs also and I haven't marketed myself at all! I sometimes feel a bit overwhelmed when I look at how much there is to learn, but I try and remember that nobody knows all of it!

I've been doing this since 1998 and I still am learning everyday.
I sold my services to people before I had a good handle on it...
I basically threw myself to the wolves. Forced myself to learn !!! Stressful way to do it and I wouldn't recommend it!
Learn how to make basic sites well(different layouts, color schemes, themes) then go for it.

Absolutely agree with you, Linda. Sometimes it seem like I will never be good enough, but then someone says, "Wow, that is neat!" and I raise my head and go on. When understanding comes it is a nice warm fuzzy feeling for me.

how much do you study every day all day like me or in th evenings can you recommend any good books (real) that i can learn basic to intermediate design cheers

There is a list of books and sites listed in the beginner's resource forum. Go there. They are all highly recommended.

I don't study... so I can't say, I work anywhere from 4-10 hours a day. When I have a situation that I'm not familiar with, I just plow through it. It can take 10 minutes or 10 hours.

Start with basic html. Then coordinate that with css. Html is the structure of a site, the css is what makes it look pretty and organized. Everyone is different, you could learn it all in a week or a year.. no way of telling. But the journey of learning it is fun.

First, learn structure. That would be building the valid, accessible xhtml document. Like this.

Then learn presentation, the CSS! That's what makes the web page have style and flavor...you want your page to POP! Look what the style/presentation of that same website above looks like with the CSS. CSS Version.

Okay, this might seem kinda basic but I thought this might help you some. Now, as far as time. Everyone learns at different speeds, it really all depends on how bad you want to learn to be an efficient programmer. For me, it took time, practice, and lots of Webforumz!

So do you do the structure first so it looks like ryans website with css disabled, then do the css?

Yes, I setup the structure within my document then add the style and layout everything.

I should of done that :/
my blog is a mess of headers in the wrong place

Yeah always start with how the document should logically be set out. Your design might have the nav in an odd place or make use of a peculiar layout but your html (the structural layer) should reflect the logical hierarchy of your content. SO that may be masthead, main nav, main content, secondary content, additional information, footer. Sometimes it is necessary to sacrifice this logical structure but usually it is possible (an often easy) to reorder the different elements of a page using CSS (the presentational layer).

Pete.

Once I've finished my blog, I'll make some template and use that strategy then

Dude...haha! After you are proficient in XHTML/CSS then you can learn what you are most interested in. Wither that be flash, java, JavaScript, PHP, pearl, ASP...etc.

i'd probably see it like this in order of importance.
html
css
dyanmic languages(php, asp)
Client side scripting (javascript)
applets (java)

Javascript can be expecially useful for saving use preferences.
for example; if the user closes a navigation bar, this can be stored in a cookie and checked on every page.
Java is useful for applets like chat rooms. It's quite confusing though.

Hmmmm, the order of importance is completly up to you. Here is the order in which I learned.

HTML
XHTML
CSS
Flash
JavaScript
PHP

I was pretty experienced with ActionScript and flash, and when I got to JavaScript there were a lot of similarities. Knowing what I know now, I might have changed that order a bit.

HTML
XHTML
CSS
PHP
Flash
JavaScript

I have never learned java, as I have always hated Java. Just something inside of me. Chat rooms can be done in PHP or even Flash. You will find PHP will be your best friend with XHTML and CSS.

Flash is the best though, love flash! It is most important...hehe.

I was born of the W3C Validator. But it only took me about 3 months of pounding at it to nail XHTML Strict and CSS. The hardest part was unlearning bad practice I learned over the years. What I did was literally toss DreamWeaver in the trash and used only skEdit to code which forced me to learn all the syntax etc. Then I just learned by example if I couldn't figure something out on my own right away.

The W3C validator is a very good learning tool as well as it will show you all your errors etc and you can learn from them.

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Hmm PHP chat rooms. would require ajax would it?