Just a few years ago, a web designer could count on making a decent full time living creating custom websites for local businesses. However, with the rise of cheap wordpress themes that give websites a very custom look, while also being easily customizable by even minimally trained tech savvy people, the ability to make a full time income with web design has become difficult.

Another factor is that a website can be built by someone living anywhere in the world for a client anywhere else in the world. What this means is that someone living in India willing to work for $1/hr is competing for business with someone in the USA who needs to make $20/hr for the same work. All of these factors add up to a situation where the skills that web designers learned in college are not nearly as valuable as what they paid to learn them.