Web Design advice

Well I've decided that instead of getting a summer job, I'd post a few flyers around town and ads on the internet and do some web design for people. I can learn programming languages pretty fast, so I'm not worried about being able to learn the material needed in time, but I need some adivce on two things:

• Payment. What do you think is the best system? Hourly pay? Pay per project? Pay per MB? And what do you think good rates for this would be?
• Languages/interfaces. I've learned Java (applets) HTML, CGI, and JavaScript, but I know ther'e plenty more out there - ASP, XML, etc... What do you suggest should be my priority(ies) here?

If you have any other advice on the subject, I'm all ears.

edit: And does anybody know how to make banner ads? Are they just embedded applications or scripts, animated GIFs, or something else?

Pay per project IMO would be the best. Your hourly pay will be determined by how fast you can cater to your customers.

Learn both ASP and PHP so you can develop on Windows machines as well as *nix ones. Be fluent in XHTML, CSS, and all of the different client-side scripts as well.

>And does anybody know how to make banner ads? Are they just embedded applications or scripts, animated GIFs, or something else?<

Depends on the system. The simplest design I can think of is a script that randomly displays a GIF for each page generation.

Edit: Learning how to interface with the popular databases is probably a good idea also. In that case, SQL is a must...

i don;t know 4 PHP, but for banner ads, there is a built in object in ASP that lets u do that. called adrotator, i think, i haven't used in in a while(i don;t think i ever used it at all) you put your ad informations in a text file and it runs trouble free.. anyways as Hillbillie said, databases. IMO database interaction through the pages is a MUST. most of the sites are database driven these days and it makes your (the designer) life a lot easier. But for most people, using access as their database works fine. SQL server is not usually needed if you(or ur client) don;t get too many hits. But having SQL on a server &/|| the knowledge to use it is always a plus.

As a web developer myself, you will definately want to know your way around some graphic design tools... photoshop, corel, something... that's going to take up the majority of your time and demand the majority of your skill. The HTML and scripting languages can be picked up in no time, but to really set you apart, you're going to need some, hopefully small, but some graphical prowess.

Check out this site: www.dynamicdrive.com for some ways to do things without fancy graphics... i get so ........ed off when a website uses 2 images for menus when you can use font and apply DHTML affects to it to get the same thing with less download time.

Oh, and I'd also say pay per project. I'm about to go on a new contract and I'm trying to come up with a pricing scheme, so I'm not sure what to tell you. Maybe set a price per page, but design it to consider complexity. Don't forget to think about charges per change.

OK. Thanks a lot for the advice - looks like I've got some reading to do.

Paying per page sounds good - makes a lot of sense. Does anybody have any suggesstions as to exactly how much to charge? What about maintenance charges?