I am new here as well and I am pretty sure this is not the right forum for your post, but times seem to be hard for everyone and I think I can help.
I have been a web designer/developer for 15 years now (I started in 1994 out of curiosity, I became a professional in 1996).
About 7 years ago I became very ill and necessitated a transplant. Didn't work for 3 years.
When I got better (much better, thank you) I found myuself in the same situation as you.
In my company I was the creative director and chief webmaster, but my programming skills were very poor. Luckily, I had a stable of programmers that I eventually co-managed with the chief developer. So I learned a lot of JAVA and other programming scripts but I never learned how to write it, only to edit it.
Fast forward and now I don;t have the support system of a company to help me and I don;t have all the skills. Plus, by 2003 the writing was on the wall: static websites were a thing of the past. If I wanted to create a job for myself I had to somehow learn how to program. So I went back to school and I did learn some, but I quickly realized that building web applications from scratch was a futile exercise. I wasn't good enough but even if I were, no one would pay me a fair price for my time.
That's when I looked into open source and specifically Mambo, Zen cart and a few other PHP scripts.
As I tend to do, in a matter of a couple of months I bought every book, read every forum and built countless mock websites to see what these scripts could do. At the same time I immersed myself in CSS, which when I left the business was still in its infancy.
Once I was somewhat comfortable with my new skills, I started advertising on Craigslist and spreading the word around. The first few jobs were small and I did not make a lot of money, but I was still on disability so I didn't mind.
A year later the jobs kept on pouring, thanks to a website I built for my business and a SEO crash course I submitted myself to (again reading forums, making test sites, etc).
When Joomla came out I immediately switched to it from mambo. I also started using Joomla to build every site I was asked to do. Even the ones their ownrs anted to be static. I became very good at making my Joomla sites appear static, but when those clients came back asking for new features it was a piece of cake to add them since Joomla had (and now has even more) many add-ons.
Fast forward to today and I am easily the best Joomla developer in my hometown. Other developers and agencies hire me when they need to make joomla sites for their clients. I also started teaching Joomla, html/css and E-commerce classes online.
Since the economy tanked, my business doubled. Now I am turning down an average of 2 prospective clients a week or I have to make them wait for up to two months.
Naturally, part of this success is the fact that I try to deliver top notch websites and I am extremely fastidious about my coding standards and my designs. I also developed an encyclopedic knowledge of the Joomla interface and the available add-ons, which allows me to answer every question prospective clients may have.
But as a programmer I still suck. However, now I partnered with a very good friend and former classmate whom is a php whiz but not so familiar with Joomla. I sketch out the programming logic and he implements it. Works out very well.
I am also writing a book on Open Source scripting integration with Dreamweaver and Firefox ( a very rapid CSS/HTML/PHP integration system I perfected in the past few years) and I am working on a series of Sceencasts I am going to publish on Itunes and on my website.
My wife is suffering in her job from the slow economy, but we figured that if she takes over some of the clerical work, I can probably support both of us and my daughter (whom is attending UC Berkeley on a partial scholarship, so she ain't cheap)
Can I make a living? So far this month I deposited a bit over $9k in the bank and there are almost 10 days left to the end of the month and I am waiting for another $3K in the mail. One client stiffed me for $2800 and I am taking him to court next month. Naturally, not all months are this fat, but I never make less than $4k. When my online training really takes off I probably will be able to work a tad less and make a bit more money.
Since I am pretty much maxed out (meaning I could not make a penny more unless I work at night) in the future I am going to hire a few subcontractors and have them build sites to my specs so I can just come in at the end, polish them and increase my output while giving them work.
I hope you don't think I wrote all this to brag about it. Back when I recovered from my transplant I was as desperate as you probably feel and my outlook on life was probably much worse. Nothing like dieing to bring up guilt, depression and desperation into your life.
I thought that I pretty much exhausted all the lucky breaks my life had to offer and never in a million years I would have thought that going into business for myself would be so successful and gratifying.
I am particularly grateful to the Joomla and Open Source folks, for giving me the tools to reinvent myself and my new career, as well as all the hundreds of developers that toil in the shadows building excellent Joomla add-ons for no money.
Whenever I finish a job I make the rounds of the ones whose add-ons I use the most and donate what I can (like everyone else's, my home is now worth half what I paid for, so I am far from rich).
I also try to spend one morning a week on a forum (joomla, virtuemart or one like this one) answering newbies questions as other did for me at some point (and sometimes still do, as for example today).
My suggestion to you is to focus on a script like Joomla or Drupal or Wordpress and master it. Become the best you can at it.
Build yourself a kick ass website. It's going to be worth gold (when my site crashed a year ago and I wasn't able to fix it for 2 months, my business plummeted). Once you become good at something, write about it. Try to help others as much as you can. Every time you solve a problem, write it down and publish it on your site. It may help others down the line and create good keywords for SEO.
Use the latest technologies and never be afraid to learn new things. Never assume you have arrived and there is nothing for you to learn. Not in this business.
Always deliver top quality or at least always deliver your best.
Invest your money in top notch equipment. Always buy the best computer you can afford, the best software and the most RAM and disk space you can fit in it. Once you start rolling you don't want an old clunker to slow you down.
Naturally, at the beginning you cannot charge too much, but think of it as going to school and getting paid at the same time.
If there are non-profit that can use your help, give them a lower price (but do not donate your time. People don;pt appreciate what they don't pay for ). Build up your portfolio.
As far as the economy, as I said, my telephone has not stop ringing since it took a dive. I am busier today than I was last year at the same time. Maybe I am just lucky, but I want to believe I also made my luck.
So, I wish you all the best and I hope that next year at this time you'll be able to look back and be proud of how far you have come.
take care
PS: whatever you do, get yourself a good timer and a billing system. I lost thousands of $$ because I am so lousy at billing.