If you are ONLY A WEB DESIGNER, without any other source(s) of income or extensions, you may need to consider changing your line of business in 2014 for the following reasons:

1. 90% of WEBSITE DESIGN CUSTOMERS are unwilling to pay more than 30k (Source: Personal statistics)
2. The business has easy entry with the advent of free tools like Wordpress, Joomla and free themes.
3. Number of people with the tag "Website Designers" are more than customers and simple economics will drive price downwards.

Way out in 2014 (these tips are for people looking at web as a business, not hubby. Also, these tips are not for people who are only interested in business of IT as some tips may not apply to them):

1. If you really do not want to migrate, then become so good in website designing that everybody shouts "WOW" when your job is displayed. Simple: be exceptional. If those Wordpress themes are better or at par with your work, hmmm... watch it.

2. If you really enjoy Wordpress, Joomla and the likes, master it. Learn to build extensive themes and plugins for them. By so doing, you can equally offer services to other "Website Designers" when they get stuck.

3. Master a couple of web programming languages that are currently in high demand - PHP and Javascript. When I use the word master, I mean master. Not exposing yourself to more plugins.

The message is, learn those languages to the extent that you can do anything with them!!!! These are a list of basic things we use daily you can build to improve your skills:

- Wonder how richtext editors work? Build yours
- Need a JS/PHP graph, build it
- Need a shopping cart, forget OSCommerce, build it
- Need special effects, create it
- Need a captcha, develop it

plus many others.

4. You may focus on building products, keep improving them and selling to customers; which in the long run has greater potentials than looking for website design customers. If you intend to do this, make sure you move from customers to yourself. That is, be sure people are willing to pay and not what you think people will pay for. Forget about some bogus foreign based ideas and solve local problems.

5. You may look for a backup business, be wise, be smart and be SINCERE!

Some career paths are supposed to be arc, not destination, such is web design. With so many beautiful free templates out there, who needs a designer, simply download, edit and upload to the web servers...then its done.

Billyonaire: Some career paths are supposed to be arc, not destination, such is web design. With so many beautiful free templates out there, who needs a designer, simply download, edit and upload to the web servers...then its done.

Not necessarily...It's only people who don't value uniqueness and security that will go for whatever they see.

This is why I decide to leave web for destop and mobile app development.

I believe what you stated above applies only to a common web designer........i mean if you are a web developer that can develop a portal for a school where each student would have his/her own page with personal details, results, blah blah blah showing or you can develop a site for a hotel where customers from far and beyond can easily book online then i see no reason why u should struggle. The problem many web developers have(and my main beef with them) is that when they learn all those codes they just sit back and wait for people to come knocking at their door with jobs in hand instead of them actually going out to schools, hotels, hospitals, companies with proposals to market. I cant imagine a web developer that follows all these marketing trends earning less than 300k a month and when the gurus that actually market come out to state how much they earn you'll see a lot of lazy dudes saying "its just impossible".
Well my point here is.......dont just be a normal web developer(developing static pages) learn how to create web 2.0 applications(extremely dynamic sites) and when you do learn web 2.0 dont sit back and expect jobs...move around and market your stuff........PEACE!!!