It is not hard to make a site...
Mr.Monger if you are good like really good a web design with flash and looks great.. You can sell your sites to companys like contact the Admin of the company.. Sounds cheesy but i know someone who does that and makes about 1200 a week! That is more that what a doctor makes think about that it you are really good you may have a good life ahead.
drag and drop or wysiwyg editors are ok for editing webpages but to get a good, functional webpage you should get a text editor like crimson or textpad
i think you should start off with advanced stuff because its alot easier, if you start off with html it will just take longer and longer to learn webdesign. Start with photoshop to make the layout heres a good tutorial. http://www.pstuts.net/?id=temp
after you make this just slice the template. There are 2 programs that you'll probably need if you start off this way and there both free 30 day trials. www.macromedia.com is where you can get dreamweaver and adobe.com is where you can get photoshop.