2000 to 2007 Goldrush
I think this is the time when the idea of easy money got made. If you knew some HTML a bit of CSS, and a pinch of JavaScript between 2000 and 2007 you could make a lot of money. I knew a guy that all he knew was to use Dreamweaver really well and was making a mint and teaching web development.

At this time it was very profitable to have some knowledge of the web, as it was somehow scarce and everyone wanted a “web presence” as they called it. It was also a lot easier as it was mostly static content. It could be very boring work as it was all written by hand, but you did not need it to be a full-on programmer to do it.

2007 to 2012 Web 2.0
After 2007 was the advent of web 2.0, which changed things considerably. Anyone that was not taking their web knowledge seriously was filtered out by this change.

Web 2.0 meant that the web became more “participatory”, it was user content generated. It was the time of MySpace and Facebook. So no need for a “webmaster” to publish your stuff, you would now do it yourself. This is the time of blogs, virtual communities, youtube, etc.

This was the beginning of web development becoming more focused, you could not be just a “webmaster” anymore. The different parts that would make up a successful website would now be too complicated and to specific, for any one person to manage on their own. Also, the danger of being hacked grew exponentially, you couldn’t just get away with building a secure login framework using some security script you grabbed off the internet.

It is at this point that the web separates, there are no more “web presence” pages. Any website worth anything is now fully interactive. Websites now need to provide a service, it is not enough to have information about a product, you have to now sell it via the site.