Webmaster

Career Overview

Webmasters generally work for companies that rely on their internet site as a business component.  The webmaster develops and handles day to day maintenance of the employer's website.  Tasks may include scaling up the site to deal with increased traffic; overseeing site expansion or redesign due to rising traffic rates, and working with other sites on linkage and cross promotion.

The webmaster makes use accessibility a primary concern and works with site designers to make the site user friendly.  Generally, the webmaster is also the first line of defense for complaints from website users.

Education

Webmasters today often need some understanding of business goals and marketing principles, as so many sites have become sales outlets.  However a webmasters' initial educational goal should be an understanding of HTML, JavaScript, SQL and other popular web programming packages.  Applicants for a webmaster job opportunity need a mix of online abilities and understanding of business advertising and marketing planning.

Current Employment

It is difficult to tell exactly how many webmasters are working today.  The Department of Labor lists a general category of database administrator and computer scientist and 262,000 and notes that some percentage of that number are webmasters - probably most of the 157,000 workers listed as "all other" related jobs.

Job Outlook

The job prospects for webmasters is excellent.  Significant chunks of retail business, advertising and information dissemination (news) are being shifted to the internet every year.  Webmasters will be needed at more businesses as the internet becomes more highly integrated into their operations.  Those that currently contract for web services will eventually want an in-house professional.

Salary Range

Lowest 10% $45,471

Median Salary $65,640

Highest 10% $88,838

Source: Salary.com