[sho]

There are wild variations between what two different "web developers" can produce. As the type of person who is actually interested in programming enough to be hanging out on a site like this, you are probably at the top end of the chart without even realising it. The bottom end is the schmuck clicking around in Dreamweaver, you never see him but he outnumbers you 20 to 1, and he is dragging the salary down to 70k. If you are familiar with statistics, you might say that 70k is the mode but I doubt it is the mean.

Everyone should listen to tptacek, he is absolutely right. It is the value you can deliver, not what your actual cost is. A good web site can be literally worth millions. Deliver the final product, end to end, and you can charge a good proportion of that. 70k is "sitting down money" and most good web devs should not accept anything like that.