Fascinating to read from the opposite view! It's my belief that the better someone is at designing the worse they are at programming, and vice versa; I think your designing is fantastic, so I can imagine how hard getting technical must have been. Great job! I also notice some popular themes from HN, such as pivoting and getting MVPs out the door fast in your strategy, so nicely done again!
I think you're thoughts on monetizing are right. However, I'd add a couple suggestions. You fit 9 huge designer samples on the front page. I'd shrink those a bit and add a "Featured Designers" section over the standard designers area on the front page which you can charge a premium for. Next, if the picture samples are small enough like here (http://www.weddinginvitelove.com/profiles/little-green-chair...) you have great ad space on the right side of the page. You can geo target visitors location by IP address and charge a premium to local florists, halls, and other wedding related services. Good luck!
It's my belief that the better someone is at designing the worse they are at programming, and vice versa
It's been my actual experience that good designers -- i.e., the ones who actually know more than just how to use Photoshop -- tend to be quite good at picking up programming when sufficiently motivated.
It's the transition in the other direction (programming -> design) that seems to be the killer.
Flexible programmers (generalists) have an easy time learning the basics of design an turning out something that will pass snuff. Its not highly creative work for sure, but it will be easily usuable to the standards of Facebook.com, et all.
Flexible designers on the other hand, can do simple coding too when motivated. However, you're not going to see them say coding a Baysian spam filter by hand, or making creative use of minhashing for auto-suggestion.
I think you're thoughts on monetizing are right. However, I'd add a couple suggestions. You fit 9 huge designer samples on the front page. I'd shrink those a bit and add a "Featured Designers" section over the standard designers area on the front page which you can charge a premium for. Next, if the picture samples are small enough like here (http://www.weddinginvitelove.com/profiles/little-green-chair...) you have great ad space on the right side of the page. You can geo target visitors location by IP address and charge a premium to local florists, halls, and other wedding related services. Good luck!