I'm afraid I can't, I didn't learn from a book, I learned from school and then from forums and the web in general, including that site I mentioned. Regarding money, it's like any other field, the better you are at it, the more aspects you excel at, the more job opportunities there are. I don't know how it is in South Africa but it's a fairly saturated field overall. Server-side scripting will definitely get you better job opportunities but you need to know the basics first and that's what I mentioned above