Well i can only speak for myself - i learned the hard way by trial and error. In other words i just started fooling around with paintshoppro, made a few shitty personal sites, then made some business sites - made enough money to buy photoshop did some more trial and error...and well you get the point.
Tips:
Try, Try Try
Find some of the great tutorials on the net
try some more
and get a digitizer pad if you got any creative skills
