LOL Useless... You crack me up.
You received some good advice,
stay away from the turnkey shit. Also, I am really wondering how they can guarantee how much money you will make in 2 years. I am 99.9% certain that is impossible to do in this business.
You have some options:
Tgp site (don't think I'd start there - see Ramsters reply)
Linklists (probably would not start there either)
Freesites and / or galleries (probably where I would start my learning / building process).
Blogging (this might be a very good choice to start with while you are learning html as it's not required to blog) Check out the blogging forum section here.
HTML is really easy to learn as stated, just put in a weekend and learn the basics first. In my opinion you do not need to learn CSS right now, just html first. I still don't know css (but I do use it) and i'm not planning on learning it either. Although it is useful to know I'm sure.
Best of luck to you.