Yes, I know that most of the members start here from zero ! And as you said about article writing - I am from Latvia, so my English is not so good to write articles in English ! I can post in the forums and do some reviews, but I can't do articles because my grammar and word count is not very well ( only 12 class education in English ) and this first year in university !
You can make money with Squidoo lenses too. You don't even have to write a ton of articles to make money with them, at least I didn't write a ton of articles to make $880 with Squidoo lenses. I wrote a free guide about it, you can find the download link in my sig.
Freelance sites like www.goforfreelance.com www.elance.com where you can sign up as freelancers/ sellers and bid for projects posted by employers/ buyers. It is free to sign up and you only pay % commission if you win a project. Since you know web banners, headers , design, post your services in the "Buy Sell Trade Services" in this forum. Don't join contests. You can contact SEO/ programmers here and offer to tie up and complement with their services. For eg. you can work with web designers and promote total package web design, logo design, banners etc. You can earn $10 per Logo/ banner design easily and you just need to get 10 orders per mth to earn $100. You can also resell related services (eg. directory submissions, blog posting, article writing) of other members and earn commissions. Even better if you can spend $10-$20 and start yr own website offering all these services - Your own services+ services you resell for others Good luck!
As I said - here is DP, only thing on which you can earn is REPUTATION ! How I can get reputation, if I can't get any job here ?
You dont need no god damm reputation here. Get something worth buying not something a million people are already selling. Your better off getting a regular job if you want to make chump change.