About salary range, a ultrasound tech make average $69k per year, hope it's may help. Source: http://ultrasoundtechniciansalarysource.com

Here is an essay I had to write last week, hope it can answer some of your questions :)
Lab Experience
Being a in a diagnostic medical sonography program students face many challenges when first introduced to scanning in the lab; most of these challenges arise when the students have to perform ultrasound scans. Challenges involve dealing with issues like anatomy and physiology, body organs relationships, body planes, knobology, agronomics to transducer orientation. Sonography is like a jigsaw puzzle-- students have to learn one piece at a time and then put them all together to get the entire image. This paper talks about struggles sonography students would encounter when studying sonography in the lab and how one overcame them.
One of the most important pieces of the sonography puzzle is the anatomy and anatomical relations. Knowing where each body organ lives and where other organs live in relationship to that organ is a crucial key to learning how to scan. Some of the most important things that can help a student overcome the anatomy and sonographic appearance challenges is the body layering chapter on (Introduction to Normal Structure and Function) book, downloading the visible body app on his phone and using the human body atlas (A Brief Atlas of the Human Body), along with the PowerPoint and PDF guidance in the lab provided by his instructor.
Other important pieces are the transducer orientation-- how the transducer works and how images are placed on the monitor. At the beginning of semester students used to scan looking for body organs and not find any. When students asked the instructor, she told them” you are holding the transducer in a wrong orientation, the pointer of the transducer should be placed to the patient’s right in transverse plane and on the patient’s head on longitudinal one.” Body planes and body organs in relationships to the ultrasound machine monitor and how the transducer captures the image are also important to know. Student struggle on how the transducer works and what part of the body would it image when it is placed on transverse, longitudinal or coronal plane. However, after reading (The First Scanning Experience, General Scanning Techniques) PDF file provided and explained by the instructor and discussed with class mates, it starting to make sense, one realize that when scanning in transverse, it’s like looking on a section of the body from feet up. One other things that was really helpful to students figure out how images are obtained is playing with the play dough and slicing vegetables in class and also purchasing an atlas called (Color Atlas of Ultrasound Anatomy).
Kobology and machine manipulation difficulties are other things students would stumble on when they first start lab experience. At the beginning sonography students only focus on finding the body organs, they didn’t know what knob or button does what, whoever after practice, reading knobology chapter in the text book, power points and watching you tube videos enabled them to know most of the keys on the machine keyboard and how they function. Students also learned some agronomics explained by their instructor in the lab to avoid musculoskeletal and other injuries associated with the wrong posture.
One of the most challenging chapters students usually face is the liver chapter due to its enormous content. However, due to the liver’s location and its sonographic characteristics being the window for most of the abdominal organs they usually find it easier to scan after studying that particular chapter. One other chapters student usually struggle on is the pancreas, they find it harder to distinguish between pancreas and other structures adjacent to it. Liver is one of the organs students usually mix with pancreas, due to their similarity in echogenicity. The biliary system chapter is usually students’ favorite chapter.
After three months of practicing and learning anatomy and physiology, body layering, body vasculature, scanning techniques, transducer techniques and ergonomics, students are finally able to; recognize most of the normal abdominal organs sonographically, obtain some diagnostic images, identify some abnormal or congenital variants, take measurements, able to manipulate the machine knobs a buttons and put all the jigsaw puzzle pieces together.