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The industry is just picking up steam with the whole Selenium, QTP, Waitr stuff so there are a lot of opportunities out there for these specific technologies. However, I wouldn't bet the house that you can make 100k just being an expert on Selenium forever. It's going to become more mainstream and a normal part of everybody's development lifecycle. Which means every developer will know it, and they won't need some specialist that can't bring anything else to the table. A better title for the job you probably want is Software Engineer in Test, which is what Google calls it. These jobs are going to be around for the long haul. People that know how to develop, but approach problems from a quality perspective.

Back to your questions :

• I have a non-technical degree (BA in Econ). How will this hinder my prospects, or is it a plus that I'm self-taught?
  
  Some companies will cut you off right away without a CS or related degree. Others will require you to just have a degree in something but be prepared to back up your talk with some real code (read : github). Others (like Google) don't care if you have a degree at all, as long as you can put your money where your mouth is.
  
  
• I don't have any experience working with other programmers, so I'm unfamiliar with enterprise standards. What are some more skills I should teach myself that I couldn't just pick up on the fly at a new job? For example, most of my coding is done in Notepad++ or Geany depending on the OS... I'm guessing this is not very "professional."
  
  This is a problem. You need to join a community (meetup.com) or a find a friend who can show you the ropes so to speak. Development in a professional large scale environment is massively different than writing a few Selenium scripts with Python. To get in the door be prepared to have at least a general understanding of source control, agile development, coding standards, continuous integration, unit testing, integration testing, and test strategies.
  
  
• How beneficial would it be to teach myself Java, or can I be employable with just python? (I really love python). Would the time required to learn Java be better employed elsewhere (lettuce, mobile testing, _____)?
  
  Very. Learn java. Learn Ruby. Learn Go. Learn javascript (JQuery or AngularJS ). You are going to make yourself a 100x time more marketable by showing that you love programming not just Python. Its okay to have a favorite language but you need to show that your capable of being fluent in any language. Study the elements of every language and picking up the basics of a new language will be just learning a few new rules.
  
  
• I have started to get more active on /r/python and stackoverflow, but what are some other things I can do to boost my CV? My employer would probably not appreciate me sharing the code I've written. People always say to get involved with an open-source project, but testing seems like something that you would not really find in a random github repo.
  
  Start your own repo on github and start making something that makes your life easier. Start small and don't try and create the next facebook. Try and create a goal for yourself to commit code everyday for 6 months. Everything else will follow. You'll inevitably create a problem for yourself that will lead you down a path to projects you would like to help contribute you to.
  
  
• Can you link me to any good code examples of automation in action that would demonstrate how a company might do testing, on a macro level? Like, I can easily write methods to do stuff with selenium, but how do I compose the smaller test pieces into the bigger framework?
  
  Checkout Thucydides. Its java but its a great framework to learn how to write tests in a controlled manner for a large project. Pay careful attention to ideas like Page Objects and BDD. Try and and come up with an answer to why those paradigms exist and when they wouldn't be useful.
  
  
• Could you describe a day in the life of a QA Automation Engineer?
  
  Really depends, but pretty much the same as a developer. Coffee - checkout code - cry a little - write code - cry a little - write code - commit - scrum meeting - coffee - write code - meeting on how to meet unreachable deadline - write code - cry a little - commit - profit$$
  
  
• Salaries I see online range 80-110k. Is this accurate? I was honestly surprised by the salary -- do you think this level of pay will be around for the long-term?
  
  Yes, you can make a lot of money right now by calling yourself a QA automation engineer, I've seen upwards of 150k. It won't last. If you want real money and real work than think of yourself as a developer that is really good at testing, not as an automation engineer that knows a little bit about development.
  
  
• What are some questions I might expect in an interview?
  
  Take a look at How Google Tests. They have a whole section about their interview process.
  
  
  Also, a big piece of advise when starting with automation -- You can't automate everything. I'll leave the gateway site here to a rabbit whole of really really really good testing.
  
  ( I have no affiliation to this blog other than being a fan )
  
  http://www.satisfice.com/blog/
  
  

There are quite a few books out there you can read. I used Selenium WebDriver Practical Guide and it was pretty good. You can look in the "Customers also Bought" section to find a few more examples.

You can find complete Java code for this problem in this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Selenium-WebDriver-Mark-Collin/dp/1784394351