Notepad
YUK.
If you want to hand code, try a good text editor like PSPad, Notepad++, or Context (all free). Notepad sucks, as you will see... if only for the highlighters available, using a good editor is a must.
But for the most part, a WYSIWYG HTML editor is much easier to use - Download Nvu for a really decent and very simple html editor. It is much like Word, other than learning tables/properties and such... Load your page in NVu and you can cause the color of the linked text to be anything you like:
Highlight the text of the link, 2click on the foreground color in the toolbar, and select a color... easy-peasy.
One can still get to the code page if one desires, but it is MUCH easier to DO first, then look at the code for understanding.