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Nicole -> RE: Website Templates (9/5/2006 1:39:34)
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Brandon,
I too thought it'd be nice to make a small collection of templates, sell them through various template sites and receive an income each month by doing so.
I created about 20 templates (all tables based), using CSS to style a lot of elements and made them as accessible as possible, spent an age writing a 4 page instruction sheet for each template (to try and minimise the questions from purchases) and included links in those instructions to further information on web standards, CSS and accessibility.
I consulted to an extent with Thomas, Andy, Cooper and Traveler on these forums, put them on my site and in about 12 months had only sold a couple. I made contact with at least a dozen well known template sellers and was basically told "no thanks" by all of them.
These templates are now stored on a CD and live in my bookshelf!
I won't be going down that road again for many reasons.
- It's a very time consuming operation
- The templates have to be quite unique and therefore coming up with new ideas is as hard as it is to do the same with client sites
- Most templates out there aren't valid to any standards, aren't accessible, look okay to the naked eye and are selling from between $10 - $20 each.
- Most people who know about web standards, CSS and accessibility also have the ability to create their own sites, and surf through template sites looking for ideas and whether or not you "hide" the code, most can replicate your designs without too much trouble.
- Those that don't know about web standards etc also don't care about them, and are going to break your template's validation with the first piece of content they put in. They are also comparing templates on look alone and will buy the $10 glitzy template over anything that doesn't look quite as good every time.
Good luck with it if you happen to go in this direction, as I've said, I won't be again. Why not though, with each client you get, create some designs to present to them, whichever ones they don't go with, validate them and approach Template sites with them? At least that way you won't be spending a lot of hours on templates you're not sure will sell or not.
Nicole
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