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Brandon
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From: Indiana, US
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Website Templates - 8/16/2006 12:39:41
Do you think you can make any money building Website Templates for people to buy and use on there own? I always see these websites selling them. Also how about selling icons/images for websites?
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Thomas Brunt
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RE: Website Templates - 8/16/2006 13:18:26
Stock web templates used to be my core business. That was before everyone and his brother started producing and selling them. It was a whole lot easier to make money at that 5 years ago than it is now.
t
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Andy from Spain
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From: Ipswich
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RE: Website Templates - 8/17/2006 17:09:31
I just thought people signed up as an affiliate of a large template offering site rather than doing their own, then everybody and their brother offered membership packages of ripped off templates.
I think the key now is to add your own twist on the idea, maybe find a niche in the market.
< Message edited by Andy from Spain -- 8/17/2006 17:18:28 >
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Thomas Brunt
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RE: Website Templates - 8/18/2006 10:20:57
Yes. And Andy from Spain is possibly the best example on the Net of how to do that. He produces high quality shopping cart templates.
Advanced functionality is the key if you want to go into that industry.
t
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cooper
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From: Woburn MA USA
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RE: Website Templates - 8/18/2006 11:25:20
I sell over 500 templates on my site that I built for FrontPage, Dreamweaver, HTML or Expression. The toughest part for me is the competition from affiliate sites of a certain "monster".
I have seen an increase in requests for templates that are more than just static layout, css, themes, etc. People want templates with functionality.
As Andy from Spain said, I think the new template "frontier" are templates with some sort of functionality built in.
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godshall2
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From: Telford PA USA
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RE: Website Templates - 8/23/2006 11:04:02
NOOOOOO!!
LOL. Please dont. I dont need any more competetion..LOL
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Tailslide
Posts: 6032
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From: Out here on the raggedy edge
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RE: Website Templates - 8/23/2006 11:53:05
Oh I didn't realise that the ecommerce templates were Andy's - I've been looking at the CSS ones for a while as there's so little available in the way of carts that are remotely accessible and use decent code.
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Nicole
Posts: 2830
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RE: Website Templates - 9/5/2006 1:39:34
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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Andy from Spain
Posts: 922
From: Ipswich
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RE: Website Templates - 9/5/2006 3:52:42
Hi Tina
With our shopping cart software you can have static pages and consequently unique meta and title tags on each page. To avoid duplicate content the internal linking structure will also respect the static URLs. I'm actually on holiday this week in sunny(?) England but if you do need any clarification then I will be checking in from time to time.
Cheers
Andy
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Tailslide
Posts: 6032
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From: Out here on the raggedy edge
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RE: Website Templates - 9/5/2006 5:37:29
Tina
I've come across 3 shopping carts that claim good accessibility - all of them cost around £500 unfortunately... As you're in the UK though I'd say that it would be a good idea to be as accessible as you can possibly get (even if you can't convince your client to stump the £500) which may mean getting your hands dirty delving into the code on CSS carts to add stuff like labels to form elements for example.
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Reflect
Posts: 4769
From: USA
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RE: Website Templates - 9/5/2006 9:29:38
I can't say enough about Andy's templates and cart. His claim is spot on. Easy setup, easy customization, static URLs, web interface.
I have used carts that cost much, much more and was not as satisfied with ECTs work...they rock.
Take care,
Brian
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tinaalice
Posts: 97
From: Stockport, Cheshire. UK
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RE: Website Templates - 9/5/2006 12:07:03
quote:
ORIGINAL: I'm actually on holiday this week in sunny(?) England
Weellll it's not too bad today here in Cheshire but has been pretty wet... when it was sunny for so long I actually got used the heat! This was just an oppourtunity to quiz you, I'm not looking to spend any monies at the moment. I've not looked at paid carts yet, just free one's but I can't find one with a guarenteed stable static url setup.. I have been looking for bought one to recommend though that does what I'd want in a cart, with no horrendous amounts of money poured into it... I only had a quick look but will look more indepth... the main criteria for me also is that it has a plugin to FP (and promises to take a look for ewd) ... On my fp resources sites I only recommend fp tools, addons or plugins to fp.. and I'm always on the look out. Besides a recommendation from Thomas is to be noted:)
Tailside.... you say " as your in the UK" I'm curious as to what my location has to do with it? Net is net is net! Perhaps you meant something else that I'm not getting? ;)
My current set up is with paypal and mals (free) but my stuff is all original so i have to trust the buyer not to put 2 of an item..then I have to go in and change it to sold asap... but since I'm not selling very much it's not really a problem at the moment... this is for my art at http://clarke-abstract-art.com/ that setup is easy and simple enough and will do for now... but I wanted to learn more about carts... I know some of what I want...
Let me ask also....
(and for when your back of hols Andy not before, you need all your energy to hold up that umberella ;)
What should one be asking for when it comes to shopping for a cart (forgive the pun)? Do you have an article on that?
Thanks for the feedback.
Tina
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Reflect
Posts: 4769
From: USA
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RE: Website Templates - 9/5/2006 12:42:50
Tina,
I'm sure you have tried this but when you said free, static URLs, SEOd. OS Commerce comes to mind. You would need a few user mods but hey they are free also.
Are there integrated ones? I hadn't run across any in my searches in the past.
Take care,
Brian
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Tailslide
Posts: 6032
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From: Out here on the raggedy edge
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RE: Website Templates - 9/5/2006 12:45:38
The reason why I mention your location is because if you're setting up an online shop which operates out of the UK then you come under UK disability discrimation legislation which says that websites have to be accessible. If you were in the US then the rules are a bit more woolley at the moment.
No-one in the UK has appeared in court yet although the rumour is that a couple of companies have settled out of court.
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