The problem with using templates for web sites is they all look alike after a little while, there is no room for innovation or customization for your clients. Templates are great for letters, invoices, and lists, but disaster for web sites.
I mostly agree with you. However, I found www.boxedart.com which has a yearly subscription for $39 and a little over 100 nice templates online.
We only do about 40 web sites a year, so I can use a number of them without duplication (on my part) and as I mentioned previously, they are MUCH better than anything I can produce.
Sadly, I have to compete with about 10-15 local "html kiddies" who are willing to create complete web sites for around $200. 99% of everything they do is total cr*p, but the "price" is attractive to all of the penny-pinchers around here (which is 90% of the local businesses).
Most of my clients come to me after they've been burned by one of the independents and are still trying to pinch-pennies as much as they can.
On our last project, I found a sub-contractor who did great work, but we made next to nothing. 90% of the fee paid by the client went to the sub-contractor. I simply can't afford what good work is "actually worth" on most of our sites.
Fortunately, we get a few "big dollar" web sites each year from my wife's HTML/XHTML books to make up for all the "little sites" we do. And when we get those, I am certainly willing to pay $80/hour plus for graphics design because the client can afford it.
--Dave
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