At 8/28/2003, you wrote:
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).
We all have these Kiddies in our small town, they think just because they can insert a table and some background color they are web masters. Another place you might look is your local college or university, they usually have a fairly good art department, they have good talent, and you can add to the students resume profile. You get to check out their talent and abilities to create what you need, and they get credits for their degree.
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.
We have a railroad track running through our town, occasionally we can see one of the local merchants placing a penny on the tracks to see if he can get more out of the penny after the train goes by. :-D
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.
On your small local sites its the add-ons that come later that bring in the extra cash, like adding shopping carts, catalogs, contact forms, upgrades to the site, and modifications to existing pages.
Good luck,
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
Michael
-- Character is doing the right thing... Even when no one is watching... http://www.armadilloweb.com
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