Web templates are the answer for the artistically challenged

By Stefan Mischook
Posted Sunday, September 26, 2004

You're basically someone who knows their way around building a website but your design skills are not the best... ok, they suck! But still, you have dreams of building your own web design empire wanting to cash in on the 2nd Internet boom that is just picking up steam.

You have a few options:

1. Put out crappy looking websites and hope people are not looking.

The problem with this approach is that everyone is looking! Now that the web has matured, there are many hotshot web designers out there, so putting out crappy looking websites just doesn't cut it anymore... 1995 is long gone.

2. Hire kick-ass web designers

Yep, you guessed it; this is not an easy road either. To make any money with employees, you need at least 10 people working for you full time to make the same cash you would make working on your own! And you still have to find quality people on top of that.

3. Use web templates

I guess you saw this coming - or didn't you read the title of this article? With web templates at your disposal, you can put out world-class websites in record time for little cost, which still look fantastic.

Ok, how do you use web templates in your business?

First thing you have to do is find a great web template company. Fortunately for you, I've done the legwork already - just go to Template Monster.

Get familiar with TemplateMonster's website because it will become your library of web designs. You will find thousands of web templates to choose from that are displayed both as thumbnails and nearly full sized - so that you can really see them. The fact that you can view each web template makes for a great sales tool when dealing with your clients.

Getting the templates

You have two options here, just buy the templates that your clients like or become a TemplateMonster affiliate and buy the template through your own template store!

This brings me to one last point about TemplateMonster, through their affiliate program you can create your own web template store that is totally self-branded. This way your clients will have no idea where you get your templates!

With your own template store in place, you can have them browse your store and select the template(s) they want to use as the basis of their web sites.

Using the templates

Templates from TemplateMonster come in a ready-made HTML version as well as in Photoshop format. This gives you total flexibility in tweaking them to suit your needs. Often times, from template to finished website, you are talking about less than an hours work!

About the author:
Stefan Mischook has been developing websites for nearly 10 years. Experienced with Java/J2EE, PHP, ASP.NET and many other web related technologies, he now writes about web design on the popular websites (www.killersites.com) and
(www.how-to-build-websites.com)