I see an increasing amount of web template services and specialists. Some better than others. I think I always dismissed it and assumed no one purchased those but I don’t know.
Does anyone have any experience with templates? Buying them, selling them, running a business on them?
I never seen any one purchasing web template packages… But i still can see many Joomla Templates, Word Press templates sold from club sites like Joomlart, Rocket Theme, Yoo Themes. And personally in my company, few clients opted to go for their e-commerce site with Template Monster’s.
This is part and parcel of the drive to the bottom.
What is a template? If it’s simply the choice of one stock photo over another. In a layout indistinguishable from half a million other sites, then your criteria are out-of-whack.
A lot of developers are making formlaic, trite, clichéd templates. They’re just wasting their time and effort by making them from scratch and selling them to one client.
That you chose one stock photo fashion model pretending to be an employee over another, it’s not ‘from scratch.’ You are simply a very expensive, high overhead, random website generator.
If the users can’t tell the difference, it’s a template.
I’ve been suspicious of the business around it although I’ve started seeing different kinds of templates intended for different users. There are those who create PSDs for others to program the XHTML (I consider that a kind of template). As a designer I’ve seen some templates that I think would be easy to customize to one’s needs. However I would prefer not to use one. None the less I’m intrigued and surprised by the business of templates.
Most people wouldn’t know a template if it hit them in the face. It’s all about how the developer positions themselves (i.e. the best and preferrably the only solution) and the level they can sell in a bubble (i.e. no competition).
Just go on themeforest it shows for each template how many are sold.
I have myself subscribed to joomla templates (don’t remember something like 200$/per year) because I’m not a good webdesigner at least not yet I’m here to learn to 
So I think that there are some developers buying just to customize them for clients.
I have a side question: Do you find Joomla more popular then Drupal? I’ve considered moving into Drupal theming.
I think so but joomla is hugely dominated by plazzatemplate so you may have better chance with drupal 
i actually looked into this a while ago and it all seemed pretty iffy. use the contacts on this forum, they will be able to guide you in the right direction.
Well, I’ve already started studying Drupal so I’ll just stick with it I suppose… unless it’s completely going out of fashion.
I feel Joomla is designer friendly… Drupal is best suited for PHP - Developers
It’s a market that bounces around a lot. My company provides custom design, but if a client is trying to save a lot of money I might use a template, they can be a pain to deal with though if the client wants lots of modifications.
I question why some designers charge prices like only $25 for a template. I currently theme and set up wordpress accounts for clients. The theming part I consider a large deal. I’ve just seen some decent template that shouldn’t be so cheap? At least I think so. Anyhow, I’m considering creating templates but I’m not sure if it’s the worth the trouble. Seems competitive.