There are a number of reasons to create templates. First, creating templates gives you as a designer a chance to be creative without the specifications of a client. Second, creating templates and themes gives you room to experiment, play, and learn to strengthen your skills. It is an excellent way for a student just out of school or a self-taught designer to build up a showcase of work to show to clients in their portfolios to branch out to better paying jobs and challenge themselves.
Templates are offered for free on the internet, as well as sold. This is beneficial to web designers in the sense that if they offer free templates, they can earn backlinks and exposure as people use their templates and link back to their portfolio sites. There are numerous places to list free templates, as well as sell them. Selling templates you create through a third party website together with or independently from your own will give you an extra stream of income to cushion your pockets when work is slow. You can choose to charge more for templates that are not resold, and charge less for those that remain a part of your catalog.
HTML and CSS Templates
These templates are commonly used for static websites and some blogs. These are very basic and easy to design templates. Even for a novice web designer, these can be easily created. In fact, novice web designers should spend time creating HTML and CSS templates to strengthen their skill set and push themselves out of their comfort zones.
MySpace and Other Social Media Templates, Themes, and Graphics
Many social media sites use HTML and CSS to create themes for their profiles, but it is a bit more complex than the standard HTML and CSS templates discussed above, because these display differently than a simple website. Designers will not have much luck charging for these templates and themes unless they are completely customized because there are plenty of providers of free themes and graphics.
WordPress Templates
These are more complex to create because of the fact that WordPress uses PHP and MySQL to generate the blog design and its posts. Things to consider are your coding knowledge and expertise, how many sidebars, whether or not you want the sidebar to be widgetizing, and whether or not the header should be customizable. Many free themes are availble, but there are many themes that do well as premium, too. These will take longer to develop for novice and average web designers, but are an excellent way to increase skill level and get into coding. Start with the basic WordPress Theme and play around with the style sheet until feeling brave enough to tackle a theme from scratch.
osCommerce Templates
Start with the basic osCommerce template and edit the style sheet to learn how to create custom osCommerce templates just as you would with WordPress templates. Create graphics and change the stock buttons, and with enough practice, you'll know what you need to do in order to create your own osCommerce template from scratch.