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australia.internet.com
September 2001

DIY Template Site Named Top Australian E-Business
By Shelley Dempsey

It's the stuff of fantasy for all cash-strapped solo e-business owners. Winning $50,000 cash, plus a $13,000 advertising package, plus the services of a business mentor for a year. But no, Template Central founder Paul Wilson is not dreaming.

Mild shock has set in, however, after the company won the inaugural Yellow Pages E-Business Awards in August this year. A boost in subscribers has resulted - particularly from its home market, which has until now lagged way behind the main US market.

"One thing that these small business awards did was produce a huge boost in Australian subscriptions," Wilson says. "That was quite marked. I was quite shocked. I am still now doing work for clients who have come through that way."

Wilson says he's now on a roll after all his long hard hours of solo slog and that he's going to make the most of the money. The first thing he's going to do is hire a full-time graphic designer to cope with demand.

Template Central, which offers about 50 photo images and 3,000 different downloadable template formats online at its site http://www.templatecentral.com/ now has about 1200 annual subscribers. Of those, only about 150-200 are from Australia, but before August, there was only a fraction of this number, with just one or two new home subscribers trickling in every month.

The site was set up 18 months ago and revenue of $200,000 (Australian) was notched up in the first year. Monthly revenue also increased by about 200 per cent in the first 12 months of operations. Revenue rose from $24,000 in the first quarter of trading, to about $60,000 by the fourth quarter.

"So that's a huge rise," says Wilson. "There's been a huge increase in user visitors as well. We're probably getting 50,000 to 60,000 visitors a month now. And that's with no promotion at all, that's just using web search engines."

The business has been cash-flow positive for some time, after an initial outlay of about $60,000 on Wilson's part, from his bank savings, for software, hardware and hosting to get the site up and running.

Subscribers can log into Wilson's library of templates ranging from logos, Power Point presentations and brochures to emails, website design, reports, newsletters and stationery. They can download what they want, when they want, in return for paying a set yearly fee ranging from $US49.95 for individuals to $US194 for corporates. Four different subscription levels are available for corporates, individuals, small-team multi-users of five or less and for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and technical people.

Many templates are industry-specific, for manufacturing or the medical world, or wineries, to give examples. The templates are displayed in software applications ranging from Microsoft Word to PowerPoint and Outlook through to Dreamweaver, FrontPage and GoLive.

Corporates such as Nestle, Johnson &Johnson, Dupont, Fedex, IBM, BHP and Honeywell have subscribed to the service. In terms of overall client base, the five biggest sectors for Template Central are corporate professionals, small to medium enterprises, educators and students, and developers and technical providers. All markets are equally lucrative at present, with the technical side recently gaining an edge.