There are tons of templates out there, but many are not designed well
to help you get good search rankings. In fact many are HORRIBLE for SEO.
I like to recommend GoldenPineCone.
She builds CLEAN templates, most of which are already SEO'd
and she even builds templates specifically for James Martell's affiliate training and the SEO Web Site Builder. Most are under $100, which for SEO'd, XTML validated, easy to update templates are a STEAL!
What's your time worth? You could start with a free template, waste months only to find it's not great for SEO, rebuild or tweak and lose months of income in the process.
You just need to be sure to get the right template based on what you are using to build your sites. Dreamweaver, FrontPage, HTML or whatever.
Also you get GREAT images that are legal and licensed.
Here's some examples.
http://www.goldenpinecone.com/Samples/801/index.html
Dig starting at home page to find all the different categories and options.
Happy site building!