Kurt,

Exactly!

I've used the most basic html templates and simply changed headers and colors, and wound up with some good looking sites.

For what we are doing, it works well like that. WP themes tend to bog down because they are time consuming to convert....and when bombing, time matters.

Some would say you are sacrificing good looks for time, and it just isn't so.

For what it is worth, my suggestion would be to get some simple sites up, get them indexed, get a linking strategy set up, add to them, and then let them season while you are building more sites.

You can always change the design later when you have a catch up period.

Mary