AdSense guru Joel Comm is is preparing to launch his latest product tomorrow, Instant AdSense Templates, which promises AdSense-optimized layouts for sites using Wordpress, Blogger, phpBB, vBulletin and Invision Power Board. Will these be worth the cost - which isn't listed but likely to be at least $97? There's no way to know based only on the sales pitch, and if Joel is serious about the 2,000 copy limit, the offering is likely to sell out quickly to members of his mailing lists who are willing to buy before they see reviews from purchasers.
For those looking for AdSense-optimized designs who don't have the cash to consider Comm's product, there are a number of free templates circulating. SapiensBryan has released two versions of a theme called "Ads Minded" for Wordpress, a standard fixed-width design and a wider version. These themes feature pre-configured spots for your AdSense ads, including a featured 250x250 square at upper right and a 120x600 skyscraper. A novel twist is the top "navigation bar," which is actually a horizontal AdSense ad link unit. Once the theme is installed in Wordpress, you need to go into the templates and swap in your AdSense code for the placeholders (which are images in a couple instances) to get things going.
Also, if you see ads for AdSense-ready sites with content, be wary of those. They're usually templates that are pre-filled with free articles from article directories. Yeah, it's a quick-and-dirty way to populate a site with keyword-rich copy. But the Googlebot already knows these sites and articles well, as they're in use in hundreds of MFA (Made-for-Adsense) sites around the world. You're not the first person to buy these sites, and unless you're ready to customize each one with an introduction or summary, your site is likely to be ignored by Google.
You're much better off doing the hard, honest work of building your own site with original, unique content. Fine a niche, do your research, and then find a good template/design.