WRONG!
A poorly designed and laid out site with high quality content will not make you money. I know because I have some. I also have professionally made sites, made from the best grafics dudes in the buis. The nicely designed sites with HQ content work best...thats it.
You can still use a non traditional paysite design but if its not laid out properly and has a bad collection of images to seduce the surfer it just wont work.