Teachers Pay Teachers: Marketplace for Education Materials

What is TeachersPayTeachers?

TeachersPayTeacher is an online marketplace where educators can market their original downloadable content, ranging from lesson plans and workbooks to classroom decorations and clip art.

How it works:

If you want to list items on this site, you’ll need to pay either a one-time fee or annual fee.

After that, you’ll set up a profile for yourself and your “store.”

Your store can include a wide array of resources, from classroom art to lesson plans and workbooks. However, the items you sell here must be your own original work. You cannot violate copyright laws or re-sell someone else’s products.

You upload your products, price them and, if you can, market their availability on your own social media pages. Sales on the site are paid out, minus site commissions and fees, once a month through an electronic wallet.

TeachersPayTeachers Review:

Long-time teachers who have popular lesson plans, classroom decor, or instructional resources, ranging from workbooks to quizzes, may be able to parlay that content into semi-passive income with TeachersPayTeachers.

This site, launched by an educator to help other educators share resources, has paid millions to participating teachers over it’s near 20-year existence.

Products can be shipped or downloadable. But must be original and not subject to another author’s copyright. Content also may not trivialize traumatic events (slavery, Holocaust, etc.); discriminate; or include pornography. All items on this site are aimed at public- and private-school kids, grades pre-K to 12.

You set the price

Sellers set the price of their products and can offer promotions or freebies, if they chose. However, to list products for sale on TeachersPay Teacher, you must become a member. There are two membership options.

Membership options

One option is to pay a one-time $29 fee, but no annual fees. This “basic seller” membership costs less upfront. But, you pay a higher commission — specifically 45% — on every sale. There’s also a 30 cent “per resource” transaction fee.

The other option: Pay a $60 annual fee, but just a 20% commission on your sales. With the paid-subscription model, the teacher is only charged per-item fees for products sold for less than $3.

Best option

If you sell a lot on this site, the subscription is definitely worth the cost.

However, the commissions and fees can be onerous if you are selling inexpensive items. And teachers report that their products are being copied and the site does little to stop copyright infringement.

Recommendations

If you have clever teaching aides to sell, you can also market them on Etsy. It’s a vastly larger and more active site. And Etsy doesn’t appear to have the same trouble with copyright violations that you see here.

Teachers can find other money-making options by offering online classes through Teachable or Thinkific or tutoring through Wyzant, TutorOcean and Varsity Tutors.

What their users say:

(from Glassdoor)

You can earn money from creating your own products and the royalty rate is good. The premium sellers fee is a yearly fee to pay to earn a better commission though you can start selling without paying this fee. I suggest starting using the free version and waiting to see how your sales go. Then using your earnings to pay the fee. The flip side? Other sellers will create almost identical products. In some cases, this is somewhat understandable because we all cover the same thing. However, if you come up with an original idea, expect that it will be copied and sold by other sellers.

From SiteJabber:

They are a rip off because they take more than half of the money you make on the website. For instance I sold an item for $3.00 that I worked really hard to create and they charged me $1.35 as their commission an additional .30 cent as a transaction fee. It left me with the earnings of $1.35. This website is designed to take all of your profit. It is so sad to see websites like this. They could make such a wonderful impact by getting these items out there but they make absolute sure that the seller pays them half of what they make or even more. Such a shame.

From Reddit

A teacher who uploaded hundreds of items onto this platform says she’s now making about $400 a month. And buys the premium plan because her sales warrant it. She says:  I only started making $100+ a month when I had around 120-130 items on my store. It takes a lot of work initially, but now it truly is a passive income as I don’t HAVE to do anything and I would continue to get sales.

You can read her full detailed analysis here.

Updated 1/28/2025