Teachers Pay Teachers Review

Teachers Pay Teachers is a solution for teachers who don't want to create educational materials day in and day out, but would rather simply buy them online. Teachers Pay Teachers makes it possible by providing a marketplace for teachers to sell their creations to each other (and now for any publisher to get on and sell…no need to be a teacher).

If you're not a teacher or some sort of educator, there's not much in it for you here. Homeschoolers, on the other hand, can go buck wild and earn earn earn on stuff they've created to teach their kids at home.

Huh? What's the Product?

Obviously you're not a teacher if you're asking this. Ask any teacher and they'll tell you that lesson planning usually involves creating some sort of handout, some fun activities designed around the teaching points of the day, and original assignments designed to help kids nail the lesson.

All this takes enormous amounts of time and energy, so teachers view a resource like this as a golden opportunity to get ahead in life. Save time, and it's not even very expensive.

So, examples of the product would be:

Comprehension Activities Created For Specific Books
Writing Activities For Kids Based On A Theme Like Valentine's Day Or Suffixes
Math Games For Young Kids- Theme Based
Word Games For Literacy Classes
Clip Art
Entire Lesson Plans
Worksheets

These are building blocks of classroom activities, the foundation of a school day and they cost around $3 to $10 and up.

Teachers Pay Teachers Account Levels

For teachers who simply want to download (purchase) some teaching aids, membership is free. So is membership for teachers who want to sell their products. Then there's a paid membership, which cuts out transaction fees on sales and ups the royalty payouts for teachers selling things. Here's the break down:

Standard Membership. Free.
Seller Upgrade. Free. Get 60% royalty on the things you sell, and $.30 per transaction for your teacher-created items.
Premium Seller Upgrade. $59.95 per year. Get 85% royalty on teacher-created items and no transaction fees.
Publisher Membership. This is for non teachers who want to try and sell their teach aid products. There is no annual fee, no transaction fees, and 85% royalty on teacher-created items. Digital sales are split evenly with TpT.

There is also a marketplace for selling used goods- royalties are higher but so are transaction fees.

About Teachers Pay Teachers

As far as we could tell, Teachers Pay Teachers is unique in the world. Nowhere else can you sign up, download stuff for your class, pay a small fee, and be on your way. Nowhere else do you have a chance to sell your teaching aids online, either.

There are over 1.6 million registered users of Teachers Pay Teachers. They are all teachers. There are over 90 million page views per month. This is a big site.

Sellers can have their own product page, and members can follow sellers whose stuff they like.

Anyone in the world can join, as long as they have access to PayPal. Everything is in English (except foreign language products), and geared towards English speakers.

Some Opportunity

There is a referral program, where teachers who refer new sellers get 5% of the new person's sales for the first two years. The 5% comes out of the Teachers Pay Teachers' bank account, not the new referral's.

The Company

Teachers Pay Teachers was founded in 2006 by a NYC public school teacher. In the nine years it's been in existence, TpT has paid out more than $75 million in teacher earnings. The biggest chunk of teachers in the system seem to make around $1000 dollars, with the top seller pulling in over two and a half million dollars. About 255 teachers sold more than $50,000.

Teachers, there simply isn't a clear reason why you shouldn't join TpT now and start recovering some of your time by earning money on the teaching materials you make.