How To Make Money On Teachers-Pay-Teachers Whether You’re A Teacher Or Not

It’s a revolutionary idea.  

It started as a place where teachers, PreK to 12 could have a marketplace to sell their kid tested, teacher approved, educational lesson plans to one another. 

Then the site grew to include the general public. Now, it's not only teachers who can make money on TpT.

How To Sell On Teachers Pay Teachers

To become a Seller, you must first become a member. Membership is broken down into 4 different types. 

The first type is the ‘Basic Membership.’ 

Teachers, administrators, parents and the like can sign up for a free Basic membership and that allows you to browse, buy and/or download free resources.  

The second type of membership is the ‘Basic Seller Membership.’ 

This, too is free and enables you to become a TpT Teach-Author (Seller). This type of membership is ideal for teachers who create lesson plans on a regular basis and sell them on the side to earn passive income online.

If you’re not a teacher you can still be a Seller, more about that in a minute.

For now, let’s take a look at the TpT storefront; Leslie’s Locker who's listed for sale a Parent Christmas Gift {2020 Calendar} for $5.00 dollars.  

This item is simply a PDF document and it has already been purchased and downloaded 700+ times.

Parent Christmas Gift 2020 Calendar

How Much Does The Average Seller Make On Teachers Pay Teachers?

Well, if the Parent Christmas Gift 2020 Calendar were your listing, multiply approx 700 x $5.00 and you’ve made a wofty $3,500.00 dollars!!! 

... All for making and selling something you enjoy doing (less 45%, but more about that in a minute)

The third type of membership is ‘Premium Seller Membership.’ 

This is an annual paid subscription plan that affords you a higher payout rate, plus you get 80% of all your sales instead of 55% like in the free plan.  

With the Premium seller membership you also get to keep half more of the transaction costs than normally, and you don’t have to worry about being limited to 1 GB per file size, including videos. 

You’ll also be invited to advertise throughout TpT’s entire website. But, just as the name suggests, Premium seller membership also comes at a premium price; $59.95 per year.  

The fourth and last type of membership is ‘Publisher Membership’. 

This membership is free and available for anyone who is okay with selling their downloadable materials at a 50/50 profit split with TpT. The benefit here is you don’t need to be a teacher to qualify. 

TpT Membership Comparison Chart

How Does Teachers Pay Teachers Work?

First, you’ll need a PayPal account in order to get paid. As soon as you start selling items, you’ll receive monthly earnings distributed to your PayPal account once per month, on the 21st. 

If you're taking advantage of TpT's advertising system to promote your listing(s) throughout the site, advertising costs will automatically be deducted from your payout.

How To Make Money From Teachers Pay Teachers As A Buyer

Yes, even buyers can benefit financially from TpT. However, buyer’s form of payment is in 'TpT credits'. 

Buyers earn TpT Credits by leaving feedback on their purchases. For every $1.00 spent, 1 credit is earned. Every 20 credits earns you $1.00 back towards future TpT purchases. 

It’s a win-win-win.

How To Sell Products On Teachers Pay Teachers

Products inside of TpT are listed as “Resources.”

TpT Products List of Resources

Teaching resources are arranged in categories filtered by Grade Level, Subject, Price and Resource Type. The most expensive resource listed for sale is $9,999.00 dollars. 

However, those resources are of higher caliber than the rest, and typcially sold by licensed institutions who are also including accrediation along with the product sale.  

Since you and I are not a licensed institution, let’s see how we could realistically make some money with TpT.

How To Get Started On Teachers Pay Teachers

The first thing I'd want to know is - how much are people spending on TpT?

To get this information, I used the "Prices" menu to find out how many product listings were in each pricing category.

TpT Resource Prices Menu

Free: 608,283 results Under $5: 2,766,595 results $5 - $10: 505,644 results $10 and up: 155,070 results

There is less competition selling in the $10 and up range, so let’s research that area more.

Now that I'm in the $10 and up range, let's find out who the ‘Best Seller’ is and what they're selling.  

TpT Best Seller List

It appears that the best selling item in the $10 and up range is the Editable Teacher Binder | Print & Digital Teacher Planner 2019-2020 FREE Updates, teacher's planner. 

Teachers Planner TpT Resource

Even though there’s no exact way of knowing how many times this product was sold, we can confirm this item was purchased at least 31,640 times. 

We can guage that by looking at the Ratings number, and on TpT you’re only allowed to leave a feedback rating if you’ve purchased the item, or if it was a free download.  

From a marketing perspective, the next thing to do would be study the product listing. Identify target keywords, note the selling angle, and determine the seller’s unique selling proposition.

  • Target keywords: teacher binder, lesson plans, free updates, google slides, meeting notes, teacher planners. 
  • Selling angle: free updates for life, editable and customizable, includes google drive (ease of use).
  • USP (unique selling proposition): Save time, money and ongoing support.

Then look at the storefront owners profile and see how they’re branding themsleves, marketing their products and handling customers.  

If I find the product meets my criteria, and I feel confident enough to invest my time, energy and resources into creating and selling a product like this, the only thing left for me to do would be to purchase it, and take note of every step of the final sales process; from “Add to cart” to subscribing for more information. 

Remember, the secret to creating a product people will absolutely love is by reading through the feedback and ratings section. Especially 1-star reviews. That's where paid customers leave their best suggestions!

Is Teachers Pay Teachers Worth It?

The one thing we all ask ourselves before jumping into a new venture is... is this going to be worth my time?  

Great question!  

Let’s weigh the pro’s and con’s for a minute…  

Pro: it’s easy and free to get started  

Con: it’s expensive to sell items

Pro: there’s 3+ million ideas for creating resources  

Con: there’s an ocean of accredited educators who are also selling  

Pro: legitimate work from home, passive income stream  

Con: lot’s of uncertainties to overcome on your own  

🤔

For a teacher, TpT looks like a great way to legitimately make money online. All they'd have to do is set up their profile, upload their digital resources, and start socializing with other teachers - done.  

But, if you are NOT a teacher, TpT probably isn’t the right platform for you to sell from. 

That’s OK Though!

Because all you really need, to sell anything online, is a website.  

Plus you get to keep 100% of the profit that way!  

That’s all TpT is anyways. It’s just a website.  

Here’s another example of an educational, ecommerce style website… 

Ecommerce - Work From Home Website

It’s not fancy. But it can be found on the first page search results for '5th grader math lesson plan'

Notice the advertisements? 

This website owner is also generating advertising revenue in addition to selling downloads from their website. That’s two intentional ways this one website is earning money. 

Let’s look at another example...

Here’s a more appealing website. This website was found under the search term 'teachers planner'. Just in the header menu alone, I can see 4 different ways this website is generating revenue…

Website Using 4 Methods To Monetize

One of those ways is through Speaking engagements. Getting booked for speaking gigs can earn upwords into the thousands $’s. Using a website as an online business card is the most practical and effective way to promote (brand) yourself.  

The next way this site is earning money is by selling Books, and Printables. Websites can easily be setup with a checkout cart. This is how website owners / product creators can keep 100% of the profit.

The next way this website owner is earning revenue through her website is by offering training Courses for sale. She's monetizing her expertise and sharing priviledged inside information. 

Websites have the flexibility to host a variety of different content and formats. They also allow you an automated way to sell those things 24/7.  

One last way this website owner is making money from their website is through the Amazon Associates program. I noticed an Amazon affiliate link to an item mentioned in the article. 

Earning revenue from one of the biggest ecommerce online whales (Amazon.com) seems like a pretty smart thing to do. I bet you can’t do that on TpT? 

Here’s one final example…

Amazon Affiliate Website

This is a nice looking website. It was discovered under the search term 'teachers planner'

I can tell this is an ecommerce and Amazon Associates affiliate style website because looking in the header, “Amazon Favorites” is up in the menu area as well as navigation to other download and printables pages.  

This website owner is smart and took her marketing one step further by collecting subscriber email addresses so she can build a customer base and market to them over and over again.  

Email Subscriber Pop-up

Teacher or not, anyone can benefit from having a website.  

It’s always on-duty working for you, even when you’re not.  

It allows you to earn passive income from anywhere in the world.  

It’s accessible to anyone with a smartphone.  

Running a successful website is easy to do when you have help and step by step instruction. 

Meet Jessica...

Meet Jessica, she loves nature

Jessica has figured out how to work from home and do exactly what she loves doing with her time.

Jessica is free to do what she wants in her life by working from home

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Continued success by working from home

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Jessica isn't alone.

Before I achieved even a tiny bit of success online, there were a lot of roadblocks. 

The biggest was believing I could make money online from home.

Michael Martinez_digitalmarketingacad

Hi there, my name is Michael Martinez. 

Welcome to my website. 

Through perseverance, I've managed to achieve quite a bit of success.

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Does any of this sound familiar?

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But at making money online... you're still at square one

make money online_mike_digitalmarketing

I understand just how you feel.  

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affiliate marketing community_mike_digitalmarketingacad

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Before I let you go, I want to extend a big thank you to you for reading this guide.  

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Talk to you soon, 

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