Introduction
Brief overview of Teachers Pay Teachers
Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) is an online marketplace where educators can buy and sell original educational materials. It has grown a lot since it was founded in 2006, and it’s tapped into the collective expertise of educators around the world.
Now, it’s a hub for educators to share resources, lesson plans, activities, and other classroom essentials. It allows teachers to earn from their creativity and expertise while helping other educators find time-saving and innovative materials tailored to their needs.
The increasing demand for online educational resources
The pandemic shifted education forever. Both resources and people jumped online so that us educators could continue to share our skills, experience, and crafts. Now, the internet has become to norm to connect with other teachers, and also find teaching resources. Here is a short list of reason why it’s online educational resources continue to become more popular.
Digital Integration: Modern classrooms are becoming increasingly digital. With tools like interactive whiteboards, tablets, and online learning management systems, educators are on the lookout for digital resources that can be easily integrated into their teaching methods.
Remote and Blended Learning: As mentioned above, the sudden transition caused by COVID-19 heightened the need for online materials that are both adaptable and engaging.
Personalized Learning: Online resources allow educators to cater to diverse learning needs. Teachers can now provide materials tailored to different learning speeds and styles, ensuring no student is left behind.
Time Efficiency: Creating lesson plans and materials from scratch can be time-consuming. Ready-to-use online resources save educators time, allowing us to focus more on teaching and less on preparatory work.
Cost-Effective Solutions: Online resources, especially those that can be shared among many users, often present a more affordable option than traditional textbooks and teaching aids.
Global Accessibility: The internet has bridged geographical constraints. An educator from one part of the world can access, use, and even contribute to resources created by a peer from a completely different region.
Continued Professional Development: Online platforms don’t just offer resources for students. They also host a plethora of courses, webinars, and materials for educators to enhance their teaching skills and methodologies.
Alternatives to TpT
While Teachers Pay Teachers has undoubtedly made its mark in the industry, and I believe the platform will remain strong, there will always be competitors – and rightfully so. TpT has carved out something special to a lot of people.
However, with demand, there is always new springs of supple. In this article, I aim to take a closer look at alternative places teachers can sell their resources, other than TpT. Let’s begin!
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List of Sites Like TpT
Boom Learning
Boom Learning is a digital platform that offers interactive, self-grading exercises called “Boom Cards.”
About: This is a marketplace designed for both educators and learners, where digital task cards can be used as a fun way to learn all different kinds of subjects.
According to them, “Boom Learning provides cloud-based digital teaching tools that engage students and save teachers time.”
What I like about this platform: You can create Boom Cards, and sell them on Boom Learning’s site, but you can also sell them on other places, like your own blog, or even Teachers Pay Teachers.
In addition to the flexibility you get with selling on Boom Learning, they also provide a nice revenue share by giving teacher authors 85% of each sale, which is better than selling on TpT.
What I’m not a huge fan about: In order to begin selling on the platform, you need to sign up for a paid publisher program. At the time of writing this, that comes to $4.17/ month, or $50/ year.
Furthermore, the site isn’t the easiest to navigate. At this time, it simply doesn’t feel very user friendly, the way TpT laid out.
Tes Resources
Up next, we have TES Resources. This company has been providing educational services for over 100 years! Now, they’ve started a section called TES Resources, which include, as you may have guessed, resources made by teachers for teachers.Â
One thing to keep in mind is that TES primarily focuses on supporting the English national curriculum. If you’re in the USA, or other countries, you can still participate in the selling, but it appears like they are UK focuses.
What I like about this platform: TES makes it easy! In case you’d like to diversify your teaching resources, TES makes it simple to start selling on their platform. Just use this link to get started.
TES also allows sellers to create bundles, and their program is very supportive of teacher authors in creating what they think is best for their own shop.
What I’m not a huge fan about: TES is such of a big organization, that navigating their resource marketplace was challenging. I think their marketplace would be improved if they created a new sub domain and eliminated the side bar that felt out of place. Then, if people wanted to use their other services, we could simply find them in the footer of the page.
Made By Teachers
For our next review of alternative sites like Teachers Pay Teachers, we have Made By Teachers.
The team here has done a great job providing one thing – a marketplace of educational resources. That being said, it feel very much like a copy of TpT. But hey, it works!
What I like about this platform: It’s free for teacher authors to get started! Similar to TpT, getting started as a seller only requires completing a quick form, and then you’re off to the races.
What I’m not a huge fan about: There’s not enough information on this site! As Lori-Anne pointed out in her YouTube video, I found it tough to get much information about this company – or even much about what it means to be a seller on their platform. When it comes to selling and making an income, I’d personally all the facts.Â
Classful
Now, here we are at Classful – design is really important to me, and straight from their homepage, I feel welcomed. I also feel like this is a friendly, educational site.
What I like about this platform: First, my experience showed me that they’re transparent, and easy to get information from. Here’s the scope on what it means to be a teacher author with Classful:Â
- There’s no subscription fee
- They only only charge a seller fee (5%) and a processing fee (2.9% + $0.30) per transaction.
- You can sell your resources on Classful AND on other platforms of your choice.
- Getting started made easy!
What I’m not a huge fan about: Honestly, I love the way Teachers Pay Teachers is a marketplace for people to buy and sell educational resources – and that’s it; very streamlined. However, with Classful, they’re also focused on other educational needs, such as fundraising. Again, I think these platforms are better off serving a single purpose.
TeachSimple
Up next, we’re checking out TeachSimple. This platform is different, and you know what? I kind of like it! Let’s dive into what it means to be a seller on this site.
One of the most different parts about this is that they offer a “free upload service where our team at Teach Simple will upload all your products for you.” This is kind of crazy, right? You create the product, they do the uploading, and the marketing? For those passionate creators out there, who don’t enjoy the admin or marketing side of TpT, TeachSimple might be your best bet.
What else is unique at their platform is that they don’t just allow anyone to contribute teaching resources. They’re selective! According to their site, As Teach Simple is a membership site, we have limited spots available for contributors because we want to see less competition and more revenues on site for our contributors. We are also aiming for quality over quantity.”
Even the payment plan is different. Instead of getting paid each time your product sells, sellers receive half of the recurring revenue from their memberships. From what I undertstand, the other half goes to TeachSimple to cover their fees, including marketing for your product.
All in all, I’d say TeachSimple might be best for those who are very creator focused, and don’t have an interest in building an audience, sending out newsletters, or any of the other marketing aspects TpT sellers often wind up spending time on.
Teacher Sherpa
Last but not least, we’ve made it to Teacher Sherpa.
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What I’m not a huge fan about: I don’t like when I feel bombarded by ads right from the homepage, and that’s exactly how I feel when I visit this site. The layout feels more like a site that has free resources – for those sites, my tolerance to ads is much higher, but if people spend buy something from the site – particularly if it’s a marketplace of goods, the look should be cleaner.Â
Also, on sites like TpT, Classful, and Made By Teachers, the educational products feel like they’re being shown off – like truly presented as individual solutions to some busy teacher’s problems. However, at Teacher Sherpa, I could help but feel like they were trying to stuff as many products on one page as possible.Â
Enough about the design aspect though, here are the key takeaways as to what it means to be a teacher seller on Teacher Sherpa!
- Revenue is earned each time your product is DOWNLOADED, not sold. This is similar to TeachSimple.
- It’s totally ok to put your resources on Teacher Sherpa and other platforms, too.
- According to their website, “Royalties are earned monthly according to the following table: $0.25/downloads on the first 1500 downloads, $0.50/downloads from 1501 to 3000 downloads and $1/downloads on any downloads above 3000.”
Conclusion
Is selling on other sites like Teachers Pay Teachers worth it?
The classic saying about generating revenue is that diversifying our resources is a smart move.
Being a seller solely on TpT has platform risk. Who knows if they’ll continue to increase the amount they earn per sale and decrease the amount the seller earns.Â
In conclusion, because sellers have the ability to sell the same resource on different platforms, it might be a wise way to reach a wider audience (try to say that 5 times fast : )
I hope you found this helpful, and below are a few other blogs you might want to checkout as a teacher seller. Thanks for reading!
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