Teaching isn't known to be a lucrative profession, but online marketplace Teachers Pay Teachers is changing that for some educators.
Deanna Jump, a kindergarten teacher from Georgia, has made $700,000 selling her lesson plans on Teachers Pay Teachers, an ecommerce startup where teachers offer their lesson plans to fellow educators.
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Paul Edelman, the founder of Teachers Pay Teachers, created the platform following a four-year stint as a New York City public school teacher.
"I had an insight that the materials teachers created night after night had monetary value, so I set out to create a marketplace called Teachers Pay Teachers," Edelman told Mashable. "Teachers are now making a pretty significant supplemental income and creating higher quality materials."
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During the first two years of Teachers Pay Teachers, teachers would pay for the lesson plans they wanted to use, though many would then be reimbursed by their schools. On Wednesday, Teachers Pay Teachers launched a purchased orders option, which allows schools to purchase several lesson plans directly for their teachers.
Edelman expects schools will become the primary buyers with the new purchasing option.
Teachers Pay Teachers focuses on lesson plans for pre-K through 12th-grade classrooms. The most popular subjects are English and language arts, science, social studies and math.
The site has about 700,000 registered users, of whom 10,000 are sellers. Edelman estimates that of the sellers about 6,000 are earning money. The teachers earning money have so far earned $7 million selling their lesson plans, once Teachers Pay Teachers takes out its commission.
Teachers selling lesson plans have the ability to set prices, title their products and make changes based on user feedback. Users can also follow their favorite content creators. Jump, for example, has almost 12,000 followers, who are notified whenever she posts a new lesson plan.
Lesson plans are often sold for $5 to $10, though many are available for free.
The teachers who sell lesson plans use social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Edelman says Pinterest now drives more traffic to Teachers Pay Teachers than Facebook.
About 93% of sales come from the U.S., 5% come from Canada, 1% come from Australia and the remaining 1% come from the rest of the anglo-speaking world.
Is a marketplace for lesson plans a good idea? Tell us your thoughts in the comments.
Image courtesy of iStockphoto, hamzaturkkol
This story originally published on Mashable here.
