Teachers sell lesson plans online

Mashable reports.

Deanna Jump, a kindergarten teacher from Georgia, has made $700 000 selling her lesson plans on Teachers Pay Teachers, an e-commerce start-up where teachers offer their lesson plans to fellow educators.

Teachers Pay Teachers was founded by former New York City public school teacher Paul Edelman in 2006 with the goal of connecting veteran teachers to those just starting out so that teachers with a knack for planning could pass along their lessons to those looking for a little help, Business 2 Community writes.

Of course, it's not all altruistic. Those who are providing their hard work for others to use will get compensation through a system that the Web site calls 'Free Market Merit Pay'. In other words, those who want to spend their free time creating stellar lesson plans can sell them, while those who are struggling to engage students can purchase the lesson plans that others have already penned. According to Teachers Pay Teachers, everybody benefits from this system, most of all the students.

Of course, sellers on the site get cash compensation, and some more than others. Jump boasts about 12 000 followers. And she isn't alone in earning a supplemental income from this site. There are approximately 10 000 members who are actively engaged in creating and posting lesson plans. While some offer these helpful teaching tools for free, about 6 000 members post them for a fee, usually $5 to $10 each. With hundreds of thousands of members on the purchasing end of that equation, there are plenty of customers. And Edelman estimates that they have generated approximately $7 million in revenue to date (of which the site gets a cut).