*Educents has now closed down, but I’m leaving this post here, for the other information it contains.
Which is better for sellers: Teachers Pay Teachers or Educents?
That’s the question I’ve been trying to answer the last few months. Is it better to sell my educational games on Teachers Pay Teachers or Educents?
When I discovered TPT, I thought, “Wow!” Here’s a huge marketplace dedicated to helping teachers connect their educational products with other teachers who want to buy them.
I opened up a shop (read more about how my store got started here) and listed my products, but I was hesitant to pay the almost $60 fee for a Premium account. Not having made any money yet, it was hard to spend that much. So here I was getting only 60% commission, plus a 30 cents transaction fee per sale.
Then I discovered Educents and again my reaction was, “Wow!” They let me open a store for free and I get to keep 85% right away. And no transaction fee!
Now before I go on, let me compare the two briefly.
Teachers Pay Teachers Seller Accounts
Basic Seller
- Free
- 55% Commission
- 30 cents transaction fee per resource
Premium Seller Account
- $59.95 a year
- 80% Comission
- no transaction fee on products over $3
- 15 cents transaction fee for products under $3
Here’s a chart comparing the two plans on TPT.
Educents Seller Account
- FREE for all sellers
- 85% comission on all sales
- no transaction fee
So which is better for sellers- Teachers Pay Teachers or Educents?
Now at first glance it would seem that Educents is a better deal than TPT, and that’s what I thought.
I quickly opened up another shop on Educents and started promoting my Educent store. I even did a launch on Facebook and ran some Facebook ads and made some sales. But I couldn’t quite make my Facebook ads pay off (not yet) so I stopped running them.
And you know what?
Sales stopped.
But while I was focusing my efforts on Educents I noticed something. Sales kept trickling in on TPT without me doing a thing.
Which got me thinking. Maybe Educents is free, but TPT has something Educents doesn’t- a huge marketplace of educators looking for downloadable teaching helps.
When I look at my Traffic Data on TPT, 100% of my sales are coming from traffic originating within TPT.
I have traffic from my blog, other blogs (Where did that come from?) Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter (Again I’ve no idea where that came from; I’m not on Twitter), but my sales are all from searches on TPT itself.
So I evaluated my sales in the last two months and decided that at the rate I’m making sales on TPT, the Premium Membership will pay for itself in a years time, with no additional promotion from me.
Let me repeat that. The Premium Membership on Teachers Pay Teachers will pay for itself without me doing a thing.

Calculating if the TPT Premium Seller Account will pay off (this was back when they were offering 85% commission)
It took a while for that fact to sink in for me. I kept thinking I’ll keep both stores but promote the Educents one, because after all, I’m getting 85% commission on sales there.
But once I realized that anything I promote on TPT is above the amount that TPT will automatically generate for me to pay off the Premium Sellers account, then I was free to promote whichever I wanted.*
And I think that it just makes sense to promote my TPT store, since I’d love to have all my reviews and followers in one place.
And if I see that I don’t make anything on Educents, I can always close that shop and not lose anything.
Plus TPT has the most incredible community of sellers willing to help out and share their experience. If you’re logged into your account, just hit the drop down menu next to your name and the link to the forum is on the bottom left.
So are you convinced yet? If you want to sign up for Teachers Pay Teachers, you can do so here.
And if you’ve found another sellers marketplace where you’ve had success, let me know in the comments below. I’d love to hear about it.
*When I first wrote this article TPT was offering 85% commission on a Premium Seller account and 60% on the basic plan. They have since dropped to 80% so there is a slight advantage in promoting Educents. I’m still mostly promoting TPT because most of my feedback and review are on there. Also it’s been almost six months since I wrote the draft for this article and I’ve easily paid off my Premium Seller Fee on TPT, so I’m really glad I upgraded when I did.
I have considered a couple of different platforms to sell my products on: Etsy, my own website, and a Selz store. None of them match the sales I can make on TPT. During the school year my marketing and attention to my shop are very low. It still manages to perform well. If I ignore the other platforms, all I hear are crickets!! 🙂
That’s really interesting to hear and is definitely my experience. Thanks for sharing.
I’ve been selling since 2012ish on TPT but this will be my final year. TPT is saturated with resources and sellers and while there are sellers from many different countries the website is still geared to just US sellers and buyers.
I opened a Selz store and I made in a matter of months what took me years to make on tpt. The platform is mine and I can sell how and what I want with tiny fees.
Anyone considering starting a store on TPT should seriously sit down and crunch the numbers. The fees I pay in commission per month to TPT are higher than I pay in 12 months on Selz including any credit cards fees. Plus I can interact direct with customers.
Admittedly I opened an account years ago on EDUcents but did nothing with it.
At the end of the day each person needs to decide if you want to build your brand or the brand of the marketplace – kind of like renting versus buying. How much control do you want (or need).
I see what you’re saying and that is why I’ve moved some of my products over to my own website and probably will continue to do so. But I’ve found that I’m responsible for driving traffic to my website and I don’t always have time for that. So with the TPT commission also comes the traffic.
I’ve actually wondered if I’d be better off moving all my products over and then concentrating on my blog rather than on making new products. Sometimes I feel like I’d rather just make products and not worry about marketing, and other times I feel like I’d rather work on blog posts. 🙂
I’m glad it’s working out well for you.