I make a few hundred dollars a month on TPT. Is my own store worth it?
Often, not yet. If you make a few hundred dollars a month on TPT and sell little or nothing elsewhere, Exclusive will almost certainly pay you more next year than Basic plus a brand-new store.
We build stores for a living, so take that as an answer against our own interest. Here is the arithmetic behind it.
The numbers at $300 a month
Say your TPT sales are $300 a month, at an average price of $5, in orders over $3. Using the rates on TPT’s fees page and in its Exclusive Seller announcement:
| Exclusive | Basic | |
|---|---|---|
| Payout rate | 77.5% | 55% |
| Payout on $300 | $232.50 | $165.00 |
| Transaction fees (60 resources) | $0 | 60 × $0.30 = $18.00 |
| You keep per month | $232.50 | $147.00 |
Going Basic costs this seller $85.50 a month. Exclusive also has a $59.95 annual fee, which is about $5 a month, so call the gap about $80.
To come out even, a store of your own has to make up that gap and pay for itself. With a $25 a month store and card fees of 2.9% plus 30 cents on $5 orders, you would need about $121 a month in sales on your own site just to match what Exclusive pays. That is 24 orders a month, from visitors you bring yourself, starting in January.
For a seller with an active email list, 24 orders a month is realistic. For a seller with no list, it is not, at least not in the first several months.
Why a new store starts slowly
A store of your own does not come with marketplace search traffic. On TPT, teachers arrive already looking for resources. On your own site, nobody arrives unless you send them: by email, from Pinterest, from a blog post, from your social accounts or from search engines once they know your site exists.
You also start without your reviews and without your buyers. You cannot take TPT reviews or the TPT buyer list with you. A resource with hundreds of ratings on TPT shows up on your new store with none.
None of this means a store cannot work. It means a store is the second step, and the audience is the first.
What to do instead
If the numbers point to Exclusive, you can spend the next year building the thing a store needs, without giving up any TPT income. TPT’s Exclusive Seller FAQs say Exclusive sellers may run their own website, promote their resources on it and offer free resources off TPT. The one condition on freebies is that you cannot charge on TPT for something that is free elsewhere.
- Start an email list. One good free resource, one sign-up form, one helpful email every week or two.
- Pin and post. Write short blog posts that answer questions teachers in your grade actually ask, and pin them.
- Make more and better resources. At this size, ten strong new listings on TPT will probably do more for your income than any store.
- Keep your files tidy. Back up your product files, editable sources and listing descriptions outside TPT.
What you may not do under Exclusive is sell digital educational resources anywhere else, including through a membership. Do not try to do it quietly. That risks your TPT account.
And if things change, TPT says you can move from Exclusive to Basic at any time. There is no refund of the annual fee and a one-year wait before you can rejoin Exclusive.
When it tips
A store of your own starts to make sense for a small seller when one or more of these is true:
- You already sell elsewhere. If Etsy or your own site brings in something like a third of what TPT does, you may already be past the break-even point. Sellers on Reddit’s TPT forum report being in exactly this spot. Do not rely on a rule of thumb. Put your numbers in the calculator.
- You have an audience. A few hundred engaged email subscribers, or a social following that clicks when you post, changes the picture.
- Your TPT sales are falling anyway. Sellers report lower sales over the past year and AI-generated listings crowding search. If your TPT income is shrinking, the gap between Exclusive and Basic shrinks with it, and a second place to sell matters more.
- You want to sell something TPT does not suit. A pass to your whole catalog, for example, or school licenses on your own terms.
- You are thinking in years. Some sellers will accept less income for a year to build something they control. That is a fair choice, as long as you know the price. At $300 a month it is around $80 a month.
A cheaper way to test
If you are a Basic seller and curious, you do not need to spend much to find out. Free storefront plans exist that charge a percentage per sale and no monthly fee. Send your list there for three months and see what happens. If sales come, move to something better. If they do not, you have lost very little.
This only applies to Basic sellers. An Exclusive seller cannot test a paid store for digital resources at all.
About us
Up At Last builds and hosts stores for teacher-sellers. The starter store is $25 a month with hosting included. If you are a small seller and the numbers say wait, we would sooner you waited and came back with a list.
Up At Last is not affiliated with or endorsed by Teachers Pay Teachers.
What to do next
- Run the free calculator with your real monthly TPT sales and any sales elsewhere.
- If Exclusive wins, opt in before December 31, 2026 at 11:59pm ET. Doing nothing makes you Basic.
- Start an email list with one free resource this month.
- Look again in six months, with your list size and your TPT trend in front of you.