How the TeachLessons 70/30 Split Works (and Why 3% Comes Off First)

When we say sellers keep 70% at TeachLessons, we want you to know exactly what that 70% is a share of. Vague percentages cause more confusion between sellers and platforms than almost anything else, so this article shows every step, with real numbers.

The short version: you receive 70% of net revenue. Net revenue is the price the customer actually paid, minus a payment processing cost that is always 3% of the transaction. Multiply it out and you receive 67.9% of the sale price, every time, at every price. The payout calculator runs the same formula for any price you enter, and if the numbers work for you, you can submit your resources straight away.

Step by step on a $10 sale

A teacher buys your $10 resource. Here is where the money goes.

The same steps work at any price. On a $50 bundle, the payment cost is $1.50, net revenue is $48.50, your 70% is $33.95 and our 30% is $14.55. On a $3 resource, the payment cost is $0.09, net revenue is $2.91, you receive $2.04 and we keep about $0.87.

• The customer pays $10.00. Sales tax or VAT is not part of this figure, since it goes to the tax authorities, not to either of us.
• The payment processing cost is 3% of $10.00, which is $0.30.
• That leaves net revenue of $9.70.
• You receive 70% of $9.70, which is $6.79.
• TeachLessons keeps 30% of $9.70, which is $2.91.

Why the 3% comes off before the split

Every card payment costs money to process, and someone has to pay for it. Platforms handle this in different ways. Some charge a fixed fee per resource, some fold the cost into their share, some combine both. We chose to take the cost off the top as a flat 3% and then split what is left. It is one rule, it is the same on every order, and you can check it on any statement with a calculator.

This means we share the payment cost in the same proportion as the revenue. On a $10 sale, the $0.30 cost works out to $0.21 from your side and $0.09 from ours. Because the cost is a flat percentage, there is no fixed amount that eats into cheap resources. A $1 worksheet pays you $0.68, the same 67.9% you get on a $50 bundle, which pays $33.95.

If much of your catalog is priced at a dollar or two, that consistency is worth noticing. A fixed per-item charge of any size takes a far bigger share of a $1 resource than of a $50 one. A percentage does not.

Discounts, tax and refunds

The split always uses the price the customer actually paid. If a $20 unit is sold at half price during a promotion, the customer pays $10, and you receive $6.79, exactly as on a regular $10 sale. If there is no discount, the $20 unit pays $13.58.

Sales tax and VAT are excluded. They are collected for the tax authorities and never counted as revenue.

Refunded orders are reversed. If a customer is refunded, there is no payout on that sale. Keep this in mind when you compare a month's statement with your own notes of what sold.

How and when you get paid

Payouts are monthly, for the previous calendar month's sales. Each payout comes with a statement that lists every sale, so you can check the math line by line. Say you sold 40 copies of a $10 resource in March. Your statement after March closes would show 40 sales at $6.79 each, or $271.60.

There is no membership fee, no annual fee, no sign-up fee and no per-resource transaction fee. The 30% share is the only thing TeachLessons keeps, and the 3% payment cost is the only deduction before the split. Save each statement with the month in the file name. If you sell in several places, our record-keeping article suggests a simple way to keep them together.

What the 30% pays for

Our share pays for running the store and for work we do on your listings. For every accepted resource, we write or improve the product title, description, FAQ and structured data so search engines understand the page. We feature seller resources on landing pages, in relevant Teacher Hub blog articles and in a seller spotlight. Each seller also gets an author profile. You can read more in our article on what SEO for a teaching resource listing involves.

You keep your copyright. You grant us a non-exclusive licence to list and sell the resource, and you can remove it at any time. There is no exclusivity, so you can keep selling the same resource on your own site or on other marketplaces. The one exception is a resource you have already agreed to sell exclusively somewhere else. Those can't be listed with us, and that agreement should be honored. Our payout table from $1 to $50 shows every common price at a glance.

If the split works for you, submit your resources with your author details and we will reply by email after review. Not every resource is accepted, since we look at quality, originality and rights.

Questions sellers ask

More for teacher-sellers

General information about the TeachLessons Seller Program, not legal, tax or financial advice. The seller agreement you receive before listing sets out the binding terms.