Hi, everyone. So starting this academic year, I’ve been putting extra effort into my curriculum as I figured that it could be a source of passive income.
Has anyone had any success selling their worksheets, etc. online?
I’m targeting the Japanese market in particular and I’m not sure what would be a good platform that would drive traffic to them. Etsy??
I’d love to hear about your experiences selling educational material online.
Where do you get your paid educational resources from?
Edit: for additional context, I’ve copy and pasted one of my replies:
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I currently provide my current clients (kindergartens) with a customized curriculum that fits their needs. I base the curriculum off many things like the types of events, activities, seasons (spring has outdoor activities, etc.), their calendar and even the property itself. Everything in my program requires a bit of additional prep per client. The workload can be a bit much but I think they’re happy with the services.
I hope to offer this kind of curriculum modules to others with the intention of them being modified, because that’s what we teachers kind of already do.
Most of it will be provided for free as single one-offs, but if people were interested, they could purchase modules or the whole curriculum as a proper composition.
An example would be ‘The Great Outdoors’ module. Once colors have been pretaught students go outside and search for a red leaf, a white rock, sand, dirt, etc.. “I got a red leaf, Mr. Tim!”
The color flashcards as well as the nature flashcards along with the worksheet will be available for free. However If the customer would like to have additional paraphernalia, insights and segways into other modules, I would be glad to provide it for a small fee.
I feel like most programs trap the teacher into the textbook’s method. I’d like to provide an program where teachers can pick and choose what works for them, their students and their institution.
Sorry for going on such a tangent, but I think it’s a marketable idea.
8 comments
I have only worked in teaching for a little, so take this with a giant grain of salt.
I see two things that would make this hard:
1. You’re up against big providers of educational material that have long established themselves; generally, the amount of both free and paid material available is staggering.
2. Language schools have their long established providers and books, and especially in Japan, people don’t exactly like change, so it would be super hard to get them to move away from whatever material they currently use and switch to what you provide.
The only way to solve both these issues would be to set your material apart in some way, to have a “unique selling point”, to give people a reason to switch to your material.
One way is obviously price. If you’re cheaper than other providers but offer the same or better quality, that’s always going to help. But probably not enough. Which leads me to another idea, which might or might not be good: how about offering an easy-to-use way to customize the material to the school’s particular needs and branding?
Like, have your materials available on a website where people can upload their school’s logo and it will automatically be placed on every worksheet they can then download. Let them change the font, to match their corporate design. Make it so that names of people in worksheets and stories can be customized easily, so teachers could quickly adapt worksheets to show the names of today’s students, instead of random names. Stuff like that. Maybe.
Or maybe I’m just a dog and have no idea what I’m talking about.
Oh, and feel free to use [these](https://github.com/domsson/tracedletters) in any way, in case it helps.
I have been working on teaching materials for almost 20 years now. I made lesson plans for a national eikaiwa chain (formal side job, found it online), worked with an international publisher on the scope and sequence of one of their big series, and published my own materials.
The one that has done the best and has the most potential is this: [https://fluency-course.com/](https://fluency-course.com/)
Given the amount of free stuff online, I can’t imagine many people would be buying random worksheets, etc.
You’d need to create bundles, preferably supporting an existing book or curriculum (like es3 content, for example, or something like Let’s Go).
But almost more importantly, you need to get the word out somehow, by having a network of people who know you, or going out and publicising it somehow.
I am just about to publish my 6th textbook. Writing them is a lot of work, but every fall I get a decent pay check.
You can try, but the Japanese ESL teacher area is flooded with free or <exchange your own worksheet for access to others> websites. Just post them up on pay to access sites, but don’t expect much out of it.
Anyone who uses either of the above – or even paid sites – should be editing the material to meet their needs anyhow. The only ones who don’t are generally ALTs who don’t want to be ALTs, and they don’t have enough money to throw away on those websites.
I don’t follow. You want to make a passive income yet “ most of it will be provided for free…. Color work sheet and flash cards will be available for free…” . No . This is not good practice . It implies they have no value , plus you could sell them. You won’t Make any money giving your work away for free, so don’t. Schools can pay up for your work or do without. 🙂
I think the issue you will face if selling kindergarten based lessons is who would buy it.
A Japanese owner who has no idea about a curriculum and wants to set up a school could be a target. Would it be cheaper for the owner to hire some random foreigners and have them design the curriculum while teaching at the same time.
A person put in the above situation who would spend some of their own money to work for someone else?
Mommies teaching their kids at home? I think this would probably be best so you better have attractive presentation and 0 English skill requirements.
>I think it’s a marketable idea.
Well, that makes one of us.
I think you’d be better off just sticking it on a website for free and trying make some passive ad revenue.
Like this: https://happylilac.net/index2.html
In regards to putting your work out, I think it’s not a bad idea and if you think you deserved to be compensated.
Others have pointed out that there are lots of free teaching materials. But, I think they are obsolete and haven’t changed over the years. In fact, many BOEs/schools reply on their ALTs to develop lessons, but not pay a dime for innovations. And, if you try to do something new, I wonder what dispatch companies or eikawa will do because their business is to make money.
Back in the days, I had made my Eigo Ganbare resources for free with the mindset of providing equitable educational resources. Like if the parents can’t afford to send their children to juku and/or eikawa. However, it needs to be back up by funding or a community to support this kind of thing. Anyway, what I have for free now are only the archive resources. Japan don’t recognize government grants or something like that. So, I guess the initiative is to have the BOEs/schools be responsible to pay for teaching-related materials and have more flexibility for teachers to create stuffs that are new. It also prevents dispatch companies and eikawa from…
Finding a balance is still challenging. Give teacherspayteachers a try because I’m using that too!