Welcome to the staff room. Pull up a chair, because this one's a group project.
You spent years building your store one product at a time, and on October 1, 2026, TPT changed the deal. Starting January 1, 2027, the best payout is 77.5% for a $59.95 yearly fee, and you only get it if you sell your digital teaching resources nowhere else. Everyone else is on the Basic rate of 55%, plus a 30 cent fee on every resource sold. To us, that's an ultimatum, and we think the right response to one is to walk away. The catch is that walking away alone means finding new buyers from scratch.
We're Wardah and Mussab. Wardah makes and sells resources too, and since the announcement, seller groups have been on fire. Under all that anger, plenty of people feel stuck. So here's our slightly crazy idea: what if we built our own? If 5,000 sellers each pledged $25, that would be $125,000, which is our rough working estimate for building it until real quotes come in. A pledge is only a show of hands for now, and no money is collected.
Building the site is the easy part. Getting buyers there is the hard part, and that only works if we move together. If we pull it off, the proposal is for sellers to own the shop as a group, with one vote each. It doesn't even have a name yet, so that's where we're starting.
A top-1% store and a little shop that makes extra coffee money would each get exactly one vote, which is more say than most of us get in a staff meeting. For now it's only a proposal, and it could change once a lawyer has looked it over.
The goal
5,000 founding sellers
Pledging $25 each would cover our working estimate to build the site. We'll check that number against real build quotes and post the update here, even if it turns out higher.
Status: needs a name
This marketplace is currently as nameless as the mystery container in the staff fridge, so picking a name is the job we're on right now. Send us your best idea, and silly ones are welcome too.
If you've ever kept a second shop open so your whole business isn't riding on one website, this change lands hardest on you. Starting January 1, 2027, Exclusive pays 77.5% and costs $59.95 a year, and in return you agree to sell your digital teaching resources only through TPT. If you'd rather stay free to offer them anywhere else, Basic pays 55% and charges a 30 cent transaction fee on every resource sold.
Anyone on Premium today keeps 80% through December 31, 2026, then moves to Exclusive by opting in or to Basic by doing nothing. Free resources and physical products can still be offered elsewhere.
Type in roughly how much buyers spend in your store each year, and we'll do the math so you don't have to read the announcement a fourth time.
A full bar is everything your buyers paid.
Rates only, before fees. Basic also takes 30 cents on every resource sold, and new Basic sellers pay a one-time $29 fee. Exclusive costs $59.95 a year plus 15 cents per resource on orders under $3. Source: TPT Help Center, October 2026.
Tell us you'd put $25 toward building it, or whatever feels right, if there's ever a safe, legal way to do it. We don't collect any money, and a pledge is non-binding, so you can change or cancel it whenever you like.
Make a pledgeIf you can code, design, untangle legal paperwork or get buyers through the door, we'd love your help. And if your main skill is laminating without a single bubble, we'd honestly still like to hear from you.
VolunteerWe'll get in touch with volunteers as the project reaches the point where each skill is needed, so a quiet inbox just means we haven't reached your step yet.
Here's where things stand today. We'll tick off each step as it happens, and we'll only add dates once we're sure we can keep them.
Our Facebook group is where we'll do the planning, from naming debates to build updates, and the copier there never jams. Skeptics are especially welcome, because the plan gets better every time someone pokes a hole in it.
Join the Facebook groupUpdates
We'll only email when something real happens, like a name shortlist or the first build quote, and each one will be short enough to read before the first bell.
We only use this to run the project and send you updates. Privacy policy
You're on the list, and we'll be in touch when there's news worth sharing.
About us
Why a TPT payout change sent us looking for a marketplace teachers could own as a group.
On October 1, 2026, a lot of us found out that the way we get paid was about to look very different. Teachers Pay Teachers announced that it is replacing its Premium Seller membership with a new Exclusive Seller membership. Premium closed to new sign-ups right away, and current Premium Sellers keep their 80% rate through December 31, 2026.
Starting January 1, 2027, Exclusive Sellers earn a 77.5% payout rate and pay $59.95 a year, and in return they agree to sell their digital teaching resources only through TPT. Anyone who wants to keep offering those resources elsewhere can use the Basic Seller membership, which pays 55% on sales and charges a 30 cent transaction fee on every resource sold. The same day, Premium accounts move to Exclusive if the seller opted in, or to Basic if they did nothing.
TPT says it made the change because more and more of its resources are being sold on other sites, and that it wants a more unified marketplace. You can read TPT's reasons in its own words in the sources at the bottom of this page.
Wardah makes resources too, and the seller groups have been on fire since that announcement. People are angry, and underneath it there's something heavier, which is the feeling of being stuck. Sellers put years into their stores, and now the people who built TPT are the ones paying for this.
Plenty of us spread our work across more than one shop for a sensible reason, since putting your whole income on one website feels a lot like building on rented land. Under the new rules, that careful choice has become the expensive one, because selling your digital teaching resources anywhere else means settling for 55% when the top rate is 77.5%. It feels a bit like being told you can keep your favorite stapler as long as you never staple anything outside the building.
Under the new rules, the top payout depends on offering your digital teaching resources only through TPT, and putting them anywhere else means the Basic rate, which TPT says is unchanged. To us, that's an ultimatum, and when you get one, the right response is to walk away.
Doing it alone is risky, because a seller who moves to Basic gives up the top rate and still has to find buyers somewhere new. If 5,000 of us bring our resources to a marketplace sellers would own, and point our own email lists and Pinterest followers at the same place, it would give us a third choice, one where sellers vote on the payout rate.
So keep your TPT store as it is, and make your membership choice based on what's right for your store today. Then help us build somewhere worth walking to.
We kept thinking that if sellers make everything on the shelves, there has to be a way for them to own the shelves too.
We borrowed the idea from @hitherehunter's Spirit Airlines video, so full credit goes to him. His math needed 50 million people, and by our rough math, ours needs 5,000, which feels very doable for a crowd that organizes field trips for a hundred kids without breaking a sweat.
If 5,000 sellers each pledged $25, that would be $125,000, which is our working estimate for building the marketplace. We still have to check that number against quotes from developers who've built this kind of site before, and we'll share what they tell us here, even if it's higher.
Sellers who look at alternatives to TPT keep running into the same wall, and it's traffic. TPT has a built-in audience and years of search behind it, and a brand-new marketplace starts with neither.
Building the site is the easy part. Getting buyers there is the hard part, and it only works if we move together. One seller on a new site is a lonely little shop on an empty street, but when 5,000 sellers send their email lists and Pinterest followers to one place in the same week, it starts to look like a real marketplace.
We can't promise buyers or sales, and you should be wary of anyone who does. We'll post our plan for bringing buyers in here before the doors open, so everyone can pick it apart.
If we pull this off, it's ours, and we mean actually ours. There would be no corporate boardroom deciding what your fraction worksheets are worth, and the only greed allowed would be fighting over the last donut in the teachers' lounge.
Under the proposal, sellers would own the marketplace together, with one vote each, whether your store has ten resources or ten thousand. Big decisions like the payout rate would belong to the people who make what's on the shelves, which is what a platform truly built by teachers, for teachers should look like.
Exactly who would count as an owner, and how someone would become one, still has to be settled with legal advice, so please treat all of this as a plan in progress that could change.
If you've watched other TPT alternatives pop up and rolled your eyes, that's fair, and this one deserves the same side-eye until it earns your trust. Every TPT figure on this site comes from TPT's own published pages, listed in the sources below, and you can check the payout math yourself.
So far, nobody has paid anything, and the pledge form doesn't even have a payment field. The $125,000 is a working estimate until real build quotes come in. Ownership and one seller, one vote are proposals that still need legal review, and this project isn't affiliated with or endorsed by TPT.
The fairest worry is that a new marketplace could start out friendly and rewrite the rules later, once someone else is calling the shots. That's the reason ownership sits at the center of this plan. Under the proposal, sellers would own it together with one vote each, so a change like the one TPT just made would need the sellers themselves to vote for it.
Setting up shared ownership the right way takes longer than putting up a website, and some steps will move slower than we'd like. If ownership is ever offered in exchange for money, that may count as a regulated offering, so we'll get legal advice and follow it before anyone could be asked for a cent. At every step, we'll tell you plainly what we know and what we're still figuring out.
Imagine opening your seller dashboard on a marketplace you help own, where the payout rate was voted on by people who also spend their Sunday nights formatting PDFs. Imagine a buyer searching for a math unit and finding one made by a real teacher who knows exactly which part of equivalent fractions makes fourth graders groan.
That's the place we want to build, and it starts with a name. What would you call a marketplace built by teachers, for teachers? Send us your idea, and if you'd like to be counted, make a founding seller pledge.
The crew
Right now the crew is Wardah, Mussab and a lot of empty chairs, so most of this page is about the people we still need. If you spot your skill here, we'd love to hear from you.
Co-founder and fellow seller
I've been creating teaching resources for five years, and Mussab and I started this project after TPT's October 1, 2026 announcement. I'll admit I'm a little obsessed with it.
Co-founder, words and email
I'm a copywriter and email strategist, and I'm helping turn this idea into something sellers can actually join, starting with the words on this site.
Tell us what you're good at and how much time you can realistically give. We bring people in as each skill comes up, so a slow reply just means the project hasn't caught up to your skill yet.
We only use this to run the project and send you updates. Privacy policy
Thank you! We'll get in touch when a role opens up that fits your skills.
FAQ
Here are straight answers, including a few where we honestly don't know yet.
You can keep your TPT store exactly as it is. This is an independent project that isn't affiliated with or endorsed by TPT, and pledging or volunteering here involves no listing or selling of your resources. The marketplace is still only an idea, so please make decisions about your TPT membership based on what's right for your store today.
If you offer the same digital teaching resources in both places, it would. Under TPT's current rules, Exclusive Sellers agree to sell those resources only through TPT, and the rule covers every store on the account. Putting them here as well would mean moving your account to Basic, which pays 55% where Exclusive pays 77.5%, and for many stores that's real money. TPT also says a seller who leaves Exclusive after January 1, 2027 has to wait a year to rejoin. Things like free resources, physical products, courses, Boom Cards and Kindle books are still allowed elsewhere, and TPT's help pages have the full details. That's why it makes sense to wait until there's a marketplace worth moving to, and to try the calculator on the home page so you can see the number for your own store first.
It's a show of hands, and no money moves at all. A founding seller pledge is a non-binding statement that you'd be willing to put in $25, or another amount you choose, if a proper legal way to do it ever exists. This site never asks for card or bank details, and you can change or cancel your pledge whenever you like.
Right now, a pledge gets you counted, which matters more than it sounds, because the total shows all of us, and anyone we ask for help, how many sellers are serious. You'll also be one of the first people we check in with, starting with the name. A pledge doesn't make you an owner or give you any other rights. We hope sellers can own the marketplace together one day, but whether that's possible, and how it would work, depends on legal advice we haven't had yet. If that day comes, we'll explain the details in writing before anyone decides anything.
The proposal is that sellers would own it together, possibly through something like a co-op, where the business belongs to its members and they share the decisions. Who would count as an owner, and how someone would become one, isn't decided yet, and all of it could change after legal review. If ownership is ever offered in exchange for money, that may count as a regulated offering, and we'd only do it with proper legal advice.
The proposed rule is one seller, one vote. A brand-new store and a top seller would each get one, and nobody could buy extra say. Before launch, we'd work out with legal help which decisions go to a vote and post that here, starting with the big one, the payout rate.
You can, and you don't have to. $25 is the number our working estimate is built on, and bigger pledges would show there's some breathing room if the build quote comes in higher. It's a bit like bringing a second tray of cookies to the staff party, since everyone appreciates it, and it still wouldn't buy any say in decisions.
We don't know yet. $125,000 is a working estimate for building the site, and before anyone treats it as a promise, we'll get quotes from developers who've built marketplaces. Running the marketplace and bringing in buyers would cost money too, and we'll share those numbers as we learn them. If the build quote comes back higher, we'll post it here and rework the plan in the open.
It's the hardest question we have. A new marketplace has no built-in traffic, so it only works if lots of sellers bring their own buyers at once. The plan is for founding sellers to open together, with as many stores as possible pointing their email lists and Pinterest followers at the new site during the same week. We can't promise buyers or sales, and anyone who does promise that should make you suspicious.
It's a fair worry. The fear is that a marketplace starts out friendly and changes the deal once outsiders are in charge, so the proposal puts ownership in sellers' hands, with one vote each. Under that plan, nobody could cut the payout rate without a vote. Like everything about ownership here, this is still a proposal that needs legal review.
We don't know yet, and we'll share a date when we're confident we can keep it. Before anything gets built we need a name, real build quotes, enough pledges and legal advice on ownership. Nobody will be asked for money unless that legal advice says there's a proper way to do it, and you'd get the details in writing before deciding anything. You can follow each step in the lesson plan on the home page.
That's up to us, and us includes you. It doesn't have a name yet, and choosing one is the step we're on right now. Send your idea through the name form on the home page or add it to your pledge, and we plan to put the favorites to a vote.
Use the volunteer form on The crew page to tell us what you're good at and how much time you can give. We'll get in touch when the project reaches the point where your skill is needed, so it may be a while before you hear from us. Telling your seller friends about this helps a lot too, because the whole idea only works if we move together.
Founding sellers
This is the part where you raise your hand. A pledge is a non-binding way to say you'd put $25 toward building the marketplace, or whatever amount feels right, if a proper legal way to do it ever exists. This form has no payment fields, and we don't collect any money.
Your pledge is in the count, and nothing has been charged. We'll email you when there's news, starting with the name. You can change or cancel your pledge whenever you like by writing to admin@buildourmarketplace.com, and if a seller friend comes to mind, send them our way, because this only works if we move together.
Non-binding pledge of intent. No money collected.
The fine print
Last updated: October 2, 2026
We collect what you type into the forms on this site, along with the basic visit records our web host keeps, and we use it to run this project. It stays with us and the few services that run the site, so nobody buys it and Teachers Pay Teachers never sees it.
Build Our Marketplace is an independent project started by Wardah Zahid, a TPT seller, and Mussab Ali to explore building a marketplace owned by the teachers who sell on it. It has no ties to Teachers Pay Teachers and isn't a registered company or co-op yet, so for now Wardah and Mussab are personally responsible for the information collected here. Under the GDPR, that makes them joint data controllers.
If the project becomes an organization, we'll update this policy to name it and email everyone who has given us their address. Questions about your information can go to admin@buildourmarketplace.com.
Each form asks only for the details listed below.
Along with what you type, our host saves your IP address and browser details with each form entry, which helps it catch spam. If you email us, we also get your address and whatever you write.
Please keep anything about your students out of these forms, since we have no use for it. If something about a student reaches us anyway, we'll delete it. We'd also suggest signing up with a personal email address, because districts may monitor school accounts and you lose access to yours when you change schools.
We never ask for payment details, and no money is collected anywhere on this site. A pledge is a non-binding statement of what you might put in later, if the marketplace goes ahead.
Our host, Netlify, keeps basic technical records when you visit, such as your IP address, your browser type and the pages you open. These records help keep the site running and secure, and Netlify's own privacy policy explains how they're handled.
The site's fonts are stored with the rest of the site on Netlify, so loading a page doesn't connect you to anyone else.
The site sets no cookies of its own and runs no analytics or advertising trackers. Since we never follow you around the web, your browser's Do Not Track setting has nothing to switch off.
When you suggest a name, the site also keeps a copy in your own browser so you can look back at your list. That copy stays on your device, out of our reach, and clearing your browser's data for this site removes it.
We will never use your pledge to charge you. What you send us goes toward running the project and keeping you posted on it.
Teachers Pay Teachers never gets your information from us unless a court order forces it, and we don't sell your information or share it for advertising. It goes only to the people and services below.
We use each service only for the job listed here, and its own privacy policy covers how it handles your information.
This project is run from Pakistan, and the services above are based in the United States, so your information may be stored there and opened by us in Pakistan. Privacy laws in both countries may differ from the ones where you live, and authorities in either country may be able to access information under their own laws.
Every update we send to the list has an unsubscribe link at the bottom. You can also write to admin@buildourmarketplace.com and we'll take you off within 10 business days.
Like most email services, ours may tell us whether an update was opened and which links were clicked. We only use that to see which updates are useful.
We keep pledges, volunteer details, email addresses and name ideas for as long as the project is active. If we haven't emailed the list in 12 months, we'll treat the project as stopped. When it stops, we'll send you one last email to say so, then delete your information within 90 days of that email.
If you unsubscribe, we keep only your email address on a do-not-email list so you aren't added back by mistake. Netlify keeps its technical records for a limited time under its own policy, and you can ask us to remove your information at any time.
You can ask us for a copy of the information we hold about you, in a common file format if you like. You can also ask us to correct it, delete it or stop using it for something you object to, such as emails. Email admin@buildourmarketplace.com and we'll reply within 30 days. We may ask you to confirm the request from the address you signed up with, so we know it's really you.
Privacy laws in places like the EU, the UK, Canada and California give people rights like these, and we offer them to everyone, wherever you live.
If you're in the EU or UK, this is the legal basis for each use:
You can object to any use based on legitimate interest, and you have the right to complain to your local data protection authority (in the UK, that's the ICO).
If you join our Facebook group, Facebook's privacy policy covers what you share there, and other members can see anything you post. As the group's organizers, we can see what members see, like your name and posts, plus any answers you give to joining questions. None of that goes on our email list unless you sign up on this site.
This site is for adults who teach and sell resources, and we don't knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. If you think a child has sent us something, email admin@buildourmarketplace.com and we'll delete it.
Your information is stored with Netlify and our email service, and only Wardah, Mussab and the volunteers who need it for their role can open it. If we ever download a copy to move it between services, we delete that copy once we're done. Since no system is perfectly secure, we collect as little as we can.
We'll update the date at the top of the page whenever this policy is revised. If a revision affects how we use your information, we'll email everyone who has given us their address before it takes effect.
You can reach Wardah and Mussab at admin@buildourmarketplace.com.