If you sell on Teachers Pay Teachers, you’ve probably spent the last week thinking about TPT more than you intended to.
The new seller membership changes raised a lot of questions, and then came the TPT Town Hall on October 8. Judging by the conversations happening among sellers, many people came away feeling like they had more questions than answers.
There are questions about the new Exclusive Seller membership and what the additional benefits will actually mean for sellers. There are questions about exclusivity, the future of the marketplace and whether the changes are really going to benefit sellers in the way TPT says they will. And for some sellers, there are much bigger questions about whether they want their entire business to depend so heavily on one platform.
I don’t think the answer is to panic and immediately move your entire business somewhere else. I also don’t think the answer is to ignore what’s happening. Instead, I think this is a good time to step back and look at the business you’ve built, what you actually control and what you want to build next.
Here are five things you can do now.
Still trying to work out what the TPT changes mean for you?
I’ve put together a free TPT Basic vs Exclusive Decision Worksheet to help you work through your own numbers, priorities and plans before you make a decision.
1. Don’t make a rushed decision
If you’re an existing Premium Seller, you don’t have to make your decision immediately.
TPT has given existing Premium Sellers until December 31, 2026 to choose whether to become an Exclusive Seller. If you don’t opt in, your account will transition to Basic Seller on January 1, 2027. TPT says any remaining Premium subscription time will be refunded at $5 per remaining month.
That gives you some breathing room, and that’s useful because this is a business decision rather than simply a reaction to one announcement or one Town Hall.
You don’t need to decide because everyone in your Facebook group is choosing one option. You don’t need to decide because someone says TPT is finished, and you don’t need to decide because someone else says Exclusive is obviously the only sensible choice. You need to work out what makes sense for your business.
That means looking at your actual numbers, your other income streams, your dependence on TPT traffic and what you want your business to look like over the next few years. If you’re feeling frustrated right now, giving yourself some time to make the decision based on your own circumstances rather than the current mood of the seller community is probably worthwhile.
2. Work out how dependent your business really is on TPT
This is probably the most useful exercise you can do right now.
Ask yourself what percentage of your business income comes from TPT, how many people know you or your brand rather than simply knowing your TPT store, and whether you have an audience anywhere outside the marketplace. Do you have a website? An email list? Teachers who find you through Google? Products or services that aren’t dependent on TPT?
And perhaps most importantly, ask yourself this:
If TPT changed its terms again next year, how much would that affect my business?
You might discover that you’re actually in a pretty strong position. Or you might realise that almost everything you’ve built is tied to your TPT store. Neither answer is something to feel bad about. It’s simply information.
Once you know how dependent your business is on TPT, you can make a much more useful decision about what you want to change.
3. Start building the parts of your business that you control
This is the part I think is getting lost in a lot of the current conversation.
You don’t necessarily have to choose between being a TPT seller and being an independent business owner. You can build both.
TPT’s current guidance says Exclusive Sellers can still maintain their own website or storefront and promote their resources elsewhere. The important restriction is that qualifying digital educational resources must be sold through TPT. Other types of products, including physical products, courses and professional development, clip art and fonts, can still be sold outside TPT under the current rules.
That means building a website isn’t necessarily about replacing TPT. Building an email list isn’t necessarily about replacing TPT either, and neither is creating content or learning how to get teachers to find you through Google.
These things are about making sure TPT isn’t the only place your business exists.
Your website, content, email list, brand, audience and expertise are business assets that can continue to be valuable even when a marketplace changes its policies. They also give you more options in the future, regardless of what you eventually decide to do with your TPT membership.
If you’re currently feeling completely dependent on TPT, you don’t have to fix that overnight. Start with one thing. A simple website, a free resource that helps you start building an email list, or a piece of useful content that brings people to you through Google is a perfectly reasonable place to begin.
4. Get your business organised before you need to move it
If you’re feeling uncertain about the future, this is a particularly good time to get organised.
Make sure you have copies of the things you’ve created: your original product files, covers and thumbnails, product descriptions, previews, branding, product images, website content and your own analytics and performance data. You don’t need to start rebuilding your entire store somewhere else tomorrow. You just want to make sure that you know what you have and that the work you’ve spent years creating isn’t difficult to access if you ever need it.
It’s also worth looking at your product catalogue with fresh eyes. Which resources are your strongest? Which products consistently sell? Which ones attract traffic? Which have potential but aren’t performing as well as you’d expect? Are there groups of resources that could eventually become part of a bigger product ecosystem?
You’ve already done the hard work of creating your intellectual property. Make sure you know what you’ve got.
5. Keep working on the business you already have
There’s one thing I wouldn’t recommend doing right now: stopping everything because you’re frustrated with TPT.
If TPT is currently bringing you sales, traffic and customers, that still has value. Questioning your dependence on the platform doesn’t mean you should abandon everything that’s currently working.
Keep improving your strongest products. Keep creating when it makes sense for your business. Keep paying attention to what buyers are searching for, improve your product listings and continue looking at your data.
At the same time, start building the things you control.
Think of it as two tracks rather than one. The first is making your TPT business stronger: improving the products that already have potential, understanding your buyers, improving your listings and focusing your time instead of trying to optimise hundreds of products at once.
The second is making your overall business less dependent on TPT. Build your website, start an email list, create useful content, learn how teachers can find you through Google and build relationships with your audience outside the marketplace.
You don’t have to choose between these two tracks. In fact, doing both may give you more options later.
You don’t need to know exactly what happens next
I think this is the biggest thing I’d take away from the current situation.
There are a lot of opinions flying around right now. Some sellers are talking about leaving. Some are looking at other marketplaces. Some are building their own websites. Some are choosing Exclusive, some are choosing Basic and some are waiting to see what happens.
You don’t have to follow any of those paths just because somebody else has chosen it.
The new TPT structure is a significant change. The Exclusive option currently offers a higher payout than Basic, but it also comes with an exclusivity requirement and a $59.95 annual fee. Basic offers a 55% payout with no exclusivity requirement and a one-time $29 fee.
Those are meaningful differences, but the right choice depends on your business, not somebody else’s.
And there is another question that matters just as much as which membership you choose:
How much of your business do you want to depend on TPT five years from now?
You don’t have to answer that today. But it might be worth starting to think about it.
Start building beyond TPT — without abandoning what you’ve already built
If the recent changes have made you realise that you want more control over your teacher business, I’ve put together a free guide to help you think through where to start.
Beyond TPT: A Teacher-Seller’s Guide to Building a Business You Control walks through practical ways to start building your website, email list, content and audience alongside your TPT store.
You don’t need to build five new income streams, and you don’t need to leave TPT. You definitely don’t need to do everything at once.
You just need to start building something that belongs to your business, not just your marketplace account.
Download the free guide here
This article reflects the TPT seller information and policies available in October 2026. TPT’s membership structure and terms may continue to develop, so check the current TPT documentation before making a membership or business decision.
