Diana Pineda
A few days before starting the Buy From Teachers project I walk into my husbands office and I’m like, “Babe…You’re NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THIS. Company X hasn’t paid me since God knows how long!”. My husband was shocked. We were both under the impression that “Company X” (a well known online platform for teachers to sell) would make automated payments, and even though we would receive an alert about sales it never seemed to have translated over into our bank account. To make a loooong story short I end up getting in contact with “Company X” and it turns out that they were going to do me the favor of sending me my deposit. Needless to say I was confused. The “favor”? Like…..What? I’ve been on this platform for years now, have sold quite a bit on it and they’re acting like they’re hooking me up with my payment because of the disconnect. It was kinda odd.
After everything was said and done I received my payment, and for the first time I noticed something that I had never noticed before because I’m a homeschooling mom, a cooking mom, a cleaning mom, a busy mom that doesn’t notice the small print, they took 50% OF MY EARNINGS!!! Honestly, I was shocked. And it wasn’t even me who discovered this, my husband did the math and was like, “Umm……Babe…..Umm….I don’t know if you expected this or not but these people are taking somewhere north of 50% of your earnings!?”. So of course we jabbered about it like 2 crazy hens, protesting about “the man” and about the ridiculous fees. My husband went on about “corporate structures” and about “pleasing investors” and yada, yada.
SUDDENLY my husband was like, “You know what!? Let’s just make our own damn site! We can call it Buy From A Teacher and you can make your commissions with 100% earnings. Screw these people!”. And since he’s a software developer he quickly just whipped this thing into shape. Purposely designed to be raw and simple. In the process however I was like, “Babe, let’s just call this Buy From Teachers instead and let’s share this with other people out there that make content to sell? I mean, why not?”. He went on about how the strategy is different, how we would have to market in order to actually make the site make sense. We discussed how to charge people for posting, 10%? 20%? An annual fee? And then it hit the both of us, let’s just do this thing with 0% fees for sales! F IT MAN! And we did. Here it is. BuyFromTeachers.com.
Our goal now that this is up is to build this community up with people that appreciate the 0% deductions model, and that are passionate about this project. We want vendors of all types that sell educational content, whether you’re a homeschooler, an elementary, junior high, high school or even a college teacher. Whether you tinker with worksheets, you’re a tutor or just the run of the mill content creator. We want folks that will grow with this page and what it stands for.
– Dee, Homeschooler of 3 and certified elementary school teacher
