Seller plans
I've sold my own teaching resources online for years, and the thing that always bothered me was never being quite sure what I'd actually take home from a sale. So when I built The Lesson Stand, I wanted the fees to be something you could work out on the back of a napkin. There are two plans, Free and Pro, and I set them up so that the more you do to bring buyers to your own store, the more of each sale you keep.
You own your work and you set your own prices, and you're welcome to keep selling anywhere else you already sell. Below I've laid out what each plan costs and what you keep, and I've done the math with real prices so you don't have to guess.
The Free plan
It doesn't cost anything to join on Free, and you keep 50% of each sale before Stripe takes its card processing fee, which is 2.9% plus 30 cents on each card payment.
There is a listing charge of 5 cents per listing per month, but our share of your sales that month gets counted toward it first. So if your sales cover your listings, you don't pay a listing charge at all, and in a quiet month you'd only pay the difference, never more than 5 cents a listing. Say you have 100 listings. That comes to $5.00 for the month, and if we earned $5.00 or more from your sales that month, you owe nothing. If we only earned $3.00, you'd owe $2.00.
Referral links aren't part of Free. They come with Pro, where every product gets its own link that pays you 90% on the sales you bring in. Free is a good place to start if you're new to selling or you just want to see how the site works before you commit to anything.
The Pro plan
Pro is $50 a year, and the first 50 sellers who sign up for Pro get their first year free. On Pro you keep 80% of each sale before Stripe's card processing fee, and there's no per-listing charge at all.
Pro also gives you your own referral links. Every product you list gets one, and when a sale comes in through your link, you keep 90% of it.
If you sell pretty regularly, or you already have followers you can send our way, Pro is probably the better deal for you. The break-even point is around $170 in sales a year. Pro lets you keep 30 cents more of every dollar than Free does, and 30% of $170 is about $51, so once your sales pass that point the $50 has paid for itself.
Your referral link pays you 90%
Every Pro seller gets a referral link for every product they list. When a buyer comes in through your link and buys, you keep 90% of that sale, before Stripe's processing fee. Sales that The Lesson Stand brings in on its own pay Pro sellers 80%.
I did it this way on purpose. When you share your products in your emails, pins, posts and Facebook groups, you're the one doing the work of bringing those buyers here, and I think you should be paid the most for it. That's also why referral links are on Pro and not Free. Free is really meant for trying the site out, but if you plan to send your own followers here, Pro pays you back for it with 90% on your own referrals and 80% on everything else, where Free pays 50%.
One more thing I think is only fair. A buyer who comes in through your link can browse everyone's products, and every one of your products they buy during that same visit pays you 90%, not just the one your link pointed to. If they also put other sellers' products in their cart, those sellers get their normal rate.
What a sale really pays you
Stripe charges 2.9% plus 30 cents on every card payment, and that fee comes out of the seller's share of the sale. We don't add anything on top of it for card processing, and I'd rather show it to you up front than have you find it later. Here's what it looks like on two common prices.
A $4.00 product (Stripe fee: $0.116 + $0.30 = $0.42 rounded)
Free plan, 50%: $2.00 minus $0.42 = $1.58 to you
Pro plan, 80%: $3.20 minus $0.42 = $2.78 to you
Pro with your referral, 90%: $3.60 minus $0.42 = $3.18 to you
A $10.00 product (Stripe fee: $0.29 + $0.30 = $0.59)
Free plan, 50%: $5.00 minus $0.59 = $4.41 to you
Pro plan, 80%: $8.00 minus $0.59 = $7.41 to you
Pro with your referral, 90%: $9.00 minus $0.59 = $8.41 to you
You'll notice the 30-cent part of Stripe's fee takes a bigger bite out of a low-priced product. That happens on any site that takes card payments, so bundling or pricing a little higher helps you keep more of each sale.
The 90% lines only apply to Pro sellers, since referral links are a Pro feature. These numbers use Stripe's standard U.S. card rate. Stripe Connect also charges its own account and payout fees, but The Lesson Stand pays those, so they never come out of your share.
What doesn't change, whichever plan you're on
You never have to sell only with us. Keep selling on other sites, and keep your own store, your memberships and your district licenses. I've never liked being told where I can and can't sell my own work, so I'm not going to do that to you.
What you make belongs to you, and you keep every right to it. We host it, show it and deliver it to buyers, and you can take a listing down any time you want.
Whether you use AI in your work is your call. You're a professional adult, and we don't ban it, label it, or run AI detection on anything. Buyers can judge your work for themselves.
Payouts go through Stripe. Stripe verifies your identity, collects your tax forms and pays you directly.
There's also a minimum every seller agrees to on refunds, because I want buyers to be able to trust the place too. A buyer gets a refund if a file is broken and isn't fixed within 7 days, if a product clearly isn't what the listing described, if they bought the same thing twice by accident, or if a product is taken down within 30 days of when they bought it. You can always be more generous than that, just never less. Refunds come out of the seller's balance, and the platform's share of that sale is returned too.
Sales tax
When a purchase owes sales tax, The Lesson Stand works it out, adds it to the buyer's total at checkout, and pays it wherever the law requires. It never comes out of your share, and you don't have to collect sales tax yourself on anything you sell through The Lesson Stand. At the end of the year, Stripe sends you the income form for your sales.
Coming soon: print your designs
I'm very excited about this one. After launch, we're building print-on-demand into The Lesson Stand, so you'll be able to turn your designs into classroom posters, stickers, shirts, mugs and more. Each order gets printed and shipped to the buyer for you, which means you never have to buy stock ahead of time or keep boxes of inventory in your closet.
You set your own price above the print cost, and we keep 10% of the sale price on printed products if you're on Pro, or 20% if you're on Free. The rest, after the print cost and Stripe's fee, is your profit.
Free and Pro at a glance
If you just want the short version, here it is. Free costs nothing to join, you keep 50% of each sale, and there's a 5-cent monthly charge per listing that your sales cover first. Free doesn't include referral links.
Pro is $50 a year, and the first year is free for the first 50 Pro sellers. You keep 80% of each sale with no per-listing charge, and your own referral link on every product pays you 90% on the sales you bring in.
On both plans you can sell anywhere else you like, your work stays yours, using AI is up to you, and Stripe pays you directly.
If you can't decide, I'd just start on Free and see how it feels. If you already know you'll be sharing your products with your own followers, though, Pro is the one that pays you back for that.