Deanna Jump charges as much as $100 per lesson plan

Oct 2, 2012 11:52 GMT  ·  By
Deanna Jump rose from struggling teacher to millionaire by selling lesson plans online
   Deanna Jump rose from struggling teacher to millionaire by selling lesson plans online

Deanna Jump is a 43-year-old kindergarten and first grade teacher form Georgia, in the US, who just joined the millionaires' club by selling lesson plans on TeacherPayTeachers.com.

TeachersPayTeachers is an online platform allowing teachers to exchange lesson plans. The site was created in 2006 by Paul Edelman, a former middle school English teacher himself. The New York City-based website allows teachers to not only help each other with prospects, but make extra money in the process, TechCrunch informs.

When Edelman started his business, there were already tons of websites out there, offering the same service for free. He based his business plan on the assumption that the possibility of high earnings made participants more motivated in creating quality content.

It paid off, and he sold his company to Scholastic for $500,000 (€387,000) shortly after founding it. He managed to then buy it back, at a discount, in 2009, and is currently processing $30 million (€ 23 million) per year in sales.

Lesson plan transactions made one of the users a millionaire in her own right, inc.com reports. Deanna Jump sells creative, interactive lesson plans for kindergarteners. She markets her products on her teaching blog, Mrs. Jump's class.

Deanna made a killing starting off using the website, and her figures keep rising, the creator of the site explained.

"This trend began in 2010 when Deanna earned around $27,000 (€20,000) in the last quarter of [the year]. We thought it may have been an anomaly, but it turned out it was just the beginning. This quarter, she'll make around a quarter of a million dollars," he said.

Her lesson plans are priced according to their complexity, with some costing just a few dollars to some, more intricate ones, setting teachers back $100 (€78). For this fee, she offers a full set of posters that cover an entire year's worth of teaching material.

More than 17,000 follow the teacher turned entrepreneur, giving her positive reviews and a perfect 4.0 satisfaction rating. 15% of her earnings go back to the company administering the website. The commission is set differently for premium users, as beginner uploaders are charged 40% of their income from lesson plan sales.