I Scraped 20,000 Products on Teachers Pay Teachers. Here's What Actually Sells.
We collected data on 20,761 products from TeachersPayTeachers.com — prices, download counts, ratings, seller follower counts, descriptions, file types, subjects, and grade levels. The results challenge most of the advice you will find in TPT seller Facebook groups.
How We Got the Data
Teachers Pay Teachers is a marketplace where educators sell digital resources to other educators. It has been around since 2006 and claims over 7 million registered users. But how well does the average product actually perform? There is surprisingly little public data on this.
We built a scraper that extracts product data from TPT search results and individual product pages. The technique uses Apollo state extraction — TPT is a React application that embeds its full page state as JSON in the initial HTML payload. By parsing that embedded state instead of scraping rendered DOM elements, we get clean, structured data: prices, download counts, ratings, seller info, file types, grade levels, subjects, and full descriptions.
Our dataset covers 20,761 products sampled across multiple subject areas, grade levels, and price ranges. This is not a complete census of TPT (which has millions of products), but it is large enough to identify real patterns.
Caveats Up Front
This data has survivor bias. Products that were removed, delisted, or abandoned may not appear in search results. Download counts are cumulative and favor older products. Correlation is not causation — a product with high downloads may be popular because of the seller's reputation, not because of the product's attributes. We will flag these issues throughout.
The Brutal Distribution: Most Products Get Almost Nothing
The single most important number in this dataset: the median product has 6 downloads. Not 6,000. Not 600. Six.
The average is 308 downloads, which sounds more encouraging until you understand why. The distribution is extremely right-skewed. A small number of blockbuster products pull the average up dramatically:
- 29.4% of products have zero downloads
- The top 0.5% of products (those with 10,000+ downloads) account for a disproportionate share of total downloads
- The #1 product has 207,259 downloads — a single product inflating the average by itself
The Distribution in Plain English
If you upload a product to TPT today, the most likely outcome is single-digit downloads. The average of 308 is a statistical artifact created by a tiny number of mega-hits. Plan for the median, not the mean.
Price vs. Downloads: Free Dominates, but the Middle Is a Dead Zone
| Price Range | Products | Avg Downloads | Avg Reviews |
|---|---|---|---|
| FREE | 2,309 | 1,765 | 6 |
| $0.01 – $3.00 | 10,527 | 76 | 3 |
| $3.01 – $5.00 | 4,794 | 161 | 8 |
| $5.01 – $10.00 | 1,829 | 233 | 12 |
| $10.01 – $20.00 | 758 | 172 | 11 |
| $20.00+ | 544 | 327 | 18 |
Three patterns jump out:
- Free products average 23x more downloads than the $0–$3 bracket. This is not subtle. Free is a different category entirely.
- The $0–$3 range is the most crowded and lowest-performing paid bracket. Over half of all products (10,527) are priced here, averaging just 76 downloads. This is the dead zone.
- The $20+ bracket outperforms $10–$20. Products over $20 average 327 downloads with 18 reviews. These are bundles, full curricula, and year-long resource packs. Teachers are willing to pay premium prices for comprehensive resources.
The Pricing Paradox
The most common advice for new TPT sellers is "start with low prices to get traction." The data suggests the opposite: the $0–$3 range is a graveyard. Sellers who price at $5+ and invest in quality descriptions and comprehensive resources outperform the cheap-and-cheerful approach. But this likely reflects seller quality more than pricing strategy — experienced sellers price higher because they can.
The Top 5 Most Downloaded Products Are All Free
The most downloaded product in our dataset:
#1: Scientific Method Foldable
207,259 downloads | FREE | by More Time 2 Teach
A single foldable science activity. Free, simple, universally applicable. Two hundred thousand downloads.
The top 5 products are all free. The first paid product does not appear until #10 in the ranking: a special education bundle priced at $21 with 53,253 downloads and 2,679 reviews.
This tells us something important about the TPT ecosystem: free products are discovery engines. They bring teachers to a seller's store. The revenue comes from the paid products those teachers buy afterward. The top free products function more like marketing assets than giveaways.
What Subjects Get the Most Downloads?
| Subject | Avg Downloads |
|---|---|
| Science (General) | 12,972 |
| Math: Geometry | 5,377 |
| Holidays / Seasonal | 3,980 |
| ELA: Reading Strategies | 3,391 |
Science is the standout, averaging nearly 13,000 downloads per product in our sample. This is partly driven by a few mega-products (survivor bias again), but even controlling for outliers, science consistently outperforms. Possible explanations: science resources are more universal across curricula and grade levels, and there may be fewer high-quality science resources competing for attention compared to the saturated ELA market.
Holidays and Seasonal content also performs well. These are time-limited products (Halloween activities, back-to-school resources) that spike annually. Their recurring demand creates a flywheel effect for established products.
Description Length Correlates with Downloads
| Description Length | Avg Downloads |
|---|---|
| Under 500 characters | 242 |
| 500 – 1,000 characters | 277 |
| 1,000 – 2,500 characters | 312 |
| 2,500 – 5,000 characters | 368 |
| 5,000+ characters | 454 |
Products with descriptions over 5,000 characters average nearly twice the downloads of products under 500 characters. The relationship is monotonic — every step up in description length corresponds to higher average downloads.
Causation disclaimer: this does not mean that writing longer descriptions causes more downloads. Experienced sellers who create high-quality products also tend to write detailed descriptions. But the correlation is strong enough to suggest that if you are going to invest time in a TPT product, invest time in the description too. Teachers use descriptions to evaluate whether a resource fits their classroom needs. A thin description leaves too many questions unanswered.
Products Compound Over Time
One of the more encouraging findings: TPT products accumulate downloads over years. Products published in 2014 still average 2,527 downloads. This is a long-tail marketplace where good resources continue earning indefinitely. Unlike a blog post that peaks in traffic and fades, a well-positioned TPT product is closer to a compounding asset.
The flip side: newer products are competing against a decade of established resources with thousands of downloads, reviews, and search ranking signals. Breaking through requires either a novel niche or a significant quality advantage.
What This Means
If you are considering selling on TPT, here is what 20,761 products tell you:
- The default outcome is near-zero downloads. The median is 6. Plan for this, not for the success stories.
- Free products are not charity — they are strategy. The top 5 products are all free. Free builds followers, and followers drive paid sales (more on this in Part 2 of this series).
- Avoid the $0–$3 dead zone. It is the most crowded bracket with the lowest average performance. If you are going to charge, charge enough to signal quality.
- Write long descriptions. The correlation with downloads is consistent and significant.
- Science is underserved relative to demand. General Science averages nearly 13K downloads but is not the most saturated category.
- Products compound. A good product uploaded today will still earn downloads in 2030. Think in years, not weeks.
Up Next in This Series
Part 2 digs into the most important variable we found: seller follower count. The gap between a zero-follower seller and a 50K+ follower seller is 277x in average downloads per product. That number is not a typo. Read Part 2: The Follower Multiplier
Methodology Notes
Data was collected from TeachersPayTeachers.com using Apollo state extraction from server-rendered product and search pages. The dataset includes 20,761 unique products. Download counts, ratings, prices, seller follower counts, file types, grade levels, subjects, description text, and publication dates were captured for each product.
All analysis was performed using SQL queries against a SQLite database. Averages are arithmetic means unless otherwise noted. Medians are reported where the distribution is significantly skewed. Subject and grade-level categorizations use TPT's own taxonomy.
The dataset is a sample, not a census. TPT has millions of products; our 20,761 represent products surfaced through search results across multiple categories. Products that are unlisted, removed, or not indexed in search may not be represented.
This is Part 1 of an ongoing series on TPT marketplace research. Part 2: the follower multiplier | Part 3: file formats and pricing | Part 4: the power law | Part 5: DOC vs PDF correction | Part 6: the three-part flywheel. Follow my journey as I learn new skills and build tools with Brian at Actyra.