Why I don’t sell resources
Everything I put on here is free. You can use it, change do whatever you like with it apart from selling it. I just don’t believe that it’s right for teachers to be paying for resources out of their own pockets.
I started making this site because I didn’t like the way TES was starting to bring in paid for resources. I get emails saying I could be making money from my resources but that money comes from other teachers who will inevitably be buying things with their own money. I’m not against whole packages that are bought in by departments, they can be a great way to help out busy teachers but is an individual worksheet really worth £2 and would the small amount I’d make each month from it actually mean anything to me?
When I worked in a very small department and had no one to share ideas I joined twitter and found a whole community of wonderful people who were sharing things all the time and it was a lifeline. I often joke that I didn’t have a real life department so I just found an online one. My department are now amazing but I still think the way maths teachers across the country share resources is fantastic. There are plenty of challenges facing maths teachers right now but I do feel like as a community we’re pretty good at working together.
After the non calculator paper for GCSE I decided that what I’d do is make one decent resource and then see what everyone else put out. It worked really well I shared some revision clocks which created more traffic to the site the night I posted them than the rest of the month combined. In return I found loads of predicted papers which I used with students so that by the time we got to the exam they had seen a really good variety of questions.
If you use and like the things I make that’s brilliant I’d love to hear about it but I don’t need £2 a worksheet, share something you’ve made with someone else and pay it forward. If you really feel like you have extra money burning a hole in your pocket go buy a packet of biscuits each for your admin staff, IT support and another department.
p.s if you are selling resources this is not in anyway meant as a dig at you it’s just my philosophy on it.
Ms Steel Maths 
June 12, 2016 at 10:47 am
I totally understand your point and I agree that we have a wonderful sharing community of teachers. Most of the excellent resources that I have found and used successfully in my lessons has been shared freely by teachers like you. I often feel like I work in the same ‘online department’ that you refer to! My generous colleagues who have become ‘household names’ include CorbettMaths, Coleen Young, Mr Barton, MissB, Mel from JustMaths, MathsGenie, MikeThain, dyDan, Mark Greenaway, Mohammed Ladak from MathedUp, Mr Collins, Will Emeny, Resourceaholic, Mr Reddy and many others who will possibly never know how much they’ve helped me and my students. My contribution has always been to list, share, refer or link to all of these free resources for maths teachers as a service or thank-you to those who have spent hours creating them. I am looking forward to seeing more of your resources and thanks for the revision clocks, they are very useful.
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