How to sell language teaching materials online (English and other languages)

Material sells when it saves someone time or solves a problem with a deadline. There are two different buyers; decide who you're making it for:

• Other teachers buy what cuts prep time: lesson plans, worksheets, conversation cards, printable games.
• Students buy what gets them closer to a goal: exam prep, vocabulary for a field, a pronunciation guide, a study plan.

Every example has a level, a topic and an audience. "English material" is too vague; "50 B1 conversation cards about remote work" tells me in three seconds whether it's for me. People asking how to sell language teaching materials online think about the platform first, but specificity is what sells.

There's no price list for teacher-made material. Three reference points help you land on your number:

• What your hour is worth. If the pack saves another teacher two hours of prep, a price below one of your lessons is easy to justify.
• The size of the promise. An annotated practice test for someone with an exam date is worth more than a single worksheet.
• Net, not gross. Take the platform fee off before you decide. On a R$ 19.90 product, a fixed R$ 2.49 fee already takes more than 12% of the sale.

A simple structure: one free item and two or three paid ones that go deeper on the same topic. Whoever liked the sample already knows how you teach. For your students, material can also be a bonus in a lesson package.

The content is what the buyer is looking for; the packaging is what makes them trust it. PDF checklist:

• A cover with the title, level (A1 to C2) and audience in large type. That's what shows up in the storefront.
• An instructions page: how to use it in class, how long it takes, what to prepare.
• An answer key at the end, so teachers can print only the student pages.
• Margins that work on screen and on paper.
• Fonts and images licensed for commercial use, or made by you.
• A clean file name, like english-b1-remote-work-cards.pdf, and a file light enough to download on a phone.
• A license page saying what the buyer can and can't do.

This template is a starting point, not legal advice. If you sell to schools or in volume, have a lawyer review the license.

The golden rule: only sell what you created. Brazil's copyright law, Law 9,610/1998, protects texts, illustrations, photographs and musical compositions (art. 7), and art. 29 requires the author's prior, express permission to reproduce, adapt or translate a work. Scanning pages from a publisher's coursebook, retyping its exercises or adapting a chapter and selling the result means using someone else's work without permission.

What the law doesn't protect leaves plenty of room (art. 8): ideas, methods, systems, rules of games and the use of the ideas contained in works. In practice:

• Allowed: using a well-known teaching approach, a game format (bingo, memory, spin the wheel) or an exam's question type, as long as the texts, sentences, images and questions are yours.
• Allowed, with care: quoting a short passage from another work for study or critique, to the extent justified and naming the author and source (art. 46, III).
• Not allowed: copying exercises, texts and illustrations from books, official exams or other teachers; using song lyrics or photos from the internet without a license.

The law protects you too: protection doesn't depend on registration (art. 18). Keep your original files with dates, which help prove authorship if someone copies you.

When in doubt, write it from scratch. Original material is the only kind you can sell anywhere with peace of mind.

Brazilian info-product platforms like Hotmart, Kiwify and Eduzz sell courses and e-books to any audience, with a ready-made checkout and features like members areas and affiliates, but you bring the audience. A teacher storefront sits where your audience already is: next to your profile, your lessons and other teachers.

For a R$ 39.90 pack, counting only the per-sale fees in the table, you keep: R$ 33.46 on Hotmart, R$ 33.82 on Kiwify, R$ 35.45 on Eduzz before withdrawal and, on Ludi, R$ 37.90 before the card fee, or R$ 35.92 with Stripe Brazil's domestic card fee (3.99% + R$ 0.39). Installments and early payouts, where they exist, come out of the net.

Fees checked on the official pages in October 2026. Platforms change prices and terms often: check before you publish and always compare what actually reaches your account.

• Use it in class first. The student who enjoyed the exercise is your first buyer, and the material reaches your storefront already tested.
• Give away a free sample. One worksheet or a free mini pack shows your standard and leads to the paid ones.
• Show a page from inside. In a post, story or email, a real page convinces more than the cover.
• Be where teachers look. A complete profile in the teacher directory and the community put your name in front of people who teach the same lessons.
• Tie it to your lessons. Offer the material as a package bonus or at a discount for current students.

On Ludi, the storefront is part of your public profile and lives in the same dashboard you teach from. Buyers pay by card and get the download link by email; you're paid straight into your account, and Ludi keeps 5% of the sale.

• What shows up: free or paid materials. Activity sheets and slides open just as students see them; PDFs download right away, free or after purchase.
• Where it shows up: on your profile, on find materials, with everything teachers have published, and on the marketplace, which brings together the e-books and PDFs for sale.
• Who gets a storefront: paid plans, starting with Essential (R$ 99 a month). The storefront and public profile open as soon as the plan starts. See the plans.

If you want to sell language teaching materials online without building a store from scratch, the storefront handles the tedious part: checkout, file delivery and payout.