A teacher’s maternity leave side hustle made $125,500. Now her old worksheets still earn thousands

A worksheet Becky Powell created years ago could still bring in thousands of dollars without her having to make it again. The Oregon kindergarten teacher turned classroom materials into an online business that generated $125,500 in 2022, while her husband built a separate worksheet store bringing in roughly $50,000 a year.

Powell’s business began during maternity leave when a friend suggested that she use her son’s naptime to earn some extra money. She started creating educational worksheets from her couch or kitchen table and selling them through Teachers Pay Teachers, an online marketplace for classroom resources, as per a report.

Her Old Worksheets Still Bring in Money

Powell’s store, Sight Word Activities, focuses on literacy resources for kindergarteners, first-graders and other young students. Once a worksheet is listed for sale, teachers can continue buying and downloading it, allowing older products to generate revenue long after they are created.


She said in a 2023 interview with CNBC Make It that, “I have worksheets that I created eight years ago that still yield thousands [of dollars] in passive income every year,” adding, “Even when I find myself not able to create ... the sales still come in.”

The business took time to build. Within a few weeks, Powell was earning enough to cover small household bills. Four months in, she was making enough to cover her and her husband’s monthly student loan payments.

Her store brought in $21,000 during its first year and by 2022, revenue had reached $125,500, averaging just over $10,400 a month, as per documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

She Used Her Own Kindergarten Classroom to Develop Products

Powell had an advantage when it came to deciding what to sell, she could see firsthand which concepts her students found difficult.

She used those classroom experiences to create worksheets that helped children learn and then tested the materials with her kindergarteners before offering them to other educators. Powell shared that, “I call my students my clients,” as quoted in the report.

Her husband, Jerome, helped her improve the store’s visibility by studying searches on Teachers Pay Teachers. He showed her how to identify worksheets that were trending and incorporate popular keywords into her profile.

The couple focused the business on Powell’s strength in teaching children to recognize and read sight words.

Her Husband Built a Second Worksheet Business

After seeing Powell’s success, Jerome launched his own Teachers Pay Teachers store, Editable Activities, in 2019. The store sells customizable PDF worksheets and brought in roughly $50,000 a year at the time of the report in 2023.

Jerome works full-time as a computer engineer, while Powell continues teaching kindergarten. The couple combined their businesses under an S corporation in 2021 after their tax consultant recommended the arrangement. Their seller profiles remained separate, but the money flowed to the same place.

As premium sellers, they each paid an annual subscription fee of $59.95 to retain 80% of their sales, according to the 2023 report.

Extra Income Helped Pay Off Student Loans

The couple used the money from their side businesses to pay off their student loans and put money toward their mortgage. They also spent some of it on family trips, including taking their two sons to Disneyland and travelling to Aruba together.

Powell typically spent around 10 hours a week on the business, scaling back when teaching became hectic and picking up the work again during summer.