Are you a high-achieving student or school leaver who feels like making some quick cash while helping others? Feeling sad that your personally curated and well-appointed stack of high school notes, essays, and resources are going to waste? Look no further, as we’ll explore the best websites to sell your notes and other resources that gets you the best bang for your buck and attracts a large buyer-base, all while earning industry-leading low commissions with each sale.
Choosing a website to sell on might seem simple. You just upload your notes, and make money. However, this is a complex decision. We’ve conducted extensive research and found the pros and cons of each major site, including how they are advertised, monetised, copyrighted, and transmitted.
Choosing the wrong site may result in:
- Buyers settling for free resources
- You paying crazy amounts in commissions and sales fees
- Poor discovery and marketing of your content
This leads to a lot of wasted time and missed opportunities to give back to a learning community while earning truly passive income. So, we’ve prepared a comprehensive comparison between Notes2u and our biggest competitors, showing how we’ve delivered optimisation and improvements across all key areas for people looking to sell their resources.
Note: We are only engaging in comparison between Notes2u and other paid sites for resource sharing. Open-access sites like Bored of Studies, AceHSC, THSC, and ATARNotes are incredibly valuable resources to students, but a lot of their uploads (e.g., schools’ past papers) breach copyright laws, and quality is often unverified, requiring students to spend lots of time sifting through varying grades of resources and notes.
Best ways to sell your resources
Notes2u
Overview
Notes2u is a new entrant to the high school resource market, aiming to provide a better experience for sellers and buyers. They provide a marketplace to sell HSC notes and essays.
Commission
Notes2u offers industry-leading low commissions of 20%, plus a transaction fee of 2% + $0.30, providing more money for your hard work. This means that you get 75-80% of sales on average.
Pricing and Discounts
Notes2u has a consistent pricing model for each type of resource. This makes buyer choice easier, and means you are not struck with any suprise discounts to your earnings unlike other sites.
Distribution Methods
Notes2u has a unique online-only or download distribution model. Sellers can choose whether their resources are accessible for a period of 1 year online, or locally through a download that is accessible forever. This provides both sellers and buyers flexibility with their budget and access controls.
Copyright Ownership
With Notes2u, sellers retain all rights to their content. This means they are free to sell and distribute their notes using other platforms.
Payments
Notes2u pays sellers at the end of each week, with funds deposited into your bank account for no extra fee. Proceeds from sales are credited to your platform balance instantly, allowing you to track your earnings.
Visit the Notes2u website here.
High School Notes
Overview
High School Notes is a site created by the team behind High School Tutors. It allows sellers to list only subject notes for all exams in Australia.
Commission
High School Notes takes a high 30% commission from each sale. Combined with any other transaction and payout fees, this means you only receive a maximum of 70% of the sale price.
Pricing and Discounts
High School Notes’ terms state that they can discount your notes up to 30% at their discretion. This means an even bigger involuntary pay cut for the seller.
Distribution Methods
High School Notes only allows downloads of notes, which are difficult to prevent from being circulated among friends as opposed to only-only distribution.
Copyright Ownership
High School Notes does not publish their copyright terms. Sellers might not be able to sell or distribute their notes listed on High School Notes on other platforms.
Payments
High School Notes pays direct to your bank account using Stripe Connect, which may incur further fees and restrictions.
Visit the High School Notes website here.
Studocu
Overview
Studocu, founded in 2013, is an online platform to share resources like lecture notes, summaries, and exam prep documents.
Commission
For each upload, sellers get free Premium access to the Studocu platform for 14 days. They do not refer to any cash payments for uploading notes.
Pricing and Discounts
Studocu has a subscription pricing model, with students paying to access their whole libary for a monthly price.
Distribution Methods
Studocu offers an online viewer and download options for Premium subscribers.
Copyright Ownership
Studocu claims ownership over all notes uploaded to their site. This means sellers cannot distribute their notes using other platforms once uploaded to Studocu.
Payments
Studocu does not refer to any payments as they use subscription credits as a reward for uploaders.
Visit the Studocu website here.
Thinkswap
Overview
Thinkswap is a platform that allows students to exchange their notes with each other. Additionally, Thinkswap Elite allows uploaders to earn a royalty each time their notes are sold, rather than credits from Thinkswap Classic.
Commission
The default earning rate starts at 50%, with an increased rate of up to 65% with the use of Royalty Boosters. This means Thinkswap takes between a 35-50% commission from every sale.
Pricing and Discounts
The royalty you receive is based on the price the buyer paid for the Exchange credits. This results in varying payments for the same resource, as credits can be bought in larger bundles at a cheaper per-credit price.
Distribution Methods
Thinkswap distributes files using a download only method. This means buyers can easily share the resources they download.
Copyright Ownership
With Thinkswap, you retain copyright of the documents you upload, however those directly from Thinkswap cannot be distributed and are tracked using a watermark.
Payments
Payments are made once a month via PayPal or Bank Transfer.
Visit the Thinkswap website here.
Forums and Social Media
Overview
Forums and social media are another way to advertise your notes for sale. They provide an informal setting to market to your existing networks and the broader student body.
Commission
There is no commission involved when selling using forums and social media, however watch out for self-advertising rules on forums, as some do not allow selling anything using their platform.
Pricing and Discounts
Pricing is inconsistent, with sellers asking any price they wish. This increases indecision for buyers, and leads in a race to the bottom as sellers try to compete with each other on price.
Distribution Methods
Distribution is difficult when selling with forums and social media. Most sellers can only provide a download, as online-only viewers are complex pieces of software that are hard to implement and host.
Copyright Ownership
You retain copyright of your notes, however it is difficult to enforce as a single person.
Payments
Payments are also tricky with this method. Sellers and buyers must deal with awkward bank transfers, waiting several business days for money to arrive.
Conclusion
For a full comparison of all features, see this table.
If you would like to find out more about the specifics of our pricing model and commission rates, head to our sellers’ page to get started!