Thought some of you would find this interesting considering what you're trying to accomplish on valME. This website has 1,000,000+ free and priced teaching resources created by teachers where you buy and sell original downloadable educational materials, hard goods, and used educational resources. In other words, the teachers get paid for selling the materials they produce or use for their own classrooms.
According to their About Us page (graphic below), teachers have earned over $76 million so far from selling their own materials. Good for them... and good for the kids.
Edit: To give credit where credit is due, I originally became aware of this site via The $2 Million Teacher.
To provide a supportive community for teachers and to inform and engage in discourse with educational stakeholders about the teaching profession. Learn about and discuss the practice of teaching, receive support from fellow teachers, and gain insight into the teaching profession. Share and discover teaching resources, such as demos, blogs, simulations, and visual aids.
This is absolutely wonderful. I'm going to forward this to a friend who's a teacher. I also want to post the video here that's in the Reason article you linked to because it's a good, quick summary of how beneficial this is to teachers.