I’ve had a TPT store since Aug 2013. I had a son in elementary school at the time and I wanted to be able to find products I could remediate him if he was having problems understanding a concept in school.

In Jan 2019 I actually decided to take it serious and start posting my lessons.TOP

TOP 10 TPT TIPS.

1. TPT is viable as a side hustle for teachers. I thought that there was no way for me to compete on the site since there are so many teachers on there in 2019. The marketplace was founded in 2006. I kept having friends tell me you should sell your stuff on there. I’m one of those odd ball teachers that though I did pin things from Pinterest I liked modifying ideas and making them into my own.  In today’s world work/life balance is the buzz talk. I really don’t have much of that. LOL! I really like making stuff art or otherwise. I spent 2018-2019 recreating my own animation curriculum. It was a ton of work! I was putting in 70 hr work weeks and making everything. There are teachers that are in the boat were they need to create a new program and they don’t want to start from scratch. The trade off for buying my lessons and assessments is their time. No one really wants to work 70 hr work weeks. Now I teach graphic design and photography, so I’m adding new products in those area.
2. Quality products. Like a grocery store there are tons of options to choose from. I think the level of quality will help you get sales. Teachers are broke and busy. I want repeat customers, so I make products that I’ve used in my classroom. I have like 4 binders of material I used for my animation pathway last year alone. Really look at your work objectively and decide if it sucks or not. Is this a time saver, and does it work with standards that teachers would teach in that content area. I spent time google searching teachers complaints about TPT products they purchased and made sure I didn’t make those mistakes.
3. Branding. When I first started posting things on TPT I was so busy putting stuff up I didn’t really thinking about the look and branding of my products. Which is a bummer, when post 100 products and you realize you gotta go back and fix it all. I made consistent thumbnails, previews, color palette.
4. Links. Linking to your other products and social media platforms is really helpful on TPT. I didn’t do that originally and started noticing when looking at other peoples stores that they had all those links. I keep a plan text file that has that info. I try and do that for my Youtube videos. It really is good to have a starter template to work from. Copy & Paste. That saves you a ton of time.
5. Double Down. What does sell on your site double down on. I realized very quickly what products were selling. I then just when gang busters on creating more variations in that product. They continue to sell. I look at my sales analytics from the site. Compare and contrast. Fix what isn’t selling and see if that helps. I’ve added more content and that helped fix some of my issues.
6. Who doesn’t like FREE! This is me personally I don’t charge for classroom management products on my site. I feel like some of my customers are new and broke teachers. The area they are probably going to be weak in will be classroom management. I got  help from other teachers and it really helped me out. I pass that along. I also provide some intro lessons for free to give people and idea of the quality of my products.
7. Pinterest/Blogging. For me my customers mainly find me by searching on TPT. The second place they are coming from is Pinterest. I did an experiment and spent $50 on social media ads to see what worked best for getting the word out on my TPT store. The best results i got was from Pinterest. Makes sense. All of us teachers are pinning our way to success and getting ideas from other teachers. The audience is primarily educated women and it helps them create vision boards for who and what they want to be. I organize my pins on boards, and then I did ask to try and become members of some popular boards. That helps get your products out there. Make sure you follow the rules of the board. I got this info from another TPT seller. He had a youtube video on it. If you google it should come up. Blogging is another great way to improve your SEO, and I use it to provide supplementary free info for my customers. I post weekly overviews of what I’m teaching. I also post when I put a new freebie on my store. I’ll post it on the boards I’m members of. I also switched my account to a business. That way you get access to analytics and promoting your pins. I will say it took me more time to get used to how stop my ads on Pinterest. FB and Instagram are easier.This is my personal observation on why Pinterest works for TPT. The company really didn’t do as aggressive profit revenue generation in the beginning. Which to me works heavily in their favor. When I first joined never saw any ads. You felt like you weren’t being sold to all the time. FB and Instagram I can tell more of when I am getting sponsored content. FB is getting worse and worse. I rarely pay attention to the ads. In the past year the sponsored content on Pinterest has grown considerably, but because of how Pinterest is laid out and I’m seeing a whole lot of images that I’m interested in at one time with the occasional ad content it doesn’t seem as intrusive.  I mentioned the audience is primarily women and educated, so the cross over of a lot of female teachers. I am more likely to try something from Pinterest than I would from FB or Instagram.

   Their IPO went public this week. They are a company that is in the negative, but next year their revenue is projected to be $1.6 Billion from overseas revenue. I read that on money/stock site. I did purchase 2 shares.

8. Sales Tax. Do some research or talk to someone about tax implications on TPT. They started nexus for some of the states in Jan 2019. I submit my own sales tax. The dreaded tax man, but it isn’t that bad. I made calls to my state tax center and they walked me through it. I also called my local state/county business license office. I got my license and sales tax permit. I feel better that I went ahead and did this. Being a teacher I’m not much of a rule breaker. It will also helps you to get your own business checking/savings at your local bank.
9. Regular Products. Posting products on a regular basis will help you show up on the feed of those that are following you. It shows up on the homepage.
10. Collaborating. I’d like to collaborate with other teachers that are blogging and Youtube. I really need to get out and DM people. It’s hard having the confidence. I’ll keep you posted on how that all works out. I’ve been doing that on FB as well with other illustrators. I’m an introvert at heart, so this is a big step for me.

Good grief this is a long post. I hope it will be helpful to teachers that want to jump into TPT. I think it is never too late.