Hey TPT sellers! Ready to see growth in your business? You’re in the right place. Welcome to The Savvy Teacher Seller. I’m Kristen Doyle. And I’m here to give you no fluff tools and strategies that will really make an impact on your sale. Let’s get started y’all.
Hey, y’all, and welcome to this episode of the savvy teacher seller. I’m your host, Kristen Doyle. And today I am diving into a topic that I think will be really helpful for a lot of you. This topic actually came about from an Instagram story I posted a few days ago, and I had three different people comment basically asking me variations of the same question.
And that question was, how to prioritize your TPT tasks when you are extremely busy. I know that is something a lot of us resonate with. And so today, I’m going to focus on how to prioritize your tasks based on where you are in your TPT journey.
Whether you’re a newer seller, and you’re still building up your store, or you’ve been around a long time, the tasks that you should be prioritizing on the most will be a little different. So I am going to talk about both of those in today’s episode. And this is a topic I have definitely struggled with throughout my TPT journey, I’ve seen both sides of this particular coin. So I’m excited to kind of share some of the things that I’ve learned along the way.
Like I said, your priorities as far as the top three tasks you should be focusing on for TPT really depend on where you are in your TPT journey. The priorities for brand new sellers, are going to be very different from established sellers. So I’m going to start out talking to newer sellers who are still building up your store. And then I will talk to you if you’re a more established seller and you have a good sized catalog already filled with quality resources.
Now, if you’re not sure which of these you fall into, then chances are you might be somewhere in the middle. I know there are people who would throw out specific numbers of products you need in order to really be successful. As a seller, I’ve heard the number 50 products, I’ve also heard 100. To be honest, I really don’t believe that there is any magic number of products that you need to get to before you’re considered a veteran seller.
I have seen some very established very successful sellers with under 50 products in their store. So it really does depend on your niche on your inspiration for products, and kind of how you feel about your catalog and your experience level. If you still feel like you’re a new seller and you don’t know everything, you’re still kind of learning the basics of TPT, then you fall under a newer seller.
If you still feel like you don’t have enough resources in your store, or you have a ton of ideas that you feel like you really need to get out there in order for your catalog of resources to be well rounded, then you’re a newer seller.
But on the flip side, if you feel pretty confident in your product creation, if you have gotten kind of settled on TPT. If you feel good about the number of resources that are in your shop, then I would say that you are a veteran seller in this case.
So let’s start with talking to those of you who consider yourself a newer seller. This means that you’re still building up your catalog of products, you’re still learning some of the basics on TPT. Let’s talk about what your top three priorities should be.
The first one should be to get to know your audience. Before you even start creating resources, you really do need to know who your audience is, what they need, and how they are searching for it. Those are the big three things that will help you to know what types of products you should be creating, and also how to describe and how to market your products.
So if you are still not quite sure who your target audience is or what resources they need, spend some time getting to know them. One of the best ways to do that is to pay attention to what teachers in your niche are saying on social media.
So look at their comments on other people’s Instagram posts. Look at what they’re saying in Facebook groups. Pay attention to the teachers in your teacher’s lounge and what they are needing as far as resources. That way you’ll know what you should be creating. And you’ll have the right words to use when you’re describing those resources as well.
As a new seller, your second priority should be to take that information that you have about your audience and create high quality resources. Now one big mistake that I see a lot of newer sellers make is they try to just crank out as many resources as they can as fast as they can and they don’t focus as much on the quality of the resource.
This is important for a couple of reasons. First of all, higher quality resources are going to get better reviews and ratings than lower quality ones. And those reviews and ratings do matter. They help buyers trust you. And they’re really important for your store overall. But more than that, these products that we are creating for teachers to use in their classrooms with their students really matter.
So we have a responsibility to make sure that the resources we’re providing teachers are educationally sound, they’re inclusive of all of our learners, that when a brand new teacher who doesn’t know any better yet, buys your resource and uses it exactly as is that it’s going to be a good educational experience for all of their students.
So make sure that you’re keeping that in mind as you’re creating resources. Take some time to learn what makes a resource high quality, and then spend the extra few minutes to make sure your products really fit those qualifications. This includes things like adding the answer keys, and the rubrics, creating lesson plans to help a teacher do a better job of implementing your product, adding on teaching notes that will help the teacher do a better job.
All of those things can help your resource be higher quality. And in the long run, this is going to build buyers who come back for your resources. And it’s going to make a bigger and a better impact in the classroom, which is really what we’re all here for in the end.
Your third priority as a new seller should be to build a brand style and a brand presence. So let’s talk about both of those. When it comes to your brand style, it is really fun to play around with fonts and colors and different combinations, different styles of clipart. So go ahead and do that for a while.
Use that to kind of find your style, find what works for your products and what feels like you. But then eventually, you’ll want to narrow it down, make a decision and stick with that brand style, at least for a long time. Now, I’m not saying you can’t ever change it styles definitely change over time. Fonts and color patterns that we were using several years ago just aren’t in style now. And so they don’t sell well. Things have shifted. And my branding has shifted a little bit to accommodate that and yours will too.
But at least for quite some time, you should find a style that is going to work for you something that feels timeless that you’ll be able to use for your products and stick with it. This is helpful for two reasons.
First of all, it builds brand recognition, because buyers will start to recognize your products when they see them on social media or they see them in the TPT search. And so that builds brand recognition. And if buyers know they like you, they are more likely to click on your product than someone else’s who they don’t know that they like. The other reason that this is a really good move is because it makes product creation a lot faster and a lot easier.
Now I know a lot of us really love to play with different combinations, and get creative and make every resource totally brand new. But your product creation process and your cover and thumbnail and preview creation process is so much faster and easier when you have some templates, or you’ve already chosen your brand fonts and colors and you stick with those. It’s faster, it’s easier, and it makes your products more cohesive.
Now let’s talk about brand presence for a minute. Even if you’re not ready for a web presence outside TPT just yet. Maybe you don’t want to start posting on social media, you’re not ready to make a website, I would still recommend right now that you claim your names.
And what I mean by that is that you sign up for social media accounts with your TPT store as the handle and that you buy your domain for your TPT store name. It is never too early to secure those names just so that someone else can’t take them and start using them. Case in point. I have a Twitter account for chalk and apples. I don’t even know if we’re calling it Twitter. I guess we’re calling it x now.
But I have an account for talking apples. I do not tweet. I have probably put five tweets in the grand scheme of my entire Twitter career on there. But I have that account because I don’t want anyone else to be chalk and apples on Twitter, because that’s my brand.
So go ahead and sign up for all of the social media handles that you can even if you don’t intend to use them yet, because you want to secure them so that someone else can’t.
Alright, those are your top three priorities if you are a newer TPT seller, but let’s talk about veteran sellers. You are established as a seller, you’re feeling kind of settled with how to create and what to create on TPT, you have a solid catalogue of products that you know are high quality. Here are your top three priorities.
Your number one priority should be to analyze your sales data. Look at your best sellers each month, how many page views are they getting that month? What percentage of viewers are buying the resource once they see the page? That’s your conversion rate on TPT. Use this data to drive the updates that you’re making the products that you’re creating all of those things so that you can sell more of your resources.
Now, like I said, I would recommend looking at your best sellers in every month and using those as kind of a good high benchmark for goals that you want to aim for with other products. Now keep in mind when you’re looking at conversion rates, that is an average of the number of people who purchase to the number of people who view the product listing page.
And because it is an average, you do need a threshold of around 300 pageviews for that conversion rate to be really, really reliable. But you also can start to see trends earlier than that in a lot of cases. So don’t feel like you can’t look at conversion rates until you get 300 pageviews each month.
But do keep in mind that that’s sort of that threshold number for that conversion rate to be reliable. Prior to that point, you’re looking at trends, you’re noticing things, and you can definitely use it to drive some of your decision making. But it’s just not as statistically valid yet.
Now the reason that you want to be looking at your data is so that you can do priority number two, which is refining and updating your existing products. And you’re going to let the data lead you in what updates you’re making.
The reason that I want you to focus more on refining and updating existing products than on creating new ones is because as an established seller, you already have a catalog full of great products. And they probably shouldn’t be selling better than they are no matter where you are in your journey no matter how much you’re making on them, they could be selling more.
So like I said, as you’re looking at your existing products, let the data lead. If you’re not getting enough traffic, then you want to go in and update the SEO, the keywords that are in your title and your description. Update your cover image so that people get excited and want to click on it in the search results.
On the flip side, if you’re getting traffic to your listing, but teachers aren’t buying it, then I would look first at updating your thumbnail images, and your preview. And then maybe also consider updating the price, the content of the resource itself or just the styling of the resource itself.
When you’re thinking about updating content or the style of the resource, keep in mind what the current trends are. If this is a resource you created many many years ago, then it’s entirely possible that the resource itself is still great. But buyers aren’t buying it because the fonts are out of style or you’ve still got chevrons all over the place. And it’s time to give that product a little bit of a facelift, just so that it looks current.
And then there are certainly cases where you need to update the content of the resource itself. That’s where you want to use your buyer feedback to help drive those changes. If you’re getting a lot of feedback on the resource that isn’t as good as it used to be, that could be an indication that your content is out of date or that you’re missing some things and you need to add to or change some of the content of the resource so that it will continue to sell.
Now I’m going to give you a little bit of tough love, if you have tried updating those visuals on your resource. So the cover the thumbnails, the preview, maybe you’ve tried updating the styles, and the data isn’t showing any improvement, then it might be time to try to break out of the mold that you’ve created for yourself a little bit.
See, we all get attached to certain fonts and colors and clipart. And we are sometimes willing to change everything else but not those. And it might be that those are the things that are out of date and that need to get changed.
Or maybe we just aren’t willing to spend the time to learn how to take better photos or to use mock ups. So those images we’re putting on those visuals don’t look as good as they need to. See on TPT, our kind of overall marketing has improved so much in recent years. And if your photos, if your layouts on your covers and thumbnails, if yours are not measuring up to other people’s, that could be a reason that a buyer is clicking on someone else’s resource instead of yours.
So if you are feeling like maybe that is a problem for you, and you need to break out of the mold that you’ve created, then I would recommend sharing some of your resources that you’re working on with a TPT friend, or looking in your TPT Facebook groups for what is currently trending.
Ask people for some feedback and be willing to accept some feedback that maybe isn’t just telling you how great your resources are. I know we all love to hear that. But you need to be willing to accept some constructive criticism and to make those changes so that your resources will continue to sell.
Alright, your number three priority if you are an established seller is to find a way to connect with your audience. And I would say your top priority there, your must do would be to keep on top of your TPT questions. This is a place where people who are actively looking to purchase your resource are trying to contact you to get more information, or they’ve bought your resource and they’re struggling with something and they’re trying to contact you before they leave bad feedback.
So don’t let those questions kind of slide and go unanswered. Make sure you’re staying on top of that. But beyond that, when it comes to connecting with your audience, I know by the time we become veteran or established sellers, we probably are already connecting with our audience in multiple channels.
And if you are stressed out and overwhelmed, one of the best ways to limit the amount of work you’re doing is to pick just one of those channels to put your energy into. And this is another great place to start looking at your data. Which channel that you’re using, are you getting actual results from? And then decide to go all in on that channel and either ignore or automate everything else.
Now for me, my top picks would be email or Facebook ads. And honestly, Facebook ads is my top pick right now because it requires so much less work on my end than emailing does. Now for some of you, maybe those are not working at all for you. And it’s one of your social media accounts that’s converting well.
There’s no right or wrong answer for this, it really depends on who your audience is and where you like to show up. Because we are all going to do better in the places where we actually like to participate and show up and connect with our audience.
I want you to consider letting go of the idea that you have to keep doing something just because you’ve been doing it in the past. If we try to do all the things we’ve ever done before, sometimes what that means is we’re hanging on to something that’s just not working. And we’re spending a lot of time and energy on it.
If your Facebook group is dead, archive it and move along. If you do really great on Instagram, but no one is engaging when you post on Facebook, then you can always at turn on that setting that auto post your Instagram content straight over to Facebook, and call it good.
This way, you’re not disappearing from Facebook, but you’re also realistically not spending any time on it. Because you’re just pushing the content straight over from Instagram.
I am currently in the process of automating all of my Chalk and Apple’s social media. Because what I discovered when I looked at the data was that the time and the money I was spending on social media, and that’s Instagram and Facebook organic posts, really were not giving me a good return on that investment.
So I am in the process of creating some evergreen posts that I can set up so that they automatically repost every so often. That way I am still showing up on social media, because it is good for building know like and trust factor. But it is not converting into sales for me. So I don’t want to pour a ton of time into it.
So, as an established seller, make sure that you are looking at the things that you have started doing in the past to make sure that they really are still worth your time. And don’t feel like anything is wrong with you if they’re not worth your time anymore. trends change our audiences change. I know I am personally not spending the time on the same social media platforms now that I was 10 years ago.
So it is just normal for those things to change. And it’s good for us as business owners to shift and change with our audience.
All right, friends. In today’s episode, we explored the top three tasks that you should be prioritizing depending on where you are in In your TPT journey, just to recap, if you’re a newer seller, those top three tasks are to get to know your audience, to create high quality resources for them, and to work on building your brand.
For more established sellers, it’s all about analyzing your sales data, using that to refine your existing products so that they sell better, and then finding one good way to connect with your audience. Keep in mind, you can be successful on TPT without doing everything, it’s really more about doing the right things and putting your time and effort into the things that are going to give you the biggest return on that investment.
Your action step for this episode is to identify where you are in your journey, and implement at least one of those top three tasks that we talked about today. If you’re a new seller, then I would start with spending some time getting to know your audience so that you can create those high quality resources and build your brand.
If you’re a veteran seller, the first thing you should do is take a look at your sales data and identify one product that would benefit from an update and then make those updates. That’s it for today’s episode.
If you enjoyed this episode, then definitely make sure to tune in next week, where we kind of continue the discussion on what we should be doing in our TPT businesses by talking about some product mistakes that TPT sellers make. Thanks for listening. I’ll talk to you soon.
I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If you did, please share it with another teacher seller who would also find it helpful. For more resources on Growing Your TPT business. Head to Kristindoyle.co/TPT. Talk to you soon.
