Hey TPT sellers ready to seek 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, today’s episode is all about time management for TPT sellers. And we all know that our time is so limited, and such a precious commodity as TPT sellers. We wear a lot of hats in our business and in our personal lives. Whether you’re a full time seller, or you’re juggling TPT with a full time teaching job or another business, time management really is a key to maximizing your productivity and profitability.
So let’s dive into some tips that can help you get more out of the time you have to work on your TPT business. Tip number one is to focus on needle moving activities, the ones that give you the most return on the time that you invest. If you’ve never heard of The Pareto principle, I’m going to introduce you to it today. It says that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. And it is amazing how often this is true in our business and personal lives. It is definitely true for our TPT businesses.
Now, for a TPT seller, the biggest return on investment is usually going to be something product focused, whether you are creating new products, or you’re updating existing ones for better SEO and for improved conversions. Now, which of these two you need to put most of your focus on, probably depends on what stage of business you’re in. And it will change as you go through different seasons in your business. If you’re a brand new seller, you probably just need to focus on creating high quality products to begin with.
If you’ve been around a long time, like I have, then there will come times when you need to put a pause on product creation. And go back to some older products that are underperforming to update those. Once you finish those updates, maybe it’s time to slide back into some more product creation again. Either way, prioritize those tasks that move the needle in your business the most.
My second tip is to evaluate the things you’re doing as far as marketing, for the return on investment that you’re getting from those or the ROI. You’ll want to identify which of your marketing efforts are getting the best results. Maybe it’s a specific social media platform that’s performing well for you. Or it’s your blog that always drives traffic to your products. Maybe it’s your email list or some ads that you’re running.
Whatever it is identify the one that is giving you the best results and double down on that one, it might even be tough to eliminate some of the marketing tactics you’ve tried that just aren’t working for you. And keep in mind that it doesn’t matter which marketing strategies you use, it doesn’t matter if yours are the same as another sellers. Or if someone else is doing something that you feel like you should try.
We are all individual very different people. And so what works well, for me and for my audience may not work well for you and yours. And that’s okay. So make sure that you are using marketing strategies that feel good to you and that resonate with your specific audience.
You also want to be sure as you’re thinking about these first two tips, that you’re balancing your time between product creation or updates and marketing, because both of these are important for growing a profitable business. This is another situation where you might need to put more focus on one part of this over the other depending on what season you’re in, in your business right now.
Tip number three is to take advantage of small little moments where you are just waiting. And my suggestion for this is to create a list of tasks that you can do in 5,15,30 and 60 minutes. Keep those somewhere that you can access them on the go. Maybe in your phone’s Notes app or a task management app, something that you always have with you. And then when you have some downtime, pick something off your list and get it done.
Some good examples of this are when you are waiting in the lobby of maybe a dentist’s office or doctor’s office for an appointment. Or you’re in the car line waiting to pick your kids up from school. I get a ton of things done sitting in the car line just waiting to pick my kids up. When your kids are at sports practices and things like that these are great times where you are just sitting, that you can knock off a few to do’s off of your work task list.
And tip number four is all about using template and standard operating procedures or SOPs, to save time, and maybe even more importantly, mental energy. Templates, of course, are just pre designed tools, documents, graphics, those sorts of things. Canvas templates are a great place to start that you can use as a starting point when you’re creating new content.
For example, you could use a product template to fast track your start on brand new products. I like to keep a product template that already has my copyright on every page has some very common page layouts that I use over and over, especially for things like my Terms of Use, table of contents, teaching notes, those sorts of things are all laid out and ready for me to just drop content in.
This can really help you get a quick start on a brand new product. And it helps you to maintain consistency in your style and your branding, You can also use a blog post template to help structure your blog post consistently. I love to use Canva templates to help me create product covers thumbnails and previews. Templates are great because they can save you a ton of time and effort. Because you don’t have to start from scratch every time you create something new.
I cannot even begin to tell you how much time I save by using Canva templates for covers thumbnails and previews. Because I am no longer staring at that blank white page, trying to decide what to put where I have a template it’s laid out, I just plugged the details in, move some things around so it all looks unique, change up some colors, and I’m ready to go. It makes that process so much faster.
Let’s talk about SOPs, or standard operating procedures. Those are step by step instructions for completing a certain task or a specific process. And I know it can feel like a lot of extra work to create the SOPs. But having SOPs for tasks that you perform regularly will help you ensure that you’re following the same steps every time and you will avoid making mistakes this way.
It can also save you a ton of time and mental energy. Because you don’t have to spend time thinking about what to do next, or worrying that you might forget something or like I often do, Googling something to see what you’re supposed to use for a certain setting that you should have just written down so it’d be ready to go.
Some of the things you could create SOPs for are how to create a new product listing on TPT, how to update your product descriptions for better SEO, how to send an email out to your list, how to create graphics for social media posts, product covers, anything like that, and even how to respond to Q and A’s in your TPT store.
By creating templates and SOPs for these tasks, you can streamline your workflow and save a ton of time, brainpower and mistakes, because the steps are right there for you ready for you to follow. Another benefit to having templates and SOPs ready to go is that you will be able to quickly and easily delegate tasks out to anyone that you hire sometime in the future, because you already have clear instructions ready to go for how to complete them.
Now, if you need a quick way to complete some SOPs, my favorite trick is just to simply record myself doing the work and talk out loud about what I’m doing and why. Because then you can hand that video off to a VA or a team member that you’ve hired. And they can watch it to learn how to do the task and type out the SOP for you. So those are my tips for today. I hope you find them helpful.
For your action step, take some time to evaluate what you’re spending the most time on. Are they needle moving activities? Or are they fluff? Are you spending the time on the right marketing strategies that are working for your store? Or do you need to shift focus? Choose one of the tips from this episode to implement this week. Whether it’s taking advantage of those small waiting moments or creating some templates and SOPs to save time and mental energy. And always remember that small changes add up to big results when you’re consistent with them over time.
As always, I’d love to hear from you. What are some time management tips that work well for you as a TPT seller? Drop me a DM on Instagram @Kristendoyle.co
I’d love to chat with you about it. Talk to you then. 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 Kristendoyle.co/TPT. Talk to you soon