How to Open a TpT Store that Makes $1000s
You haven’t admitted it out loud yet.
You’re scared to start a TpT store.
What if you don’t make any money? What if your family and coworkers laugh at you spending all this time on something that might not work? What if your stuff isn’t good enough? What if a coworker buys your worksheet and tells everyone how awful it is?
What if the sky falls?
I could tell you 835 success stories. But those aren’t your story.
Your story is the one that matters.
Instead of worrying about everything, let’s daydream.
What do you want to do with your TpT store? Do you want to make Starbucks or Target money? Do you want to make Disney vacation money? Do you want to make I-can-retire-early-money?
This is your dream.
You decide the goals.
If they laugh—great! Hand them one of the white chocolate mocha’s that your worksheets paid for. Or, pull up your Disney World vacation picture on your phone that your year long bundle paid for.
Who’s going to be laughing then?
You can make money for coffee. Or vacations. You can live out any version of YOUR TpT dream that you work for. It will just take time, work, and strategy. You will have to put a lot of time in up front before you see the benefits. This isn’t a get rich quick scheme.
(Maaaayybe a get overwhelmed quick scheme...)
But not if you follow my tips below.
(For the record, these are tips I did when I started. Not tips I came up for you after learning the hard way.)
Add Products in a Way That Makes Money (and gives direction)
You’ve graded papers and thought about it.
You’ve scrolled Pinterest and thought about it.
You’ve laid in bed when you couldn’t sleep and thought about it.
You know what products you’d like to create first. You’ve created them in your head. (At least a dozen times.) You might even have them sitting in your Google Drive. They just need to be posted.
Add 10 products that aren’t related. For example, if I was starting my visual chemistry store today, I’d put in molar mass calculation worksheet, a VSEPR doodle note set, a ionic and covalent digital product, etc. Whichever one sold the best, I’d create a product line with that resource.
Create a small product line after 10 products. Going from having $1-$3 products to having a $10-20 product will make a huge difference in your income.
Shoot for a total store value and not a certain number of products. Having 50 or 25 products in your store isn’t a magic number. Once you have $100 or $200 dollars worth of products in your store, you have a vision for your store and it starts becoming a business.
Adding products with this strategy will help you make thousands faster. And it can be thousands each month or year. It’s your definition of success coffee cash or fun fund.
Design Y.O.U.R. Brand with A Spinner
Nope.
Not gonna touch this topic.
Yes, have a brand. Pick colors and fonts.
But put some on a dart board internet spinney wheel and choose. Because you’re going to change them in 6 months or a year once you’ve found your store purpose. (We all do. But for some reason no one talks about that.)
Ok. Back to the rest of the article.
Track Important Data From Day One
What’s important to you for growing a TpT store?
Clearly you want to make money. It might feel like you need to track all your data, but that’s not true. And some of the things you track might not make sense at first. But future you will be ever grateful you did started right away.
Track followers to for brand awareness -This will help you see how many know about your products. If you get 5 years in and only have 13 followers for your store, you’ll need to change something.
Track income to see financial growth - This will help you set goals in your store. If you are growing 20% each year, you know you can set a goal to earn 20% more next year. Then you can come up with a strategy to ensure those goals. You could create more products or drive more traffic. Which we’ll talk about next.
Track highest traffic channels - These traffic channels (YouTube, Instagram, your blog, podcast, your email list, or TikTok) are how you get extra teachers to look at your products. You can post about how your products solve a problem, or talk about how to use them, or lots of other ways. But you must drive your own “bonus” traffic.
Track product name changes, price changes, conversion rates, and rankings for 2-3 products - I was able to see where I was leaving money on the table by not having the best title for one of my worksheets. In fact, optimizing the title has helped me earn back hundreds of dollars a year.
I track all of these in an Excel sheet, but you can use anything.
Helpful TpT Features that No One Mentions
There are several tools inside TpT that can help you increase conversion rates, or save you time.
Time saving features:
Create a similar product listing - Save time when you are doing a whole product line of the same type of worksheet. This way you don’t have to retype in everything. Just make a few tweeks and publish. Go to your product listings page and click “Quick Edit”. Then push the button that says, “Create Similar Listing.”
Save a listing as a draft - Create a product listing. Then instead of leaving the “Make Listing Active” boxed checked, uncheck it. Then it’s saved as a draft.
Conversion features:
Slashing the price to be discounted - Ever noticed how some sellers have products that look like they are always on sale? It’s a copywriting technique called price anchoring. On your listing, in the “Price” box enter the price you think the resources is worth. Then in the “Bundle Discount Price” box, type what you want to sell the resource as.
Custom categories - these help teachers find resources fast. So set them up. Under the store icon, click “Product Listings.” Then on the left side of the page you’ll see text that says, “Manage Categories.”
Featured products - Want to sell more of a certain product? Put 4 products at the top of the page as featured products. Under the store icon, click “Product Listings.” Then click “Quick Edit.” Check the box that says, “Featured Product.”
Write Unique Emails
Come on.
You had to see this coming.
This IS a website about writing copy for teacherprenueurs.
You don’t have to start an email list today. (Though, if you plan on making this a business, I’d start today.) If you don’t want to start your email list today, at least start sending your Note to Followers (NTF).
No matter if it’s an email list or NTF…
You need to be DiFFeREnT.
As different as a Teacherpreneur who uses cartoon characters to teach email and copywriting. Whatever makes you different, as awkward ridiculous as it may feel, that’s what makes you worth reading.
In my other store, I’m a chemistry teacher who uses coloring and art to teach chemistry. (Yes, seriously.)
But who are you? What is your thing? Why are you emailing teachers? You can’t say, “To sell my products.”
This is your story of how you started a store that makes 1000’s.
You’ll dream, create, and be successful at y.o.u.r. pace. So set your goals. If someone laughs, take it to the bank. If someone else has a different definition of success, that’s fine. That’s their definition.
Grow YOUR store.
Now you might think I should link to an opt in here to get you on my email list or sell you something. But, the purpose of this page is to serve as a reference for some of my courses.
Oh, you’re curious? It’s to teach how to write an intro for a blog. After all, when searching on Google for “How to start a TPT store”, you read this one to the bottom. And noticed the tone was quite a bit honest full of personality different, right?
Yuuuuup.
That’s what I do. uʍop ǝpᴉsd∩. Inside out. And DiFFeREnT.
Now, go grow your store or jump down the rabbit hole here.
