Creating the Perfect Product Cover Template for Your TPT Store

Kirsten 0:00

Well, hey there I am giving you this podcast. While my sons are both napping, I've found a magical time where both my toddler son and my one month old are napping at the same time. So I'm sure at any moment one of them is gonna wake up and that's fine, but I love them both. But I also love recording these podcast episodes. So I'm excited to bring to you this next one all about creating the perfect product cover template for your TPT store.

You're listening to the creative teacher podcast, a show for busy teachers looking for ways to engage, inspire and make an impact inside and outside of the classroom. I'm Kiersten, a full time classroom teacher and part time business owner who is all about simple and actionable tips, strategies and resources that result in wins, big or small, too in each week, as I give you my best advice on classroom teaching and starting and growing a teacher business. If you're looking for that extra spark of creativity, you've come to the right place. Let's dive in together.

There's nothing to listing a product right? Just we always can upload a PDF, add some images on some square templates and make sure you have a name and voila, Easy enough, right? Maybe the question we're going to be thinking about today is what goes into updating your product listings. Is it a lot of work? The short answer yes, listing a product does take some careful planning and calculation. It takes more strategy than you may think. Today I'm going to be talking to you about how you can choose the perfect product cover template for your TPT store. Okay, let's dive right in. I'm just going to be talking about what you would notice in a product cover and some things to consider. I'm gonna share with you six tips for you to consider when you are updating your product cover.

Your product covers are the first thing people see product covers can make or break a sale especially if they are showing up in search results. And you're looking at similar products. You want your product cover to stand out among the rest so that people can click and Then they love what they see. And then they will add it to their cart and purchase from you. Now, when I mentioned a product covered template, this is something where you're easily able to copy and paste. It can be created either in PowerPoint or Canva. But you're just using shape tools to create some type of design on a square slide. And you easily just copy it and paste it. So that's kind of what I'm talking about when I mentioned product cover template. For me, products cover templates are the easiest way to showcase your brand with your products. Without having to start from scratch every time it takes up more time and effort to decide on a completely new product cover. From a blank slide every single time you have a new resource, it's so much faster to just take a product cover that you have, or maybe a really good best seller or something that converts really well copy and paste it and switch out the titles and the pictures and all of that kind of stuff, it's so important to make sure you're utilizing templates, not just because it's a really great way to showcase your brand. But because it's easier on you you're not starting from scratch every single time you make up a new product cupboard.

First thing is first, you want to make sure to know your ideal teacher customer, what are their interests, if you're a high school teacher, you're probably going to want to stay away from cutesy fonts and colors and primary looking because a lot of high school teachers are gonna think Well, that's not for me that looks like it's a kindergarten product. So I'm not going to buy it. Even though it says Shakespeare's Macbeth or something like that, you want to make sure that you're catering your look of your product cover to who you're trying to target. So if you're trying to target high school teachers, your fonts and colors and pictures, and all of that should reflect that same with if you are trying to target second and third grade teachers, you want them to reflect that too.

The second step is to gather some ideas. So go on, do some research on Teachers Pay Teachers or Pinterest. And when you see a product cover on Teachers Pay Teachers, what attracts them to you, is it the font, the pictures for me, I personally love seeing bright, colorful and real photographs on product covers, which shows the resources in action with some white space. So if I'm personally looking for resources for my own students, I'm usually going to click on those product covers that show a photograph. And also it looks really crisp and clean. And it's bright and colorful. That's what attracts me. So that could give me some ideas of what I could implement on my own product covers as long as it aligns with your ideal teacher customer.

The third step is to make a square template in Canva, or PowerPoint. So you're just gonna go into either of those tools and get creative with the shapes that you use. Sometimes you'll have some circles in the corner, or you might have some rectangular or some type of geometric shapes. Some people like to add a lot of neutral tones, so a lot of black and white, and then they have pops of color, some love it bright all around and you'll see a rainbow on the product cover. It's just kind of up to you of how you would create your actual product cover. But you can always get some inspiration on Teachers Pay teacher's if you're looking for some ideas. But of course you don't want to completely copy or rip off somebody's product cover because that's a no no, that's not ever fun.

Step number four is to use fonts, photos and wording that match your brand. The trifecta of a really high converting product cover fonts, photos, and the wording. Whatever fonts you use, you want to make sure it's appealing to your ideal teacher, customer. Whatever photos or clipart or pictures that you use, you want to make sure that it matches your brand. And it appeals to your customer. Same with the wording however you word it usually on a product cover, you're just gonna have a simple title or subtitle and maybe you know, for third grade or fifth grade or worksheet activities or something like that on the product cover. You're not going to get into a whole a whole slew of details of what's in the resource, but you just want to make sure whatever it is that you add matches your brand.

Step number five is to save it as both a PNG file and a JPEG file. This one is important because we all know that sometimes if we ever upload some product covers on Teachers Pay Teachers it looks a little bit blurry, sometimes a lot blurry. And the reason why that's the case is because Teachers Pay Teachers automatically anytime anybody uploads a resource, it's going to be just blurry just to protect the integrity of your work. So people are not just copying it off, save a page of your resource that's on your product cover or something like that. So Teachers Pay Teachers purposely blurs it, unfortunately. But a way to sidestep, that would be to save your files as a PNG, because that's much more crisp. And it's a higher quality than a JPG file. I usually save it as both because sometimes I will add real photographs. And they're pretty high resolution photographs of my resource, or I will also add some clipart in there. So if I add it as a PNG, sometimes the file size is too big. But if I add it as a JPEG file, yes, it's a little bit blurrier. But I can still add those high quality photos in there. So it ends up kind of balancing out. So definitely try to utilize your product cover photos that are in PNG, if the file size is too big, just go down to a JPG file, last step I have for you is to switch out the photos in titles. So when you have your product cover your template, you're going to just have some type of background, it's going to already be set up for you. So all you're going to have to do is switch out the photos of your resource or screenshots of your resource and the actual title, you're not going to obviously have the same title for every single resource unless it's some type of product line. So you want to make sure you switch those out. All you do, as I said, is just copy paste, duplicate it in the slideshow, you don't have to go into a new PowerPoint and create a new one for a new product cover, just keep your product covers in the same document. And then you can easily switch everything out make a new product, I actually have really two, I'm not the best organization. But I do have two documents of where all my product covers are housed. I don't recommend it. Because there is a lot in there and I have a lot of products. But I would recommend maybe at least having some type of product line. And then you have a set of product covers for each product line. Or you can organize it by subject, however you want to do it, I do not recommend having every single resource in your store all housed in one document where all of your product covers are found because if you lose it, you know you're losing all your product cover. So definitely split it up, maybe have some backup files. And it's just really easy to copy and paste and utilize what you need to do you ever have a credit cover template that you really like in one PowerPoint. The good news is that with PowerPoint, you can actually copy and paste from different documents. So you can always copy that whole slide, and then paste it in a completely different document. So there's no worries about that. Same with Canva, you can do the same thing, just copy it, paste it in a new tab in a new Canva document. I always love referring my listeners to previous blog posts. And of course, this one would be no different.

If you're looking for more product cover tips, I do have a blog posts out there on four product cover mistakes and what you could be doing instead. So you can always go to the southern teach.com forward slash blog forward slash product cover mistakes. And I'll make sure to link that in the show notes. Of course for you.

Okay, here is my creative action tip for you today. I want you to think about all the effort you're putting into creating your products or even just starting your TPT store, but just not making the sales or traffic that you thought you would. I know it can be super frustrating. I've been there. I remember, you know, I updated my whole store at the very beginning. And still, you know, crickets. It was also the lowest selling time of the year was in the middle of the summer. But I was still kind of frustrated because I put all this effort into updating my store. And it seemed like nobody was still finding me. Maybe you're feeling frustrated, like your go twos aren't working or you're struggling to get back to where your store was last year, nothing's working. Maybe you've reached a plateau. You're looking for some type of mindset change and need some motivation to get yourself back on track and in the right path to making a profit for your TPT business. I'm here to tell you it does take a few key commitments that you have to promise yourself as you may or may not know I have a course called the product listing Lab, which talks about all the different ways you can showcase your resources to make a profit through product listings. I have a special offer for everybody who As listening right now, you can get a sneak peek into module one for free. This is the four key commitments, you have access to it until Tuesday, December 14. So the window to the sneak peek is closing soon. But you still have time. And the best part is that these modules go pretty quickly, these lessons are pretty short, you'll be able to go through the four key commitments that'll set you up for success through the rest of the course. So if you are interested in that, you can go to the southern teach.com forward slash sneak peek to get more details and to sign up for free.

All right, I loved chatting with you all about product covers one of my favorite topics, and one of my favorite things to create. So thank you for listening, and I will see you again soon.

Thanks for tuning in to the creative teacher podcast. If you enjoyed listening to today's episode, feel free to subscribe and leave a review. I'd love to hear your feedback. You can also find me on Instagram at the southern teach. I cannot wait for you to join me in the next episode for more tips and inspiration. Have an amazing day.