Do You Have These Essentials In Your Product Listings?

Kirsten 0:00

There's so much that goes into a product listing and it's so hard to keep track of everything. And that is what exactly this episode is about. We're going to be talking about 13 essentials in your TPT product listing. I'm gonna give you insight into what you really need to have as you're uploading your products on TPT.

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 classrooms. 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.

All right, let's go ahead and dive in to this simple and checklist style episode. Let's see if you already are including these essentials. But either way, use this as a guide as you are entering in information and uploading your files for your resource so that you can have everything set and ready to go, we're gonna go down the list of everything you need as you upload your product into TPT. So let's go ahead and get started.

Number one would be to make sure your title is straightforward and matches what the resource is. Think about the main learning objective or main topic of the resource. That is what your title needs to be. So it's having something cute like watermelon math activities, don't put that in the title, put it on your product cover go out with that, but don't put it when you're actually entering it in. Throughout this episode, I'm gonna be going off of one of my own resources in my store. And I will just kind of give you some ideas of what you can do as I go along with the example. So the title of one of my resources is called punctuation, grammar mini lessons for grades three through five. It's simple and straightforward. I don't keyword stuff, I don't add any extra tags in there. I just keep it straightforward and to the point.

The second thing you should make sure to have is a PDF or a zip file of the resource. Of course that's obviously given because you can't really upload anything and bless you have something so whatever your downloadable file is, make sure you have that in most of my products, especially if they're larger are in a zip file. And so you just want to double check and make sure everything is in that zip file before you upload it into TPT.

Number three, your main cover or product cover is uploaded in a PNG or JPG file. Right now it's common to add a PNG or JPEG file of what is in your resource. Make sure it's appealing and the cover makes people want to click on your actual resource and learn more information about that.

Next two to three thumbnails are uploaded, I just say two to three because depending on your resource, if it's something that's really small, maybe three or four pages, you don't usually have to have all three thumbnails. But If it is a very large and hefty resource, you should be utilizing all three thumbnails. And depending on the file size, you can add it as a PNG or JPEG file. Thumbnails are up to two megabytes. So that's two MB. That's the only caveat to that.

Number five is having your preview or video preview uploaded, or both. If you have a video preview, you can also add a PDF preview. So that's not a limiting factor, you can always have both, it's helpful to have a video preview because it does convert really well. But if you don't have the time to create a video preview, a regular PDF preview is just fine.

Next, number six, make sure you have your description and that it is formatted and linked properly. Make sure that if you do have additional resources or any links in your description, make sure it's clickable and it's leading to the right place formatting, you want to make sure it's spaced appropriately. Don't make it too hard to read by lumping key one huge paragraph in breaking it apart so that it's easy to read and scan because most of the time, that's what a lot of potential customers are just doing is scanning.

Number seven, your price is listed based on market research and best estimation, I appraised my product at the time of this recording at 350. And that was just based off of what I noticed when I was market researching and how I felt the bulk of the resource included compared to other resources. So far, it's converting and selling really well. I might up the price a little bit more later on in the future. But right now I haven't listed just based on my best guess. And that's kind of what it is, when you're pricing resources, you obviously don't want to make it super expensive, but you're just pricing it based on your best estimate. Never price your resources based on the amount of effort and time you put into the resource. It's not going to people who are buying the resource are not going to care that you spent hours and hours of time people are going to buy it if they feel that the value matches what the pricing is. So this particular product line took me a lot of time to work on. I worked on it over a series of months, but I'm still pricing it reasonably, I'm not trying to you know, oh, well, I spent this much hours on it, I need it, this needs to be at least $10. Unfortunately, it does not work that way.

Number eight, your relevant tax code category is selected, there are a bunch of different options, you just complete the one that best works for you. Most TPT resources fall under the category of other digital goods, no physical media. But there's others like audio books, digital images, videos, you can view the full code descriptions in the TPT platform if you're not sure which one would best master resource.

Number nine is that all categories selected best match the Resource Description. There are several sections of this grade level, subject area and resource type. And all three of these are required. With grade level, you would want to make sure to select up to four grades, do not grade level bucket where you are tagging K through fifth or sixth through 12. Even if it might be applicable to six through 12. You still want to focus on just a few narrow it down make it super specific. For my punctuation resource, I made it specific to grades three through five. I also put it on my product cover graphic, and in my description, I'm putting it in multiple places. When it's tagged as a category, it's going to show up in the search results. If people filter it specifically for that for what they're looking for. With subject area, you're going to add up to three and with resource type you're also going to add up to three. You just really have to think holistically about what is the best subject area for at your resource. I added English language arts grammar, and then also ESL because I felt like it was applicable to English learners who are learning English as a second language. by resource type I added activities assessment graphic organizers, the majority of the resource our activities, but it also has PowerPoint presentation and you can also say that it's a printable. So there There's a lot of resource types that it could be. But I just went with the best that I felt described my resource

going into number 10. We actually just talked about this, but making sure that up to four grade levels, three subjects and three resource types are selected. You can't really go over three for the subjects and resource types, but it will let you select more than four grade levels, I highly recommend keeping it less than four, four or less.

Number 11, your relevant Common Core Standards are tagged and if applicable, other standards specific to your state, I'm pretty sure you can hear my son in the background because he is not napping. Side note for that. And it happens, I guess. So something that's really recent in the last few years is that you can tag standards so that if people need to filter by a specific standard, they can see that when applicable. They also will be able to see not only the standards that you've tagged, but they'll also see their state specific equivalent. So make sure to take the time to actually tag Common Core at least. I'm in Texas, so I tagged both Texas and Common Core

number 12 would be the teaching duration, number of pages in slides and or your answer keys added if applicable. And it's the Detail section, the teaching duration, I usually don't add, but you can always add it in, it gives you a lot of options from 30 minutes to all the way up to lifelong tool. So however you want to add that in or you can just put in a or other I usually just put not applicable. Because most times than not I, as a buyer don't look at that part. And as a seller, it's not maybe I'll change my mind later. But as a seller, it's not something that is of the utmost importance, number of pages or slides. However, I do add more times than not, you can leave this part blank. But I always like to add it in. I like to count both printable and digital versions. So I will count up the number of pages in slides that are in my printable version. And I also count my digital version as well. Because the digital version, there are some tweaks to it that I make. In this particular resource. My punctuation, Gregory source, it looks different as well. It's formatted to be more digital friendly, and it's in a completely different format than my printable version. So I counted all of that as separately. But even if it is similar, and you're just adding text boxes, I would make sure to count that as a digital and printable, you would count that two pages. So I had 79 in this particular resource at the time of this recording, answer keys and other detail to make sure to add, you can always make it not applicable. But it's always nice to say that there is an answer key included, you could say that it's an answer key included or you can say it's included with rubric does not apply rubric only, however do you feel the Detail section is not as super important as making sure your thumbnails are added. But you could always make sure to add it just to for peace of mind and to be as thorough as possible.

The last part of this is your copyright, you want to make sure that you are clicking the right button, you either a test that the product is original work, or you have attested that you used copyrighted or trademarked materials, but it does not infringe upon the intellectual property rights of others. And you've received permission to use the materials or it's fair use. So whichever of the there's two different buttons that you would click, I would click the one that's best applicable. And make sure to use the terms of service to make sure you're not infringing upon any copywriting or any other trademark rights because that can be very painful and a little embarrassing and you know, awkward as TPD contacts you about how one of your products might be infringing on copyrights and all of that. So make sure you check thoroughly that your resource is not being copyrighted or infringing on copyrights or trademarks.

All right, so I'm going to do a quick review of this checklist to make sure you have these essentials. Your title is straightforward. You have uploaded your opinion PDF or a zip file, you have a main cover or product cover uploaded, you have two to three thumbnails uploaded. You have a preview video preview word both uploaded, your description is formatted and linked properly. Your price is listed based on market research and best estimation. Your Tax Code category is selected. All Categories selected best match the Resource Description, you have tagged up to four grade levels, three subjects and three resource types. you've tagged relevant Common Core standards, and if applicable, any other standards. You have added teaching duration, number of pages and slides were answer keys if applicable, and your copyright option is selected.

Alright, so here's my creative action tip for today. I have this checklist in a special freebie for teacher sellers called the product listing toolkit. You can not only get this checklist, but checklists for designing your product covers thumbnails, titles, descriptions, and previews. This product listing toolkit can be found at the Southern teach.com forward slash free toolkit and I'll make sure to link that in the show notes. It's completely free. And it's a really great way to refer back to as you are creating your product listings and uploading your product listings into Teachers Pay Teachers. All right. Well, that's the end of this episode. I hope this is giving you some really great tips and giving you a little bit of a heads up of what you need to think about as you're uploading each and every resource into your store. That's all I have for you today. I'll talk to 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.