How to Grow Your Following and Earnings on TPT

Kirsten 0:01

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 to 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.

TPT followers and less than: 1000

Here are some hard truths that no one will tell you but today I will tell you will not just be able to sell resources without an eye catching prod listing when people are looking for a resource, it's going to be mostly when they're typing in a keyword or phrase that they need. And they're going to see your resource most likely in the search results. That's why it's so important that having a really strong and appealing product cover, and snippet and title that is SEO friendly is so important. You also need to understand that you can't just upload random products that don't reach everyone, you need to stick with your niche, stick with resources that sell and then continue on with that track of creating more resources that people like that are similar to those resources that sell well in your store. You also need to understand that you need to market your products on teachers, pay teachers, and outside of Teachers Pay Teachers, Teachers Pay Teachers is a really great way to get some marketing in because you know, there are different ways on TPT. But using Pinterest or Instagram or Facebook or an email list to market outside of TPT to drive traffic to your TPT store is also important, if not more so than before.

Before a long time ago, you could probably get away with not really marketing outside of Teachers Pay Teachers, people just go on Teachers Pay Teachers and find resources. But now it's not so easy. There's so many more resources out there, there's so many more TPT stores. So marketing outside of TPT, to see that your current irrelevant will really bring in an audience to your store, you need to have a brand and treat your TPT store like a real business. No more, I'm just kind of doing this on the side making a little bit of extra money. Think of it as a real business just like Apple, just like your favorite brands Starbucks target. Think of it as a real business. Because you are a real business, you're selling a product to others, people are purchasing your product. So you're making money off of that, therefore you are a business, you need to also believe that you have the potential to make a profit even better than where you are at now. You may be complacent at where you're at you like you know how much you're making. I love making an extra $50 A month or $100 a month. But you also need to believe that you have the potential to make even more than $50 or $100, maybe $500 or $5,000 a month, that potential is there, you need to believe that your resources are good enough to sell, you need to be aware that it will take time and results will not come quickly. So just thinking about your resources, with some tweaks can be perfect for your ideal teacher customers.

And you just need to see that it does take time. And results don't always come quickly. Not all TPT resources become super viral. The last thing I want you to think about is that you need to understand that this is a process and it won't be 100% Perfect. But as long as you start with a plan, it will work. So setting out with something like a SMART goal, where you have something that's attainable something where you can actually lay out steps to get from point A to point B so that you know that you can have some type of plan, whether it's however many products you need in your store, what you want to do for your marketing, the type of resources you want to create. There's so many different things, but it does, it is a process you can't just get from point A to point B in just a couple of weeks. There is time that goes into it.

Now that we got past those hard truths. Here are some tips to grow your following and your earnings even with a small following. The first tip I have for you is to try a giveaway. This could be a classic giveaway on Instagram, and you don't have to get in a bunch of TPT sellers to put money in the pot. You can absolutely do one all by yourself. Giveaway a top selling resource for free. Have your current followers like and tag a friend for a chance to win. You can use something as easy as we'll have names and just put in all of the entries. Press the button and then you can select somebody don't ever think that you need to put in 35 $60 Just to get into a big giveaway. You can easily do one for your own audience. The next tip to grow your following is to join a like minded Facebook group. One of my favorite groups that I have joined and I really love is a group called Instagram connection for educators shout out to you guys. When I started my Instagram journey I joined the group and quickly grew through a following, and it's a really great way to connect with other teacher grammars. They do a lot of pods and Sunday socials to boost your teacher grant engagement. And so it's really enjoyable, it was something that is really worthwhile for me, you can easily join many other groups out there, I just got a search for it, and enter in those questions so that you can join as well. The next tip to grow your following is to create an email marketing campaign. If you have an email list, take a weekend to have a sale for your store. This could be a special weekend sale, or it could coincide with a holiday such as Black Friday, give important highlights about some of your best selling products and create a sense of urgency, make sure to schedule an email each day of the sale. The key to email marketing campaigns is that you do need to email a lot in that short window of time. And if you're looking to get started in email marketing, I do have a blog post that I wrote earlier this year called Email Marketing with ease and you can go to the southern teach.com forward slash blog forward slash email marketing. I'll make sure to link that in the show notes. If you need some more tips on that.

The next tip I have is to apply to be featured in the TPT newsletter in your TPT dashboard, you go to your TPT Seller Dashboard, you click on the tab that says marketing. Then you're going to click on the newsletter section where you are supposed to submit a product for consideration. There's a little section to the right of that page, where it says featured seller Do you want to be a featured seller in the newsletter, you click on that link. And you can submit some information you fill out the Google Form, and they can contact you if you've been selected. I think this was one of the biggest ways I grew my following when I first started becoming an active seller. I wasn't really well known at all when I submitted this form. And then within a couple of weeks, I got notified that I was going to be a featured seller, it was like in August of that year. So it was right before you know the big back to school time. I had just within a couple of days, tons of new follows tons of views. And a lot of people bought my resources during that time I was featured. So that's a really great way to get some eyes on your store. And maybe if you haven't heard from them, it doesn't hurt to continue to apply to be a featured seller. Because it's definitely worthwhile. If you do get selected, you just want to make sure whatever you choose to feature in the Google Form is that it's your best work your best quality work that you have for teachers.

All right, I've got a couple of more tips for you. If you're still looking for some more ways to grow your following. Here's one is to check your SEO, think about where your top selling products are landing in the search results and tweak where you need. So just do a quick search. Think in the mind of a teacher trying to like trying to find a resource, you want to type in what they may type in. So don't just type in the name of your product word for word typing keywords that would relate to your product and see where it ends up in the search results. And if it's ending up lower, maybe it's not on the top page, it's in page five, or it's on page four or 10. Wherever it is, that means you're going to need to do some SEO tweaking. And I do have another blog post I'm gonna link for you. It's all about SEO titles on Teachers Pay teacher's SEO standing for search engine optimization, I give you some tips and how I have tweaked some of my resources to end up higher on the search results. So that's at the Southern teach.com forward slash blog forward slash SEO titles on TPT. So I'll link that for you. So you don't have to type that up. But just kind of tweak some parts of your title to see where it ends up and go from there.

My last tip I have for you is to check the look of your store friends, does it look cohesive? Do your cover standout among the others in the search results? Is it hard to understand what the resources are about looking overall at your store, you want your covers to stand out among the rest. There are tons of resources out there. But the interesting thing about it is not every product cover is always going to be updated to keep up with current trends. And you can always see that in search results. If you ever look for something like if you go into a resource you start what you're looking for. You can see there are some resources on there that look like they haven't been updated in at least five or six years. That's a really great way to gain an advantage with your customers if they I feel like it looks a little outdated. They feel like it may not be relevant. But if you have your product covers updated and kept current and relevant, and continue to do that with your resources over time, you're going to continue to have more people, even if they've never heard of you before come to your resources by your resources, because they see it as more reliable, you're you're taking the time to actually update your resources. And it's not just going to stay stagnant for years, and it just kind of dies off. Always make sure your store is standing out from the search results, that it just kind of looks overall inviting and cohesive.

All right, here's my creative action tip for you. I want you to think about all of these tips that I've given you not just the tips of growing your store, but also those hard truths, and I shared a lot of them. But just thinking about stuff like understanding that you can't just upload random products, or knowing that you need to have a brand and treating your TPT store like a real business. My favorite one, you need to believe that you have the potential to make a profit even better than where you are at right now. I want you to think about if you're feeling overwhelmed, or at a loss at how to grow your following, maybe you've tried all of these strategies that I shared with you multiple times, it may be time for a change, it might be time to commit to something bigger. How can you feel encouraged, confident, less stressed? Lucky, like you've struck gold or have cracked the code? How can you feel motivated, valued, relieved and excited that you're finally gaining traction and visibility on your products and your store? I'm gonna be honest, it does take a few key commitments that you have to promise yourself.

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All right, friends, thank you so much for joining. I always love sharing my advice to you. And I hope that these tips for growing a following even if it's super small, or maybe it's not as big as you would like at this time. That's okay, you can still make money on Teachers Pay Teachers, you do not have to have hundreds and hundreds of followers. All right. Until next time. I'll 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.