Product Listing Tips and Tricks

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 in their teacher businesses. I'm Kiersten, a teacher business owner who is all about simple and actionable tips, strategies and resources that result in wins, big or small. If you're looking for that extra spark of creativity, you've come to the right place. Let's dive in together.

Hey there, and welcome to another episode of the creative teacher podcast. This week's episode is a little different. And it's actually a replay of a recent live q&a that I did in a weekend retreat for TPT sellers hosted by Misty Miller. So I'm going to do a little replay of some really great questions that TPT sellers had. And my responses to them. Most of what I talk about is related to product listing. So this is a really great live q&a That I'd love for you to listen to, and take heed of some tips I have for you. So without further ado, here is that q&a.

I'm going to just quickly chat a little bit of my session that was in the portal this weekend. So my session was mainly about product listings, I shared some common mistakes that TPT sellers mostly make regards relating to product listings, I also shared with you my mistakes that I've made, I've made a lot along my journey as a TPT seller. And then I just talked about, you know, some tips on product list or product covers and thumbnails and previews, titles and descriptions.

But one of the main things you know somebody who I love designing things, so a big thing in my store, and what I like to share with other TPT sellers is that, you know, like how how you showcase your resources is going to make or break a sale. That's just what it comes down to. If you know if people are in the search results, and they you know, they like what they see, they will click or if it's intriguing to them, or if it you know is exactly what they're looking for, then they're going to click on it, if it's really hard to see the pictures of what's in the resource or it's not descriptive enough, it's gonna be very hard to convert buyers, because they're not really sure what they're getting. So that's why I'm a big fan of you know, how you shape showcase and attract your ideal teacher customers. How you are, you know, showcasing the actual resource through photos, the designs, you use the colors, the fonts you use, it all comes together, through branding, and it's what helps you you know, convert buyers.

ound and heard of TPT back in: 2013

My, so that's one of my, you know, advice as far as that but I just what I do personally, with my store is just stuff that appeals to me, I kind of look around, I see that, you know, a lot of bright colors stand out to me and personally, being a buyer on TPT. And so that's something I want to implement. But of course, in my own way, I'm not trying to copy anybody's colors or styles or anything like that, I take what I love personally, that I think would attract my ideal teacher customer, and then I make it my own. So one of my big, I guess, you know, things is my gradient, you'll see my gradient, my rainbow gradient pretty much everywhere. I don't anticipate in 10 years, the rainbow gradient is something that's going to be you know, in style, and I will change it to something else. So just depending on the trends of what is appealing, and what's not, that is going to kind of drive what I'm going to change design wise. So definitely, you know, don't always think, okay, these are my covers for my brand, this is the style, I'm gonna go with, it's set in stone, I'm done, like I don't have to change up much, maybe you have some neutral colors, those are pretty, you know, with with a nice bright photo, that's gonna last pretty pretty for a while. But eventually, there's going to be a time that comes where you're noticing that it's a little bit, it's a little bit out of style, or it's not really relevant design wise. And that's when you're gonna have to take a look at updating it. So just thinking about, you know, if it's even even thinking about, like, maybe your brand is going in a different direction, let's say my brand right now my brand is very fun and bright and vibrant. Maybe I want to turn it down and get a little bit more serious. I'm not going to get serious, I'm too fun for that. No, but um, so then that would mean I would have to go through and start revamping and changing my fonts and colors and all of that. So just thinking about that. So hopefully that answered your question. I did. I rambled a little bit. But hopefully that answered your question.

All right. When you do the store branding, do you help people choose colors? I can't seem to settle on a color scheme, I tend to want to change my brand everything month, every three months. Yes, it's even as a designer, it is kind of tempting to like always want to, you know, always change things up all the time. And so I have to restrain myself sometimes of like, okay, it's fine. How it is, this is you know, it's getting conversions This is doing well. So just thinking about you know, you don't, as tempting as it might be to change all the time, it's best to stay consistent with what you have for now, until maybe it's just doesn't look as current or relevant or it's not standing out as much maybe it's looking a lot like a lot a lot of other TPT stores if you feel like you're not standing out, maybe that would be a time to change. But as far as colors i Oh, I do have a blog post about this about how to pick your brand colors. You are thinking in terms of you know what, it's all it kind of all comes together brand like brand wise, you're thinking about your personality traits, like what what main three adjectives describe your brand in general, what problem or who is your niche? Who are you targeting? Are you targeting high school teachers? Are you targeting primary elementary teachers? And then based on that thinking about and in combination with a few other things, thinking about what colors might attract your ideal teacher audience, but in general, your brand colors shouldn't really change very often. But the style your design of your product covers might change or your previews might change. But in general, you should probably keep your brand colors a little consistent, but maybe in a few years you can revisit you know the colors you want to use. Or maybe you want to add colors take out colors. How much time would you give an update before you But like your store is to mismatch. So that is, you know, it really depends it depends on there's no like, okay, every two months I'm, it looks mismatched, so I need to check it, I like to check it, you know, personally, at least just once a year, once or twice a year, twice a year is like my like maximum, I don't really like to spend too much time making sure my product covers are matchy matchy. I, it kind of my style evolves, as I'm, you know, I'm still improving and getting better in how I create my product listings for my store. And sometimes I switch it I like to you know, I don't have a set one cover template for my store, I some, I sometimes have a product line that looks different than another product line. But that what how what is in common are the fonts that I use the colors I use. But as far as like certain shapes and having you know something in the same place for every single cover in my store it it varies. And I like the variety. Some people, you know, it's up to you, though, some people like to have one template for they're all there, you know, all their resources. And that's fine, too, it's up to you. Some people like to have a variety of different templates that they use. So just think in general, a lot of people are not going to a lot of people are finding your store through the search results. It's very, you know, unless somebody follows you and you know, has a set of resources they want to come back for and by that is it's not something really to worry about as far as, you know, being mismatched as much, but if you it just depends on your style, like if you want every product covered to match and all of that that's fine. Or if you want your store in general to match, that's fine. The one thing that does matter is just if it you know, if it isn't matched, how does it come together as a whole holistically. But in general, I wouldn't worry too much about like being super mismatched because most people find your resources in the search results anyway.

All right, I'll also give out some common questions that I've heard about one of them being blurry thumbnails, I know, that's like a common, you know, thing that has been happening across the board. And this is because if you see like, if you think you're seeing things like no it there is some blur to the thumbnails you upload. And this is usually because TPT compresses, when there when you upload images, TPT automatically compresses the images to make their site run more efficiently. So and also to prevent it's to help you It's to prevent people from trying to take a screenshot and printing out your resource. So there are a couple things that you can do to kind of alleviate the blur, but it's not going to 100% Go away. One thing is just to make sure your thumbnails and covers have enough contrast. So if you have a white background, typically a white background with a really bright or, you know, a dark color like black or a bright, hot pink or something like that. Adding contrast can help it help the blur less, you know, make it as not as bad. Another thing is to make sure that images you upload are out of 300 At least 300 dpi. And so, so high resolution is important in that in that and I've I've like done it with Mike like I've uploaded product listings for my clients and I've seen the difference. Like there was one I you know, I thought it was you know, the file size and it was under the limits, but it just came out really blurry but then I made sure to make sure the DPI or the you know the resolution was higher. And that made a ton of difference. So it was you know, it's it helps it's not 100% If you are a PC user, I think there is a there is a way to I might have to look up the link but there is a way to change your export settings in through like you have there's there is a tutorial if you look up PowerPoint export resolution settings, there's actually like Microsoft has a step by step way you can do that. With a Mac it's a little bit trickier because the you know, the way that they store files is a little bit different. So what I've been using recently that's been a lot easier is I save all my listings as just one PDF file, and then there's a website called H net.com. And you can convert PDFs to JPEGs and it will You can change the resolution of the quality, you can change the resolution at you know, 300 dpi, and then you can convert it. So that's a workaround I've been doing that's helped a lot, especially when I'm doing some, you know, branding for my clients. So that helps.

yet, I've been on TPT. Since: 2013

Another thing that helped is just putting out not trying to, you know, turn out more resources. I didn't have the time to do that I was still full time teaching, but just making sure my product listings were optimized as far as when somebody's typing a resource that they need. Does like where does it show up in the search results? Does it capture their attention? Do people want to click on it. So that's kind of another thing. Another piece of advice is just know the type of resources you want to sell, or not want to sell but should be selling that your your niche is looking for. One way to do that is just to take a look at what has been selling well in your store. Think about how you can create similar product lines along those lines, because it's obviously something that's interested or that you know, people are interested in. So for example, it's kind of a it's a crapshoot, you really don't know until you put it out there, what works and what doesn't. For example, when I first went active, one of the big things I started putting out was a daily language grammar resource. And I don't know if that was probably the most the longest tedious that was just, gosh, I never want to think about grammar again. But much, you know, of course, it sold really well. And so based on that data, I've had, you know, not had to I mean, I'm happy to help because that's what people need. But I've created more grammar resources based on that. And those grammar resources have been doing well. So, you know, having, I guess, just easy to implement grammar lessons that are aligned to TEKS. For Texas, and also are for grades three through five, it's just seemed, you know, people seem to gravitate toward that towards my store. And that's, you know, over time has led to more followers led to more reviews of my resources.

So that's just my best tip is just to get yourself out there. And really think purposefully about you know, based on your data, what's working well in your store, you're never going to know, unless you put it out there, there's been some product lines that I put out there, I'm thinking oh, it's gonna be a great product line, people are gonna love it. And crickets, you know, and that just means I'm not going to make more of it. But that's okay. I'm still going to you know, of course they keep it up there because it does make some sales just sometimes it doesn't take off as much as you think it will and that's okay. So that's just my best tips on that.

it hasn't been updated since: 2015

I would think also, teachers now want something that's easy to implement. There's not involved, it's not involving a lot of cutting and gluing and all of that they did something that they can easily assign maybe digitally, or something that they can easily glue in their notebooks and take notes on. So you know I don't I my niche isn't science. So I don't really I can't really speak to exactly what they can do. But just think about what you're good at. Are you good at you know, in the classroom if you were in the classroom or currently are in the classroom, making guided notes for all the different science topics. Are you good at labs for all the different science topics or some type of review game or test or something like that? Think about that. If you're not sure on the type of resources you want to put out.

Thank you guys for coming in. so excited that we've had this, you know, really great retreat. I guess that's it.

All right. I personally love listening to live q&a days, even if I don't ever end up asking a question I love listening in because more times than not a question somebody else has is something that I have. And I love hearing other TPT sellers takes on it and their opinions, and so that I can form my best opinion to move forward in my own business. So I hope that the live q&a Replay was super helpful for you and your businesses. Well, I have a creative action tip of course, as always, and that is to take one of the tips that I have and implement that into your business, whether it's about really making those crisp PNG files, or just anything else I mentioned about having your branding or your product listings. Make sure you take that and use it into your business. Well, that is the end of today's episode. 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.