How to Start a TpT Store

April 24, 2017

I sell digital products online on Teacherspayteachers.com. Here’s my STORE.

The success of my store depends on your point of view. No, I cannot quit my day job and live off my TpT earning. I probably never will. Right now, I average between $2,000 and $3,000 in earnings a year. I have to pay taxes, which takes a big chunk out of my earnings, but like my husband says, better pay taxes on something than not pay them because you have nothing.

Lately, three of my teacher friends have asked for a tutorial on how I became a seller. To them, getting $200 to $300 a year is pretty impressive. One of my friends is a retired teacher, and that extra income a month doesn’t sound bad at all.

THE JOURNEY:

I started my Teachers Pay Teachers store back in May 2012. Back then the website wasn’t as popular as it is now, but I saw what the sellers sold and I knew I had products I used in my classroom that were about the same quality. Right now, the quality of the average product has improved. Not most digital products use special fonts and images. In my opinion, being cute does not mean being useful or effective in the classroom… but it definitely increases sales.

Back then, I didn’t know the summer is really slow on sales, and even when I made my first sale pretty quick (a great $4.18 earning for the month of May), I was a little disappointed when I sold absolutely NOTHING in June.

July picked up a little, but my first year I averaged $14 a month. Not very great, right?

That’s when I decided I needed more products!

THE PLAN:

First of all, my products weren’t cute like other sellers beautify them. I didn’t have time in my busy teacher life to waste precious minutes with the cute font and cute images. Also, I did not want to pay money for images and I did not want to use free online images. If anything, at least I wanted my products to be as professional as possible.

I knew I could not bring myself to sell my products very expensive either, so my store would need to have variety, and soon it would find its niche.

One of my the things in my favor was the fact I am bilingual. So, I could produce products in English or Spanish. Since I taught in a dual language environment, I understood the need to have the same material in both languages. So I searched my computer to see which of the products I had created could be candidates to be up on the store.

So the Summer of 2013 I spend a lot of hours creating material that was worthy of TpT.

My sales grew! Now my average was $159 per month!

The last thing I improved on was precisely the cuteness factor. I created “cute” margins and images that I added to my products and the product covers. 
Product cover “cuteness” is important. My covers have never been ultra cute, but here are some differences between my first ones and my last ones:
Before
                  

After
 
The better made covers brought my sales even higher… and they have stayed that way ever since:
Now, if you look at the graph above, you’ll notice a pattern. 
  • August, September and October are usually good selling months because it’s when teachers are getting ready for school. 
  • November and December are lower because by then teachers are thinking on the holidays. If you have season specific products, then these months could be higher for you. 
  • Teachers apparently come back from the winter holiday (January, February and March) and get new energy to start planning lessons and the store get’s another boost.
  • April and May are always low because, seriously, who would want to be thinking about school. Although, some teachers are planners and if you have a product that is good for the beginning of the year, then you may get some sales from that.
  • And don’t even worry about June and July. If you do have sales, then that’s great! But don’t be discouraged if you don’t.

GETTING TECHNICAL:
Which tool should you use to create these products?
Well, I am very good at excel, so that’s what I use. I like the fact that I can use tabs, so all I do is duplicate tabs and that gives me a sense of uniformity. For example, I will use the same margin for all pages, I create one tab with that margin and then duplicate that tab. Each tab can hold as many “printed sheets” as you want. So on tab 1, I can have many pages about one topic and then on tab 2 I can have as many pages as I need of this other topic, but they all look the same.
Since excel works with cells, I make my cells small with the same height and width. This helps me use the cells as a grid.

Here’s an example of how my excel spreadsheets look like. These two screenshots are from the same product. Each has the same margin. You can see the grid and how I use it to center the images and text:

This tab has 2 pages.

This tab has 4 pages.

 Do you HAVE to use excel? Of course not. I use it because I know how to use it and it brings advantages that I like over other programs.

I have heard other sellers use Word, Publisher, PowerPoint. Sky is the limit. As long as you feel comfortable using them. You are the one who is about to spend a lot of time playing with them after all.

IMAGES:

Like I said before, you need images. A product without images is mostly doomed to fail (mostly).

You can always google online where to find free images. Make sure the images are free to use in your products, as well (some images are only free for personal use). Same goes with fonts! If you buy a font online make sure what the creator wishes you to do with his/her product. Some ask that you mention their name in the “credits” of your products.

I don’t like using online images only because it doesn’t give uniformity to my products.

I bought an ipad app (idraw).

iDraw Website

It wasn’t that expensive ($8.99) and it works with layers and vectors. I have always been interested in graphic design and I know Illustrator and Photoshop. If you know vectors, this is the app for you!

I got a stylus at amazon.com and use it to draw on idraw. It was super cheap and works just like my old and more expensive Bamboo Wacom one did before I lost it:

I DEFINITELY RECOMMEND THIS STYLUS!!
Now, if you feel like drawing and vectores are not for you, then you should use free images or pay for images. There are sellers who even have them for sale on TpT! Same with Fonts!
PUBLISHING A PRODUCT:
The first thing you have to do is create a seller account. You may already have a buyer account, but you need to become a seller. I would not recommend becoming a premium seller until your total sales for one year are over the fee ($59.95). So, let’s say you sold $30 the first month and $30 the second month… this would be a good time to buy the premium seller membership. If you are averaging about $5 a month, then I wold probably wait a little.
The difference between regular and premium seller is how much your royalty is:
Basic Seller
Premium Seller
Keep in mind if your product is less than $3 they will charge a 15 cent transaction fee, which would reduce the 90% royalty.
If this is your first time publishing a resource, be aware that the first resource you publish needs to be FREE! I suggest making your free product a quality product, remember buyers will probably download it and if they like it they will want to see what else is in your store.
Once you are set up as a seller, you have to prepare your product:
– Save your file as a PDF.
– Add a cover for your product.
– Go to your Dashboard and click on Add New Resource:
– Click on the type of resource you are uploading (I have never uploaded a video, although I know there are sellers who upload tutorials and lessons as videos and sell them).
– Then you will see a long screen where you will upload your product.
Upload Your PDF File

Make sure the product is your original creation before clicking on the first choice!

This is optional, but buyers like to be able to download a preview of the product.

Make sure the title has keywords buyers are likely to type on the search bar. Describe your product as well as you can making sure it’s not too lengthy or confusing. A table of contents is usually great. You can also add html links to the description.

This next part is about your resource type, grade level and subject area.

Don’t forget to add the number of pages, choose Free or Paid and the PRICE! The default Multiple License Price is usually half the price. Finally, make your product active.

If you uploaded a PDF file, you will see the first few pages of the file as images. Choose the ones you like, making the first image the cover. Or, you can create your own, although this is usually more time consuming. Once you have your images click on SUBMIT.

There! You are now a TpT Seller!
MARKETING:
I admit I am terrible at marketing my store. 
The easiest way to do it is to share it on Pinterest.
I created a Pinterest account. In it, I created a School Board:
My Pinterest School Board

Inside my board, I pin school related materials I am interested in, like anchor charts, teaching products or other ideas. The more you pin and repin, the more you will gain a following. Then, once your product is online, click on the little Pinterest icon to the left of your product image and choose your board:
You can also share it on Facebook, Tweeter and Google+ directly from the TpT page. Of course, having a teaching blog will help wonders (I don’t have one), or any other way to make your product known to the right people.
I hope you enjoyed learning a little about Teachers Pay Teachers from my experience. 

Let me know how you did!

cheers!



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