Growing Your TpT Store and Increasing Sales

If you’re selling teaching resources on Teachers Pay Teachers, you likely want to know how to take your store (and your sales!) to the next level. Teachers Pay Teachers is a wonderful way to build passive income and provide much needed teaching tools for other teachers around the country and the world. A few simple adjustments to how you are approaching your store can make a world of difference. Here’s what I’ve learned along the way. Read to the bottom to get a free downloadable checklist for growing your TpT store!

Keywords and Descriptions

I’m going to start with the single most important aspect of selling your products (with the exception of creating a quality product in the first place): Keywords and product descriptions. It truly does not matter how great your resource is, how perfect your thumbnails are, or how much time you put into the whole thing if no one can find your products. The goal is to get your product in front of buyers actively looking for the solutions you are offering. To do this, you need have product titles and descriptions that incorporate relevant keywords and phrases so your products show up in TpT search results. How do you do this? Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes. What would someone type in that search bar on TpT if they needed something for a 5th grade mythology lesson? Make a list of everything someone might search for and then incorporate those words and phrases into your description (as long as they accurately describe your product.)

In summer 2021, I added a product dealing with artificial intelligence to my store. In my titles and descriptions I spelled out Artificial Intelligence. Over the course of three months I sold ONE copy of this product. Then, it dawned on me that people looking for something to do with artificial intelligence weren’t going to type the whole thing out but use the abbreviation AI instead. I edited my descriptions to include “AI” in addition to “Artificial Intelligence” and guess what? That product sells regularly now. As a seller on TpT, you should periodically review and update your descriptions. It is the single most important part of selling on TpT. Most of your buyers are going to come straight from TpT, so you need to be able to have your products show up in TpT’s search results!

Create Appealing Cover Images and Previews

Once you have great descriptions and titles that help get your products in front of buyers, you need to stand out. It is worth it to work on creating cover images that can draw a buyer in. My personal favorite design tool is Canva. It’s very easy to use and you can sign up for free. They do offer a paid membership that gives you access to more artwork and templates but it’s not necessary. (I recently upgraded to Pro and love it, but I waited until my TpT sales would justify the expense.) Sign up and start messing around and I’ll bet you’ll be surprised at how easy and useful it is!

The cover image is what will land you clicks on your products, so make sure it gives a clear snapshot of what you are selling. Once you’ve got that click, you need a great product preview that shows off your product without giving it all away for free. You can do this by uploading part of your product with a watermark, or you can create a something a little more in-depth. Here’s what I’ve recently started doing for my previews and I have a noticeable bump in sales when I add a preview like this:

Did it take me a long time to create this preview? Yes, yes it did. But, it’s rare that I sell something immediately after adding it to my store and this one sold several copies right away. This lesson is very comparable to many other lessons I have for sale, but it sells better. This preview gives the buyer a great visual snapshot of everything that’s included so they don’t have to try and imagine it based on the written description. It is worth the extra work to put this type of preview together. I’ll be spending my summer re-doing my previews!

Regularly Add Products

Of course many of us do not have time while teaching full-time to create a lot of products during the school year, but you should try to establish some kind of goal for adding products to your store. Gaining followers on TpT is an important part of driving repeat buyers to your store, and people will follow you because they want to see what you will add next. Each time you add a new resource, TpT generates an email to your followers to let them know. I always have a noticeable bump in views on days when an emails goes out to my followers. Additionally, more products in your store gives you more opportunities to cross promote, which is my next point!

Cross Promote Your Products

Your store is probably focused on a certain grade level or subject. That means that a lot of your products are going to be related and should be taking every opportunity to direct buyers to your other products. If someone clicks on your product because they’re looking for something general but your product doesn’t quite fit the bill, you can still get that buyer to check out another product in your store by linking to related products right in the description. Another easy way to direct buyers to other product is through the use of Bundles. If a standalone product appears in a bundle in your store, TpT will automatically mention what bundle it’s in right before the product description.

Even though most of your traffic will come right from TpT itself, it’s a good idea for the long-term health of your store and sales to create outside content that will bring buyers right to your store. Pinterest is favorite among TpT sellers because it’s fairly easy and quick to create a post that brings people right to a specific product. Set a goal for how many pins you want to create, even if it’s just a couple per month. The idea is to get these links and outside content created to boost your views and sales over time. Check the Traffic tab on your TpT dashboard to see how various sites are driving traffic.

As you can see for my store, my blog and Pinterest resulted in clicks that converted to sales. Instagram was a small driver of clicks but didn’t work out for conversions. I out my focus currently on Pinterest and blogging for driving traffic outside of TpT itself. Try out different platforms and then focus on what works best for your store.