Have you ever wanted to share your teaching resources and expertise with other teachers around the world… but then that feeling of “I don’t know what I’m doing!” creeps up on you?
I’ve been there. Hello, Imposter Syndrome.
And I’m here to tell you, just like me and all other teacher resource sellers around the world: you know exactly what you’re doing.
Perhaps the only thing you need is a little boost of confidence, and a sprinkle of quick tips to help get you started!
Table of Contents
- You Know What You’re Doing
- 3 Quick Tips: Create High Quality Teaching Resources for your TPT Store
- Find your Niche
- Design a Product Line
- Create Resource Templates
- Let Us Help: resources just for you
You Know What You’re Doing
The most important realisation for you is that you know what you’re doing. You’re a teacher. You’ve created teaching resources before. You’ve done it so many times to meet the needs of your students - to the point where you don’t even think twice about it. It’s just part of the deal as a teacher.
With your experience, you have so much to offer. You know how to engage kids, and you have a unique expertise, which you can use to create and sell teaching resources that other time-poor teachers NEED.
And as for all the business side of things? Don’t sell yourself short on that either.
You’re a TEACHER. Teachers are the masters of wearing a million hats.
Those field trips you budgeted for? Those events you coordinated for your students? All those clubs and extracurricular activities that you ran on your own time, on top of your teaching job?
You learned how to do it all through hard work, dedication, and keeping your wits about you when times got tough.
Teachers are masters at learning new things - and becoming AMAZING at them - on the fly!
So while selling your teaching resources on TPT may seem overwhelming, I promise you: you have everything you need to get started. You know what you’re doing.
I’m just here to guide you through the process, one step at a time. You are fully capable of doing the rest.
3 Quick Tips: Create High Quality Teaching Resources for your TPT Store
So how can you turn your expertise into products to sell online? While there can be a lot to think about, simplifying the process with just a few basic concepts will help you get your brain going. Here are my top 3 tips to get you started.
1. Find your Niche
Here’s a rule of thumb in sales: you are not creating products meant for everyone.
Sure, perhaps your products CAN potentially be used by almost every teacher. But you have to be clear who your target audience is so that they feel like you understand them. This is why finding your niche is so important.
I break down how to find your niche in much more detail here in this blog. By guiding you through the process of narrowing down your target audience, you’ll discover the kinds of teaching resources you want to create for your TPT store.
In a nutshell, there are 3 things you need to consider:
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Your Interests
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Your Expertise
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Your Audience Needs
If you are interested in diving even deeper into this work, my Teacher Seller Masterclass helps you flush out your Ideal Customer as well. By doing so, you will be confident about the kinds of resources to create for your TPT store, and you will have a clear direction to go in.
This brings us to tip #2…
2. Design a Product Line
While you can definitely upload smaller, easy to create worksheets and activities to TPT and make some money, it is infinitely more profitable to create product lines.
Product lines are basically a group of related resources with a similar theme or topic. You have the flexibility to list them for individual sale, and then you can bundle them together for a discount.
Many teachers will purchase your resources individually. But, you will also successfully upsell and have teachers purchase your bundled listing, especially if they really like the individual products from the product line.
Here’s an example of one of mine!
With this product line, I target every Australian curriculum outcome for Number & Algebra in Year 6 and reused the same type of activity in each product. By doing so, not only were the resources predictable for both teachers and students alike, but it was so time-efficient for me to create them.
I created the template once, then replaced the content for each outcome. Without reinventing the wheel for each outcome, I was able to create a beautiful, useful, year-long resource for Year 6 Australian teachers.
Speaking of templates, this brings us to our third and final tip of this blog…
3. Create Resource Templates
As you saw from my Number and Algebra product line, I created the template once and simply reused it over and over until the entire product line was complete. I’m sure you can see what a time-saver this is for any teacher author! Aside from the template for the student activities themselves, here’s a list of other items to include in your template so that you can save some time:
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A title page
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A terms of use page
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Acknowledgements
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Cross sells and upsells section, and
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Testimonials
There’s no need to recreate each of these elements every single time you create a resource. Just have it saved in a doc, ready to copy over anytime you make a new resource. It will save you hours of time!
If you would like to see an example of a template, I’ve created one just for you so that you don’t have to start from scratch. You can get it here!
Let Us Help: more resources just for you
I remember being in your shoes and not really knowing where to start with teacher resource creation. I wanted to do it, but didn’t have the confidence to start.
If someone had just given me something to work with right from the beginning, perhaps I wouldn’t have felt so overwhelmed and doubtful of myself.
This is why I created this resource creation template so that you don’t have to begin your resource creation process from scratch.
I have also worked with MANY other new and experienced sellers, through the process of creating and selling their teaching resources. If you’re ready for some intensive, step-by-step guidance, join us in our Teacher Seller Masterclass!
In the meantime, here’s a quick summary checklist for you to save as you work your way through your very first TPT products!
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Find your Niche
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Design a Product Line
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Create Resource Templates
I hope you found this blog helpful in building your confidence and having a place to start your TPT Seller journey. It has been so fruitful and life-changing for me, and I truly wish you the same - whatever your goals may be for your store.
Thank you for following along, friend! You’re welcome to reach out to me at any time if you have questions for me.
Wishing you the best of luck with your store!
Jess
