How to Start Selling on TPT: A Guide to Success on Teachers Pay Teachers

It seems like no matter what grade you teach, how long you have been teaching, or where you teach, you have likely heard of Teachers Pay Teachers.  Teachers pay teachers is a website where teachers can find supplemental materials to use in their classrooms, created by real life teacher authors.  The website has been around since 2006 and has grown as both a store front for teachers looking for lesson plans and activities and for teacher authors who are interested in a side hustle business selling their resources.

Becoming a Seller on Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT)

I have had a TPT store for almost a decade.  I first dabbled in it right after my son was born, but it never became a serious hobby or side hustle.  About a year and a half ago, I got a passion in my heart to restart my TPT store, fully dive in, and start selling on TPT with the intent of growing a business and making some extra money. Like most TPT sellers, my hope and dream for my TPT store is two fold- support other teachers with high quality products to use in the classroom and make so extra money so our family could travel, I could run half marathons, and my husband (a fellow teacher) and I could have a few extra date nights.  

Over the past 18 months, I have learned so much about starting a TPT store, selling on teachers pay teachers, creating and marketing products and so much more.  I am excited to share the things that I’ve learned so far along the way so that other teachers might find success selling on TPT. 

Starting your Teacher Author Selling Journey | Running a Marathon

After selling seriously on TPT for about 18 months I have learned far more than I ever thought I would about what it means to be a teacher, author and seller on TPT.  One of the biggest things that I have learned is my TPT journey has been a marathon not a sprint.  I am still teaching full time (and do not have the goal of leaving the classroom), so fitting in the time and commitment to only make products, but market products, research SEO, learn and strategize to build my store and business, and look at monthly sales data, simply takes planning, balance and commitment.  It is not a process that I can speed up.  However, I have learned so much along the way that I can share to help you get started on your TPT journey.

Is Selling on Teachers Pay Teachers Worth It? 

This is the most common question I came across as I started doing research to decide if I even wanted to jump into selling on TPT.  Is selling on Teachers Pay Teachers worth it? The answer to this question is complicated.  Are there a lot of sellers on TPT? Yes.  Are there certain areas/grades/content/subjects that are likely over saturated? Yes, there probably are.  Can you still find great, marketable, niches? YES! 

With a little bit of research, you can find a niche or an area that is still underserved in resources and that is a great place to start (if it fits your niche).  A great place to start researching is on the TPT homepage.  Filter through the grades, the subjects, and the content areas to find places where there are just not as many products.  Then, if that is an area where you can create high quality products, that might be an excellent place to niche.  For example, if you filter by resource type and pick centers, it will show 1,600,000+ results, whereas if you search games, it will bring up 750,000+ products. There is a little less competition if you are making and selling games then centers- and truthfully, games CAN still be used as centers. 

Becoming a Seller on TPT- The TPT Premium Account vs. Basic Account

Teachers pay teachers offers 2 different account options for their teacher authors, a basic account and a premium account.  The accounts are vastly different and offer a very different payout rate. If you are able to, I would start with the premium account from day 1.  While it is a bit more of an investment, it offers a higher earning percentage on all transactions and limited transaction fees. 

TPT Premium Seller Account

The TPT premium seller account is not a free account, it costs a year fee of $59.95.  However, this account offers the best payout rate and limited transaction fees.  With the TPT premium seller account, you will earn 80% on all sales, and you will only have to pay a .15 transaction fee per resource on orders under $3.00.  The TPT premium seller account also offers access to premium features and marketing tools like video previews and additional ways to track marketing data for your store.

TPT Basic Seller Account

The TPT basic seller account is exactly “free”. To have a basic seller account, you have to pay a one time $29 fee (paid one time, unlike the yearly fee for a premium seller account).  This fee is not refundable or transferable, meaning if you pay to be a basic seller and then decide to upgrade to a premium seller, you cannot use the $29 to pay for part of the premium seller account fee.  The basic account offers a smaller percentage earned per sale. You will only earn 55% per sale and you will be subject to a .30 transaction fee for every resource sold, regardless of the price.

I personally think that the large difference in percentage earned and transaction fees justifies paying for the TPT premium seller account if it works into your budget.  Here is an example the differences in money earned on a single $3.00 with each membership.

The premium seller account will allow you to make a little over $1.00 more on each product priced at $3.00 vs. the basic account. 

Starting Your TPT Store and Selling Your First Products

Once you have signed up for a membership and either paid the yearly premium seller fee or the one time basic member fee, you are ready to start setting up your store and selling products.  There are so many tips, tricks, and ways to successfully set up your store that it could be its own blog post (maybe one day in the future I can dive into that).  But in order to have a successful store, you need to have products!

Teachers Pay Teachers Free Resource

The first product in your store has to be a free resource that customers can download to assess the quality of your work.  This resource should be something that matches your niche and highlight what customers can expect from you.  The goal of this product is to hook customers into followers who will be willing to pay for your products because they are pleased with the content of your free resource.  In my opinion, a free resource should be between 5-10 usable pages and should highlight your best product.

Teachers Pay Teachers Paid Resources

In addition to your free product, it is also wise to have one or two paid products available to upload to your store as soon as you have added your first free product.  You want to have something more for customers who really like your free product.  You also want to link your paid products within your free product- add a page to the end of the free product encouraging customers to check out these other products, link the products in the description of the free product.  I like to think of this as a “bounce back” offer- something that is intended to help my customer come or bounce back to my store to make a future purchase. 

Evergreen vs. Seasonal Products

When I first started my store, I felt like there were a lot of opinions about if you should make evergreen or seasonal products.  In the business world, an evergreen product is a product that can be sold year round, it is “ever green”.  The opposite of evergreen products would be seasonal products- products that are going to sell at one particular time but then go cold the rest of the year. 

My honest answer is that I have found success with both and I think you need both in your store. 

I like seasonal products as a beginning store because they are highly searched during the “in” season and hopefully will help you increase the followers to your store.  The hope would then be that the followers would start to purchase evergreen products. The hard part about season products is that upfront, you have to constantly create products, and continually create products for each holiday.  If you have a game for Valentine’s Day, you will likely sell it during January and the beginning of February, but then after Valentine’s Day, you will need a different product (Saint Patrick’s Day if you are working on seasonal products) to help you keep momentum.

I also like evergreen products because they do not go cold like seasonal products do.  They will sell steadily throughout the year.  Once they are uploaded, with the right SEO, thumbnails, and previews, they will sell throughout the year.  These are my “upload and go” products- I upload them and then let go.

I prefer to focus on having both in my store because both serve my store in different ways.

Selling Smart on Teachers Pay Teachers

Finally, the last tip I can offer for selling on TPT is to be smart about it.  Selling on TPT is not as easy as throwing products I’ve made for my classroom in my store and calling it a good day.  You can do that, but you might not find success right away.  I have had to learn a lot about SEO to sell successfully on TPT.

TPT SEO

One of the most important factors to success on TPT is understanding SEO or search engine optimization.  I am not an expert on SEO but I have learned the importance of understanding how search engines use the algorithm to categorize, find, and rank anything on the internet- including the products that you sell on TPT.  Since I am not an SEO expert, part of my routine for naming products, writing descriptions, and creating thumbnails includes having a tool to help me maximize my SEO.  I personally prefer Ubersuggest, but there are a variety of resources out there that can help.

TPT Seller Support

Teachers Pay Teachers also offers several resources inside your premium membership to help you successfully sell on TPT too.  These resources are incredibly helpful and offer great tips, tricks, and strategies- for free. I highly recommend new sellers check out the TPT Seller Blog, the Seller Forum, and TPT University- which can all be found under the “marketing tab” from the seller dashboard. 

When you are a seller with TPT, you will also get a monthly newsletter that is full of tips and tricks, product ideas that are being searched for on TPT and so much more.  I actually ended up ignoring the monthly newsletter for the first 6 months of my store before realizing there was so much information included to help me as a seller! Don’t make the same mistake I made, the newsletter can be incredibly helpful each month!

TPT Seller Journey

Selling on TPT is a marathon, not a sprint.  It is an on-going journey, with so much to learn and share.  If you want to be notified of new blog posts aimed to support teacher-prenuers with their TPT journey, join our email list. 

Successfully Selling Resource on TPT 

Having a store on Teachers Pay Teachers has been rewarding, frustrating, exciting, and challenging all at the same time.  I love sharing the things that work in my classroom with other teachers.  And now, I love sharing everything I have learned about successfully selling on Teachers Pay Teachers with other teacher-prenues.  Whatever your reasons for starting a TPT store, I hope that you will find success and enjoyment in your journey as a seller.

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