Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT): What You Need To Know A Beginner’s Journey

So, you have decided that it may be a good idea to earn more money. Well, why not? The average salary for public school teachers in the United States is a whopping $65,090 per year on average. Who wouldn’t want more money, right? You only have to a basic search on any search engine these days to find the many ways you can earn extra cash online. The problem is, are these options any good? Are they just simply scams? Do they work? Are they easy to do? What skills do I need to have? There are many more questions I am sure you could list… Now let me tell you I have tried quite a few of the options out there and have been very disappointed in the results. My suggestion to you is to focus on one and stick to it. Put all your effort into it and eventually all your hard work will pay off. What am I putting all my effort into now? – Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT).

This blog post will focus on one way you can make more money online from a beginner’s perspective. That’s right, I am no expert or guru. I am not going to tell you how to earn 1 million dollars or how to buy a boat fast. The purpose of this post is to provide my real-life experiences – my journey so far of selling teaching resources online.

Why Did I Choose to Sell Resources on Teachers Pay Teachers?

Well, I am a teacher! So, it only made sense to focus on an alternative revenue source that I have an intimate knowledge of. The problem with the various other avenues of making money out there for me was the fact I knew little to nothing about the topic area and content. So, it made sense for me to choose a way to make more money buy exploring an avenue I already know quite a bit about.

What is TPT?

I am sure by now if you are reading this blog post you have a good idea what TPT is. However, for the new people here, Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) is an online marketplace where teaches can sell their resources. The site boasts of millions of users and resources. Basically, it is a site where teachers can sell and buy products they can use in their classroom. Sounds good right? The website is perfect for time poor teachers. I don’t know about you, but each year I seem to lose the battle with time in the ever-expanding world of teaching requirements and ever-growing workload.

My Journey so Far

About a year ago I decided to start to explore the world of selling products on Teachers Pay Teachers. I spent months trying to learn what to do, how to do it and ultimately got stuck in trying to learn everything there is to know about selling on TPT. Now I encourage you to learn as much as you can about selling online and selling on TPT.  Believe me my journey is continuing and is far from being over, but a mistake I made was I stalled for the longest time because I was scared that I did not know enough to get started. That I did not know as much as I needed to succeed on Teachers Pay Teachers. Lesson learnt. If I was to do it again, I will just start and learn along the way.

Now I am not saying I have not learnt a lot along the way, because I have, but I have learnt so much more by getting my hands dirty and forcing myself out of my comfort zone of fear of failure and fear of not knowing everything. The best thing I did was to simply start. Have I done things wrong – yes, have I had to redo things several times over – absolutely, but I have learnt and have slowly gotten better over time. There is no easy way (that I know of) to create quality resources, to make quality thumbnails, to write captivating descriptions, to gain an audience, to get noticed or to gain a following. All these things take time. I am still working on them and that will never change.

How Has Teachers Pay Teachers Been Going?

How has my journey been so far? What does it look like for this non guru/expert? To be honest, and I am sure everyone will agree – not great. I mean everyone expects better results than they are currently seeing. It has been hard going, very hard. I have put in countless hours into resources and have seen less than desirable results. It is not hard to see things this way and I am sure I am not alone.

Up till now I have solely focused on making resources. I believe this was a mistake. What you say? Yes a mistake. There are many sellers on Teachers Pay Teachers. Many sellers or long-term sellers that have hundreds of reviews. How can I compete with that? I would argue it is near impossible to do so if you rely on just creating products and do nothing else. I noticed that every resource I added, would never show up in the search results. How can I compete if there are hundreds of similar products and mine is on page 10+. Now they say pick a niche and… Even so, there are still several pages of products before yours.

What I have found out?

What I have found is the need to drive your own traffic to your store. I have had an Instagram account for my TPT store for quite a while. Through research I had learnt that social media was one way to do this. Hence, I have for some time now, been promoting my products on my Instagram account. This has driven some traffic to my online Teachers Pay Teachers store, but it could be better. Recently, I have stopped making new resources and decided to focus entirely on getting known to the teaching community and driving my own organic traffic to my store. In 2023, I believe to be successful on TPT (depending on your definition of success), you must branch out to other areas that will help you get noticed. I now have a Facebook account, expanded into Pinterest, have my own website with free resources, and just recently started an email list. The mistake was I should have started these things a lot sooner.  

This is my first blog post. Going forward, I would like to share my experiences and in my own painful way help others on their journey too. It has not been easy and lots of things have gone wrong or not turned out like I hoped. However, things will get better. I am in a better place now than when I started. The key is to stick to it and change what you are doing if things are not going according to plan. In my mind this journey must be a long-term investment. It will not pay off in the short term. I need to adapt, learn, fix things, put in the hard yards and one day, in the future, the hard work will pay off in spades.