What to Do Before You Open a Store on Teachers Pay Teachers

A lot of teachers see beautifully designed worksheets that are sold on teacherspayteachers.com and are intimidated by the amount of design work. Let me be clear – good teaching sells. Not necessarily “cute” resources. If you’ve visited the site before, you know that you have to look at resources critically. No matter how many clipart pictures you add to a product, if the educational value of the product is not there, teachers will not be interested.

Focus on creating what you would want to use in your classroom. Even better, something you’ve made and used in your classroom that went really well.

Try not to compare yourself to others. You don’t know what goes on behind-the-scenes. Some stores have teams of people working on products, others pay for marketing or other help. Not that there is anything wrong with sellers who do so, but for the beginner seller, it can be discouraging to see established stores with so much going on. Keep your focus on making good quality products and set realistic goals for yourself.

Copyright is a serious thing. But these rules exist whether you’re making products to sell or for use in your own classroom. Using clipart from Google Images needs to be done with care in any case.

Look for images that have a license for commercial use.

Pixabay.com is my favourite source for free images. They have photos, vector graphics, and illustrations and 9 out of 10 times, I can find what I want. I keep it pinned on my bookmarks bar so I can get to it with one click.

Here are some other suggestions for sites that offer free images (that are actually free and don’t require a membership.)

You can’t use a copyrighted text as a base for your product. For example, you can’t make an existing activity from the Daily 5 or Words Their Way into a resource, but you could make something new that supports them. This is a rule that gets broken all the time, but it’s no fun if you get caught.

I once wrote the phrase, “This is a choose-your-own-adventure-style unit,” in a product’s description (not even in the actual product) and had my product removed because the “Choose-Your-Own-Adventure” phrase is copyrighted.

It’s best to play this safe. Sell only work you have created yourself.

If you are just starting a store, your first priority should be to get products on the site. Don’t worry about marketing your work until you have a solid foundation in your store.

That being said, keep your mind open to the possibility that you might want to promote your store down the road and read about claiming your social space below.

There are lots of free, easy resources out there to walk you through the process. Here’s my post that walks you through making your own logo and personalizing your TPT store.

Keep reading below for my tips!

Coming up with a name for your Teachers Pay Teachers store can be tricky. Here are my tips for what to do and what not to do:

• You want something that is easy to spell so people can search for you.
• You want to choose something that will stay the same even if there are changes in your job. For example, you might not want to put your grade in your name because if it changes in the future, it may no longer represent the products you sell.
• Brainstorm a few ideas and then ask friends or family members which is their favourite.
• When you have an idea, search for the name on Teachers Pay Teachers, Google, and Instagram.

 

2. Claim Your Social Space

Here’s a mistake I made when I started. I didn’t claim ONE simple social media handle right away. Mine have slight variations, such as @bacchusclass and @bacchusclasses that makes it just a little bit more difficult for people to find me.

Even if you don’t start a blog or an Instagram account immediately, (and I don’t recommend you do everything at once!) it’s a good idea to claim the accounts with a matching handle so you have the option of using them in the future. Making your handle as short and easy to read as possible will help people find you in the future.

Open a few tabs and check your handle for availability in all locations before committing.

Here are accounts you might think about opening:

• Instagram
• Pinterest
• Twitter
• Gmail
• Facebook Page
• Tiktok
• YouTube

Pinterest is where people shop. Teachers who look for resources on Pinterest are often motivated to buy and a lot of traffic on TPT comes from Pinterest. Make a few boards and post your products there by topic every time you upload a new product. You can quickly pin some extra ideas to fill up your boards with quality ideas. Don’t worry about marketing when you first open a store on Teachers Pay Teachers. Google and TPT will do most of the work for you. But claiming the space is a good “just in case” action in the beginning.

Before you make a logo, think about your brand as a whole, because that’s what you’re making when you open a store. You’re making your own brand. What makes you unique? Just kidding – that question always stressed me out because, really, have you seen the Internet? It has everything.

The question I like better is: What are the most important themes for your brand? If you look at a successful store you like, you can pick them out right away.

What will people see when they see your store? Examples:

• highly engaging
• focused on student achievement
• 21st century technology
• aesthetically pleasing
• diversity
• playful
• high quality
• creative
• artistic
• eco-conscious
• socially responsible

Narrow your themes to the most important 2 or 3. They might help you think of a name or images you want to use in your logo and branding. Remember – choose what really matters to you because over time, you might want to change your store’s look, but you want customers to maintain their feeling of who you are and what your store is about.

I have spent hoouurs creating logos, partially because I really enjoy designing them, but also because I overthink and change my mind a lot.

Here are my tips for your logo:

• 

  Keep it simple and eye-catching.

• Make the important parts big. Your logo will be very small sometimes and you want people to be able to read and recognize it.
• Put your logo on every product you make, inside the product itself and on the cover photos.
• Get the image sizes right so your logos and pictures are clear.

1. You’re already doing most of the work.
2. You’re an expert in your field. You have degrees to prove it!
3. You do the work and upload a product once and potentially get paid for it forever.
4. You can share your ideas with teachers who will be appreciative of your work. (For those who feel uncomfortable selling their work rather than sharing for free, think about sharing for free with those teachers you know personally and work with and sell to teachers you never would have met without the site.)
5. You can have an impact on students learning around the world.
6. You really can make money. It’s not a get-rich-quick kind of thing but you can make good money over time.

It will not be perfect in the beginning. I’ve had a store for almost 10 years and it’s still not perfect. But it’s there and I’m making a profit and I can continue to grow over time. The beauty of the website is that once you add a product, you can leave it there forever. You can make a few products in the summer, post them, and leave it untouched for years while it generates passive income.

Take a look through your resources and copy the best ones into a file of “Future TPT Products” that you can double-check for copyright issues and add your logo and link to your store. How many can you find in the next 10 minutes? Go!

What questions do you have? Comment below and I’ll do my best to answer them! I hope this post encourages you to dive in and open a store on Teachers Pay Teachers.