How to Make Money on Teachers Pay Teachers- Spirited and Then Some

Friends, Spirited and Then Some is, first and foremost, a food blog about family! So most of the time when you stop by, you’ll see recipes we’ve been cooking up in our kitchen. But every now and then you’ll see blogging resources, photography tips, and life behind the scenes. Another area we focus on is education. And part of that includes developing teacher resources on Teachers Pay Teachers! Our little Spirited Learning store has grown exponentially, and all without a large following or even marketing and advertising. Today we’re going to show you what led to our growth and how to make money on Teachers Pay Teachers!

You’ll see our growth comes from four different areas: more products, updated previews, products that tap into current needs, and the beloved bundles TpT is known for. Keep reading because these four areas helped us grow our store from making a few dollars here and there to earning over $1,000 in a single month alone! And keep in mind, this was without a large following, social media presence for the topic, or marketing and advertising!

To make more money on Teachers Pay Teachers, I:

INCREASED THE NUMBER OF PRODUCTS IN THE SPIRITED LEARNING STORE

First up on how to make money on Teachers Pay Teachers is having enough products in your store. This might seem obvious, except there’s a strategy behind the process.

Think of Teachers Pay Teachers as its own search engine. Teachers come to the site to search for educational products and classroom materials. The more products you have on the site, the more opportunities there are for buyers to find you. In my first year, I had 16 products, or 16 opportunities for people to find me. Now I have over 100 products, and even with a small social footprint and no advertising, I am able to make more sales because there are more avenues connected to my store.

About that 100-product mark: I can’t confirm with any empirical data that it’s the magical threshold. I’ve read anecdotally from other teacher-creators that once they hit 100 products, they started to see more sales. The same happened for me. To be fair, having 100 products won’t work if the products don’t relate to what teachers are looking for or if the quality is low. So 100 products for the sake of 100 products isn’t likely going to move the needle in your favor. But creating enough products to be “findable” on Teachers Pay Teachers is important.

Adding more products helps keep you top-of-mind for consumers who search for resources chronologically, too. In full disclosure, you will see several teacher-creators who have small stores and do quite well. That’s wonderful for them! Each person’s journey will look different. If your store is small and stagnant, an influx of products might do the trick.

But it’s not the only trick you can try, so let’s keep going.

REDESIGNED PREVIEWS FOR EXISTING PRODUCTS

As you create products on Teachers Pay Teachers, you’ll likely develop a consistent style that your earlier products won’t have. So, redesigning existing previews can breathe new life into old products and give your store a consistent, branded look. This approach definitely addresses how to make money on Teachers Pay Teachers because it often jumpstarts sales on stagnant products. Updating TpT previews encourages buyers to take a second look at your products. And it typically takes less time to update a product preview than it does to create a new product.

I tried this for a word wall product I loved, one that I knew should be popular but that I had to admit wasn’t getting enough attention. For my Word Wall with Sight Words products I did two things:

Added alphabet posters to the product and kept the price the same.
Redesigned the preview in the spirit of my branded look, showcasing the new alphabet posters.

Almost immediately, sales for that product increased.

DESIGNED PRODUCTS THAT TAPPED INTO POPULAR TRENDS

Again, if you’ve added more products to your store and redesigned old previews, and you’re still asking yourself how to make money on Teachers Pay Teachers, then it’s time to look at trends. This is something we should be doing anyway, but it’s often easier said than done. It is tricky to know exactly who wants what in a given year. What appears to be popular today may be old news by tomorrow.

But, it’s important to try. And inspiration can come from anywhere.

For example, I create classroom decor products centered on designs and styles my own daughters would like. In fact, my daughters not only help me design the products you see in our store but also use them around the house. As my older daughter got even older, I realized students like her might enjoy a different style of classroom decor than what I had created. So, I conceptualized the FARMHOUSE AND FLORALS collection for our Spirited Learning store. That collection’s popularity grew exponentially!

Virtual learning and distance learning products were critical during the pandemic. I brushed up on my skills quickly to create helpful resources for teachers and students!

Another trend I tapped into? Virtual products. I realized my store was full of in-person learning materials, but I didn’t have as much to offer virtual teachers. So I began creating Google Slides and Google Sites materials. Before creating the products I watched several how-to videos and learned about the ins and outs of virtual learning technology. In doing so, I better understood the issues virtual teachers faced. Not only did I learn more and earn more, but I also saved teachers a lot of prep time in getting their virtual classrooms ready.

CREATE BUNDLES

Bundled products are all the rage on Teachers Pay Teachers. They are a programatic way to get several resources in one purchase and at a discount. I love bundles as a buyer and as a teacher-creator.

The more products you have in your store, the easier it is to create bundles. I like to start out with 5-6 products in a bundle, and then add to the bundle once I create additional products.

Product previews are critical for bundles because they showcase several products at a glance. It took me several tries to get the right look, but eventually I found a layout and style I liked. Once I did, I updated old product bundle previews. Sales on old Spirited Learning bundles increased almost immediately.

Old previews to the left. Updated branded previews to the right!

NOTE: I figured my smaller bundles would sell quickly because they were cheaper. Even though bundles are already at a discount, the fewer the items in a bundle, the lower the price is. But once I added MORE items to the bundle, even though the price went up so too did the sales. I suspect that’s because the bundles offered more value. Cheaper isn’t always better. And since bundles are already marked at a discount, value within that discount is important to buyers.

SEARCH-FRIENDLY PRODUCT NAMES

Remember how Teachers Pay Teachers is like its own search engine? That means it’s critically important to name products with search-friendly terms. One of the best ways to do that is to start typing possible keywords into the search bar and then study what populates.

For example, I created Halloween Google Slides and wanted to know whether “Halloween Google Slides” or “Google Slides Halloween” or “Virtual Halloween Slides” would be best. At the time I created the product, “Halloween Google Slides” was the popular search. I used that and made sales within about 3 days of uploading the product!

The bottom line? Start where you are, and as you learn more, go back and make improvements.

And if you are teacher-creator on Teachers Pay Teachers and want to learn how to create a copy link for Google Slides, then you might like this article, Force Users to Make a Copy in Google Slides.

Friends, stay well and be safe. I’m glad you’re here! ❤️