14 Action Items, 5 Take-aways and 3 Tidbits from the TpT Conference

1.6 million teachers buy from Teachers Pay Teachers. Over 90,000,000 people visit the website monthly. If you’re a teacher, why wouldn’t you set up a free seller account (they take a percent of revenue, like Amazon does) and see if all those brainy ed ideas caroming through your brilliant brain will fund your weekly Starbucks bill (or in the case of Deanna Jumper and a growing group of teachers like her, bring in over $1 million dollars to pay a lot more than bills)?

I have a TpT store (Ask a Tech Teacher) so decided to attend the first-ever premium seller’s conference on how to TpT better, smarter, more effectively, while having more fun. I went with a girlfriend–a fellow teacher. Together we made the desert drive from Orange County, California to Las Vegas Nevada, prepared to learn how to make our online stores the best they could be. From beginning to end, every seminar I attended was packed:

Here are my action items and take-aways from this great conference:

How to improve sales

1. Submit for Seller Spotlight in TpT newsletter
2. Set up a custom category in tpt
3. Before publishing, search to be sure the products is not already up there
4. Use a title that can be found
5. Link products to other products in my store.
6. Sponsor resources on the newsletter. I can do this for $50(something like that) which is taken out of my earnings.
7. Send a note to followers once a month. Cross post on Twitter and FB.
8. Have blogging buddies–support each other
9. Best practices for search optimization
   1. Keep titles simple
   2. Be descriptive not creative
   3. Most users search by subjects and themes
   4. Include key phrases at beginning of description
   5. Promote other products at the bottom of the description
   6. In title, mix subject grade month
   7. You can change title without messing up the links
   8. The message: tracking your sales equates to more sales
10. Add a terms of use and a copyrights page to each doc
11. Add a page with related products
12. Add a page with 10% off on products
13. Morning work is popular
14. Add a page with Contact info, social media

Take-Aways

1. June is a slow month. As is July. Good to know since it has been for me. I’ll wait before giving up. August-December statistically have the biggest sales.
2. They don’t recommend product covers as pins on Pinterest. I should have listened harder on that one
3. Don’t self-promote! This is a common theme on anything to do with social media
4. If you make less than $20,000, TpT doesn’t send a W9. Good to know
5. Everyone there was happy, excited, exhilarated to be a teacher sharing knowledge. The overwhelming attitude: We can do this together

Interesting Tidbits

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Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-8 technology for 15 years. She is the editor of a K-8 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum, and creator of dozens of technology training books that integrate technology into education. She is webmaster for six blogs, CSG Master Teacher, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, a tech ed columnist for Examiner.com, and a weekly contributor to TeachHUB. Currently, she’s editing a techno-thriller that should be out next summer.

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