Takeaways from the TpT Forward 2021 Digital Conference
I made a goal at the beginning of the year to increase my monthly Teachers Pay Teachers sales to $500 a month by the end of 2021. Goals are great, but require a certain level of commitment! If you don’t do any work, you can’t expect to make progress, am I right? The first major action I took toward achieving my goal was to sign up for Lauren Thompson’s Teaching Coaching Community: Better Together Experience. Through Lauren’s shared experiences and knowledge, I was able to more than double my monthly earnings (from around $120 to around $250 a month). I’d reached my half way point!
Rather than stop there, I pushed forward again and registered for the Teachers Pay Teachers Digital Conference. I know it’s hard to replace the magic of an in-person conference, but I really appreciated that I could experience and learn all the presenters had to offer from my desk chair without upending my daily life at home. And my-oh-my did I learn a lot! I promise I won’t give away all their goods for free, but do want to share some of the tips and tricks I learned. Also, I’ll be sure to include links to each presenter's platforms so if you see something you’d like to learn more about, you can easily connect with these great educators.
Here are my 8 Takeaways from the TpT Forward 2021 Digital Conference
Product Pricing Tips
Chynell Moore, a growth strategist, shared tips on how to appropriately price your items in the session: Is The Price Right? How to Confidently Price your Products. She used her husband’s experience in real estate to show how to compare your products with other similar items in the TpT Marketplace to land on a fair, yet profitable, price. She told participants to ask themselves this question, “What is everyone else charging for the resources most like yours?” She also encouraged TpT sellers to play around with their price and to dream about their potential profit increases if they’d raise their prices even $.25.
To learn more from Cynell, check her out on Instagram or listen to her podcast: Routine Your Dream. Also, make sure you visit her TpT store for classroom behavior based resources.
Video Marking Ideas
In Kerry Tracey’s Presentation, Video Marketing: From MUTB (Monster Under the Bed) to BFF, I learned all sorts of great tips. I was especially excited about this one because I wanted to learn how I could improve my own YouTube channel’s video content and Kerry didn’t disappoint. The best tip I got from her is that when you are doing a live webinar or hosting a Q&A of any kind, have a few FAQ ready to go so you can avoid that awkward silence and lag time while attendees get up enough courage to virtually “raise their hand” and speak up. Kerry said you can tell participants that some attendees emailed the questions prior to the event, so it doesn’t look like you are making up the questions. One additional tip? Kerry suggested using peel and stick wallpaper to create an engaging (and changeable) background. How fun is that?!?
To learn more from Kerry, including Professional Development training sessions, head over to her website and to check out her TpT store for am amazing array of STEM focused activities.
Email Lists Improvements
Because I have three different email lists (one for teachers, one for writers, and one for readers) I was especially excited for this session, because it would impact all arms of my authorpreneur realm. In her presentation: Build an Email List That Keeps Them Coming Back, Cassi Noack, of Minds in Bloom, pressed the importance of your email list recipients getting to know you. She also gave tips for increasing email responses and engagement. One strategy she mentioned that I’m going to try in my welcome series of emails is to tell them 5 things about me (goes along with my 5 GOOD THINGS for TEACHERS themes) and ask them to respond with the same. Hopefully, if I can make some solid connections with my readers early on, it will increase their participation, readership, purchases later on down the road.
To learn more from Cassi, head to her website to check out her blog, books (yep, she’s an author too!) and teacher freebies! You can also connect with her on social media, or view her resources on TpT here.
Product Thumbnail Images
In the presentation, New Year, New You: Redesigning Your Store For Maximum Impact, educator Kristen Hammond (@thesouthernteach) gave some practical and easy to implement changes to make within your TpT store. One of her suggestions I am definitely going to experiment with is the type of images I show in my product thumbnails. Right now I just show sample pages in those three additional image spots, but Kristen encouraged redoing thumbnails to broadcast highlights or best features of your product. Imagine these slots to now be more like product covers. I’m going to try this out with a few of my product thumbnail images and leave the preview file to do what my thumbnails are currently doing. I’m curious how this goes over and I’ll try to remember to report back with the results in a few months!
Connect with Kristen on Instagram, her website or her Teachers Pay Teachers store. She has so many great things to offer you, including a blog, courses, resources and more.
TpT Data Digestion
Tammy DeShaw, from the Owl Teacher, considers herself a Data Whiz. This was a new area to me when Lauren covered it in her videos, so I’ll confess that I’m a bit of a TpT data rookie. I found Tammy’s insight both fascinating and helpful. For example, she recommended to consider monthly conversion rates not just overall conversion rates when trying to decide if a product was “doing well”. We all know that topics and skills fall into certain months of the school year, so it makes sense that products would have different levels of sales success throughout the year as well. Makes sense… but wasn’t something I thought about, until now. Thanks Tammy!
To learn more fromTammy, head over to her website or instagram profile to connect. You can also check out her TpT store right here.
My own Instagram profile is slowly growing. I’m up to almost 800 followers, but this platform is still pretty new to me. I was thrilled when I saw that Michelle Griffo (from Apples and ABC’s) would be giving a presentation titled: Instagram Bootcamp for Teacher-Authors. One takeaway from this session for me was that at least once every nine posts you should personally show up, meaning, YOU, your face, a selfie! Nichelle explained that people are more likely to buy from another person than they are from a big company. They need to get to know you… and not just the “in the classroom” version of you. Another idea from Michelle I’m excited to try is a carousel post for my novel resources showing the full line up of products for each book, highlighting different features and aspects of the resources and really broadcasting that I have everything a teacher will need (outside of the actual books!) to teach a certain novel.
To gain more Insta-knowledge and other educational goodness from Michelle, head over to her IG profile and Teachers Pay Teachers store.
Copywriting
“If you wanna move past being salesy , put teachers’ interests and needs first.” This sentiment was at the heart of Joshua Cabral’s presentation, Compelling Copywriting 8 Essential Skills. He also said to paint a picture for your customers… show them where they WANT to be… in relation to where they currently are. Make that destination appealing and desirable, and they’ll be handing over their cash faster than you can say TpT. In addition to sharing his own knowledge, Joshua doled out tons of amazing book, podcast and information hub recommendations to help teacherpreneurs further their own knowledge on running a successful business. One that I am definitely going to subscribe to is Inbox Besties.
I learned so much from Joshua that I want to book him for one of my writing organizations conferences! :) To learn more from Joshua right now, including his podcast, workshop offerings, resources and more. You can also connect with Joshua on Instagram. Finally, fun fact: portions of Joshua’s earnings on Teachers Pay Teachers helps support his philanthropic work in Nicaragua and Haiti. What a cool guy!
Purposeful Posting
Nicki Dingraudo, AKA, The Sprinkle Topped Teacher, gave me the biggest forehead slap moment of the conference when she asked, “What do you want people to do after seeing your social media post?” And then told us, “Have this in the forefront of your mind as you create your post.” DUH! It seems simple, but how often do we really do that? I appreciated the reminder big time! Rather than feelings like we are throwing content out into the void, remember to do it purposefully. This will increase quality and value, which will in turn increase participation, engagement and eventually, purchases. Thanks Nicki!
To learn more about (and from!) Nicki, head over to her website and check out all she has to offer, including a blog, teaching resources, a free video series and more. Then, travel over to her Teachers Pay Teachers store to finde even more good stuff!
Other great moments
I loved when Stephanie Sutherland creator of The Simple Classroom Blog, said she was a teacher, but a writer at heart! I totally connected with that!
I can’t remember who said it, but one idea was to include reviews from past purchasers in your product description! Yes, teachers can scroll down to the reviews, but what if they don’t?!?! Instead of leaving it up to chance, place one or two super stellar reviews right in front of your buyer.
If you’ve been thinking about starting your own Teachers Pay Teachers store, there’s no time like the present. If you’d like a little help, this PowerPoint walks you through the steps one by one.
Alrighty, that’s a conference wrap! I hope you found some new/helpful/exciting tips and ideas in this blog post. I also hope you have the best school year ever. As always, if there is anything I can do/create/share that would be helpful, please don’t hesitate to send me an email or drop a comment on the blog post. All my best to you!
TEACH ON!
~ Amanda
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