How to Sell on Teachers Pay Teachers

Teacher Pay Teachers is one-way teachers can monetize the teaching materials they use for students, but it’s not just for teachers.

Learning how to sell on Teacher Pay Teachers can be simple and is a great option for any seller looking to diversify the platforms they sell their printables or digital resources, or make extra money.

What is Teachers Pay Teachers?

Teachers Pay Teachers, also known as Tpt, is a selling platform that was created for teachers to be able to sell resources to other teachers that they may find useful in their classroom.

Tpt has since grown to be one of the most popular sites for educators seeking resources to use with their students and for teachers selling their own resources created for students and teachers alike.

Tpt’s audience has grown a lot since the pandemic. In addition to traditional classroom teachers and educators, homeschool educators and child care centers and providers are gravitating more and more towards Tpt to have unique materials to use with their students.

Do you Have to be a Teacher to Sell on Tpt?

This is a common question that is frequently asked when sellers are looking for information about how to sell on Teachers Pay Teachers. The answer is no! Anyone can create a Tpt store and start selling products they’ve made.

While the site is designed as a great way for teachers to access the resources they need and is primarily used by teachers, there is plenty of room for nonteachers to sell their high-quality resources that are time-saving and of value to teachers.

Selling on Teachers Pay Teachers is a great way to earn a mostly passive income and a lot of people are doing so every month!

How Much Does it Cost to Be a Seller on Tpt?

When you are creating your seller account, you will have the option to have a basic, free account, or a premium seller account, which has an annual subscription fee of $59.95.

With a free account, you do not have to pay a membership fee. For every sale you have, you will earn 55% of that sale and there will be a $0.30 transaction fee on all of your resources. You will also have a 200MB file size limit for whatever you upload into your store.

With a premium seller account, you pay a yearly fee of $59.95. For every sale you have, you will earn 80% on all sales and there will be a $0.15 transaction fee on all resources that are priced under $3.00. If the customer spends more than $3.00, then there is no fee.

Other features of a premium account include the ability to upload videos and you have a 1GB file size limit to whatever you upload into your store, as well as you have access to marketing tools and some additional features located in your seller’s dashboard. By investing in this membership from the beginning you can potentially save money in the long run.

WHICH ACCOUNT IS RIGHT FOR ME?

Determining the type of seller account you would like to use is a personal choice. Many teacher sellers will start with the basic account and then upgrade to the premium account once they start making money or have steady sales coming in. Others begin as a premium seller to maximize their profit on their products.

When I started on Tpt, I began with a basic seller account until I made the same amount that it cost for a premium account. It took about a month for this to happen, and once it did, I easily switched my account over and started making more money per sale! One of the great things about selling on Teachers Pay Teachers is there are no listing fees and your listings have no expiration dates.

What Can You Sell on Tpt?

There is a wide variety of things that you can sell on Tpt. Most common are educational resources that teachers can use with students in the classroom, such as worksheets or digital activities to be used with G-Suite or Microsoft Office products.

• You can specialize the content of your products into grade and subject-specific resources that focus on specific educational standards.
• Classroom décor is a very popular item that sells well on Tpt. Creating products that save teachers times tend to perform very well, especially if what you offer is unique.
• Clip art and fonts are two additional popular items that you can sell on Tpt. Other than teachers or sellers looking for resources to use with their students, a Tpt seller may be looking for commercial use items to be used to create their own resources to sell in their stores.
• Resources that have a specific target audience such as homeschooling, special education, child care, etc. are also things many teachers or even users of Tpt are searching for.

WHAT ABOUT SEASONAL AND PRINTABLE PRODUCTS?

In addition to traditional teaching resources, you can create seasonal products that teachers can use in their classrooms or even among their staff and coworkers.

Back to School is a very popular season and you can make printables such as getting-to-know-you activities and things that build classroom community.

Being a former teacher, I originally had intentions of focusing my content and products in my store on my state standards, as I remembered how difficult it was to find aligned content for them.

I immediately felt very overwhelmed with this concept and decided to try listing some of my Etsy printables that I had created using the Gold City Ventures printable course to see if they would sell.

To my surprise, they did very well!

I had seen a lot of advice out there that you cannot sell seasonal items on Etsy, rather they tend to not sell as well. My store primarily focuses on seasonal items such as games and other easy printables that a teacher may want to use with their class and they do sell very well. The timing of listing those products is everything of course!

OTHER UNIQUE PRINTABLE IDEAS

Another kind of resource I have had success with selling on Teachers Pay Teachers are products that boost staff morale or things that one teacher may purchase to use on another teacher. Such as interest surveys or simple games that can be played at staff meetings, or tags that can be used by a sunshine committee or PTO/PTA.

The possibilities are endless and you would be surprised at things that sell well on Tpt.

How Much Can You Make Selling on Tpt?

This is a common question that is asked about selling on Tpt. The amount of money that you can make varies from seller to seller. Many sellers use Tpt as a passive way to extra make money while other sellers choose to pursue it as a full-time business.

Regardless of how active or passive you want your Teachers Pay Teachers store to be, the amount of upfront effort put into your Tpt store will determine how much money you make.

Most teachers create resources for their own classroom needs or own students, so making money selling these resources for other teachers to use works well for them to make extra money. Focusing on creating high-quality products and resources will allow you to make more money. One way to achieve this is by creating bundles.

I started selling on Tpt at the beginning of June 2022 and by September, I had already done 235 sales and made close to $500 selling my printables.

My store has now been open for 8 months and I have over 1,000 sales and have made over $3,000 selling my printables.

You can make a lot of money with Teachers Pay Teachers. The greatest factor to your success will be how much work you are willing to put into it upfront so that it can become mostly passive in the long run.

Steps to Get Started on Tpt

The first step in selling on Tpt is to create your seller’s account and select if you would like a basic membership or a premium membership. There’s no right or wrong choice to this- pick the membership you feel most comfortable starting with. You can always upgrade or downgrade if needed.

Choosing your Store Name

Next, you will want to set up your store profile and storefront. You want to choose a name for your store that is memorable and will have your customers returning to you for resources.

Some teacher sellers choose to use their first and last name as their store name, while others prefer anonymity and select a name based on the resources that they sell or the content they produce.

For my store, I chose to have anonymity as I know in the past a lot of my former students would look up my name in Google search. I didn’t need them, or their parents, finding anything additional I did. You will have the ability to change your store name at any time.

Whatever you decide, you will want your store name to be memorable so that future customers can easily return to buy more products from you.

Setting Up Your Store Profile

Every Tpt seller will have a profile associated with their selling account. You can include information such as a specific subject area or grade level, or levels taught (if you are/were a teacher), your experience, teaching style, honors/awards, education history, and additional bio information if you choose.

I have seen a variety of stores with this information filled out and others that don’t.

As a Tpt buyer, having a complete profile has never deterred me from purchasing from a seller. I tended to make my decision based on what I was looking for with a particular resource.

Setting Up Your Store Front

Your storefront is what users will see when they click on your store. You can jazz up your storefront to make it your own. You can also add a quote to your storefront, add banners and sidebar images, and organize your products into categories as you add more listings.

Determine your choice of Design Program

There are many ways to create products and resources to sell on Tpt. Many Tpt sellers design their products using Microsoft PowerPoint or features of G-Suite. Other teacher sellers use programs such as Canva.

You will want to consider your audience and ask yourself who you are creating your products for and what would be the best program for them to use the product.

As a teacher, I typically did not care for products that were meant to be used in PowerPoint, but many of my teacher friends loved PowerPoint.

If you are creating worksheets or printables, Canva and PowerPoint can be great options as those programs allow you to save items as PDFs and can easily insert fun clip art if you are trying to enhance your designs.

If you are creating a digital resource to be used, edited, or manipulated by students, programs, and PowerPoint or Google Slides would be great options.

Some sellers even offer multiple styles such as the printable item and a digital version all in one. This of course will increase the value of your product and earn you more money.

While keeping your target audience in mind to determine your design program, be sure you are comfortable with that program so that you can enjoy creating within it.

Some Things to Consider

Things to keep in mind when creating products are the type of product and how many decorative features you will include.

For basic worksheets, some teachers find that all of the ‘cutesy’ clip art can be distracting for students, depending on the worksheet’s intended use. Others teachers don’t mind festive borders and decorative elements.

In addition, some teachers are printing within their schools and do not have access to a color printer, so providing black-and-white options is great to pair with color printables too.

When I was still teaching in the classroom, activities that had cute color designs I would print at home if I wanted my students to have them in color, otherwise, I would print them at school and didn’t mind if the colored items were printed in grey.

As long as you know who your intended audience is for the product that you are creating, you’ll know which direction to lean toward when designing.

Creating your 1st Product

After you have your account set up, you are ready to begin uploading products to your store. Your first resource on Tpt must be a free resource. There are many great ideas for a free resource you could offer such as classroom activities, clip art, or mini versions of a product you plan to list in your store.

For my free resource, I made an end of year printable gift tags that a teacher would give to students as a small gift or token.

The biggest thing to remember is that although your first resource has to be free, you should still focus on providing a high-quality item for your customer. This will showcase the quality of your work and will also help bring back the customer to want to purchase from you in the future.

Keep Creating More Products

After you have listed your free product, you then can create products to sell, as well as you can continue to list free items in your store. This is a great way to get future customers, as many teachers will search for free resources to use and then return to a specific seller to buy additional items they might have if they like the quality of that seller’s work.

I tend to add one additional freebie per season to attract more customers.

For Halloween, I listed one of the games from my bundle as a freebie and this helped with customers coming back to purchase the entire bundle.

Final Thoughts

Selling on Teachers Pay Teachers is a great place where printables can sell well, you can make extra money each month and set up a passive income stream, or even diversify your selling platforms if you are an already existing seller. Focus on delivering high-quality products to your buyers and you’ll be sure to find success along the way.

Start selling with Teachers Pay Teachers today!

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