It's a Learning Curve: What I've Learned About Teachers Pay Teachers As a Newbie

I have learned a lot on Teachers Pay Teachers in the last four months. It's quite the learning curve for sure. Before Teachers Pay Teachers, I had only created teaching materials for myself and rarely thought about designing them for other teachers, but it was one of the best things I've ever done.

By creating resources, I have learned more about educational resources that teachers from toddlers to early elementary enjoy, began to understand popular learning keywords and trends, and received much advice from those in the TpT's forums.

Below, I wanted to help other newbies learn how to better succeed on TPT  by providing some quick and easy tips that I have learned from the forums, bloggers and YouTube videos.

1. Always create your files in Powerpoint. When I first started, I was was addicted to Microsoft Word. It was easy and simple to use, but trying to format my work was a nightmare. If the pictures or font moved to the next page one more time, I thought I was going to scream! After learning how to use Powerpoint, I learned that you can easily change slide positions, duplicate slides, and create jpegs for product covers in a snap. 
2. Make Square Covers in Powerpoint. 8 by 8 square covers give potential buyers a clearer and better look at the products you are trying to sell. I found out that it is very easy to do too. Just click on the design tab and change the page dimensions 8 inches high to 8 inches wide and make sure that you maximize your page size for the most usable page space. Make sure to add pictures of your product to your cover so that buyers can get visuals of your fantastic resource. 
3. Use the TpT forums for suggestions, ideas and tips. I was totally confused about flattening and securing my work and Adobe Acrobat Pro did not load properly onto my computer. Recently, a  TpT teacher-author was nice enough to help me figure out a way to flatten and secure my work without installing this very expensive pdf program. There is even a section on the TPT forums,  that allows you to ask other teachers to review your work to see how it appears to potential buyers. 
4. Set a Specific Time to Work on Your Products and Store. Otherwise, you will find yourself working 18 hours a day.:) Take time to rest and recharge, just remember that you need to make awesome and educational products for teachers, not churn out lots of low-quality, less than stellar work. Quality over quantity is always the answer. 
5. Use Teacher-Created Clip art. TpT offers a lot of teacher created clip art for free from teacher-authors. As long as you follow their terms of use and make sure that the product can be used commercially, you are good to go. Another great site for free clip art is Openclipart. 
6. Take Advantage of Social Media. Set up a Pinterest account or a blog to increase traffic. Traffic does not always mean sales, but sales are more likely to happen  if you pin or post a product frequently to these sites. Pin and blog as often as possible. The more people who see your brand the better your sales will be. 
7. Use Keywords to Your Advantage in Blogs. Search engines will be more likely to find you if you use high frequency search terms for your products. An example if some is looking for  Preschool Animal Flashcards. Search terms could be "Animals" "Flashcards for preschoolers", "Early Childhood Education Flashcards" "Picture Flashcards" etc. 
8. Most Importantly, Make Sure That You Have Researched Your Product to Make Sure That It is Developmentally-Appropriate for the Age Group You Are Designing It For. If you are unsure how to create a math worksheet for 3rd graders, perform a  search on 3rd grade math worksheets or go to the library and look at your school district's textbooks for 3rd grade to find out about appropriate difficulty levels for this age group. I generally stick more to preschool to extremely early elementary because this is where I feel most confident. I believe in the old adage "do what you know". 

It's your turn, do you have any tips and tricks for newbies to Teachers Pay Teachers? Please share your comments below to help us (newbies) learn more and improve our skills on this amazing teaching resource marketplace.

On Your Mark, Get Ready, Set, Learn!