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Deanna's good-will tour of interviews and national TV appearances has made us famous and set off a growth spurt that is re-energizing our production team. New sellers are signing up by the thousands. Those of us who have been around for a while know that each person brings a unique spark of enthusiasm with the potential to electrify the whole site. A huge surge of new ideas and new possibilities are arriving daily.
The Forum is saturated with newcomers' questions. Many of the topics have already been addressed in a discussion chain or in previous seller's newsletters, but searching the archives for specific information is time consuming. We want all of our novice colleagues to have as much important information as quickly as possible in one compact resource.
Welcome to TpT Open House! Take a tour of our best, experience-based advice for insuring a strong start, avoiding pitfalls, and fast-forwarding your TpT experience. . .
Setting Up Your Store
Think of the site's default grayscale icon as a dead battery! Replace it immediately with a photo of yourself or a lively trademark design. Complete your profile and other public information ASAP. As you stock your store, consider adding banners that showcase your best product(s). Don't expect potential shoppers to come in and poke around in the dark. Flip the switch and let them know who you are and what you have to offer.
Writing as a Professional
When you signed on to TpT, you activated your new status as a professional author! Your writing now has monetary value along with the added responsibilities of careful planning, extra hours of work, and a clear awareness of your new audience. Your products are more likely to generate interest and sales when they meet certain content and presentation standards.
- Completeness: Every posting, free or priced, should be a full teaching resource that includes everything needed to use the product--instructions, answer keys, forms, worksheets, etc. Everything! TpT buyers are looking for convenience. Make sure they find it.
- Substance: Products should not double as advertising billboards. A few links to related items, your blog, Facebook page, etc. at the end of a file is acceptable, even helpful. Prefacing an item with a barrage of advertising static, however, delays a customer's access to the material he/she has purchased, and it eats up ink cartridges. Bad idea! Products should be 99.9% product.
- Presentation: We know for certain that colorful product cover pages are a requirement! Cyber shopping speed is measured in seconds, but an attention-grabbing burst of color can bring the rush to a momentary halt. Items with only grayscale beacons to announce their presence will go unnoticed.
- Customer Assistance: Product pages should offer specific information that helps a customer decide whether or not a particular resource meets his/her needs. Thumbnails and carefully chosen preview pages provide the necessary visual information. Bypass these, miss a sale.
Write factual product descriptions. Skip the emotional/opinion words such as "awesome," "fabulous," "amazing," "cute," etc. Instead, be precise about your product's contents ("clipart with K-2 appeal," for example, rather than "cute clipart"), what it teaches, the activities, etc. Emotions do come into play AFTER a customer downloads and sees his/her purchase for the first time. A positive reaction is more likely if the seller provides exact, up-front information rather than trying to evoke an emotionally charged sale.
- Sensible Pricing: Many new sellers hit the pricing speed bump. The "dollar store" idea recently resurfaced on the Forum. Déjà vu! This concept has been hashed and rehashed among sellers and always with the same conclusion. No! A thousand times no! TpT is not a dollar store, a bargain basement, or a flea market. Underpricing presents a cheap persona for the whole site and degrades the integrity of individual products.
Still, each seller makes the final pricing decisions for his/her products. To get a better feel for how TpT's seasoned professionals handle this issue, browse through a few favorite authors' stores or those of some of the site's top sellers. You might also want to factor in Rachel Lynette's TpT Pricing Chart for Sellers, which assigns prices based on the number of pages.
Putting Your Best Foot Forward
Some of TpT's first-wave sellers wandered off the grid and fell into a few of those aforementioned pitfalls. Our mistakes were expensive in that they cost us countless hours of unproductive writing time. On the positive side, we learned how to make wise decisions in choosing product topics. Here's what we know:
- Be Original: No matter how tempting it is to think about tweaking a popular TpT product and calling it your own, zap the idea! Customers can spot a copycat seller, and they won't buy. Furthermore, we watch out for each other in these matters. Pirate sellers and their looted products quickly disappear from TpT.
- Avoid Textbook and Program-based Products: At one time, a large number of Teacher/Authors were writing and posting resources that supplemented popular programs and textbook adoptions. Then in June of 2012, a flurry of cease-and-desist notices made it clear that these products were copyright infringements and, therefore, illegal. They had to be removed from the site. Sellers lost both their products and the time they had invested in writing them.
Lesson learned! Use your time writing original materials based on your expertise, not someone else's program.
- Develop Copyright Awareness: Individual sellers are responsible for making sure that each product posted on the site is copyright compliant. Download your free copy of Top 5 Copyright Questions with Answers for the basics.
Learning the Support System
TpT has an ongoing, 24/7 support system. No seller works alone!
For technical problems (yours or a customer's), scroll to the bottom of your seller's dashboard, click "Contact Us," and open a ticket to report the issue to TpT's seller/customer support team.
Need more information about product production or seller issues in general? Go to the Forum. A veteran seller or two is always hanging around, ready to assist. While you're there, look for invitations to linky parties, giveaways, new Pinterest boards, TpT-related special events, etc. and join in. Learn to work the social media.
Consider joining a private TpT Seller's Facebook group. These off-site cyber communities build friendships, improve authorship skills, and lend sympathetic support.
Become familiar with your seller's dashboard, where you will find our code of ethics (The TpT Way), links for promoting your products or throwing a sale, and a host of archived information.
Always treat other TpT sellers with the utmost respect and offer support when you can.
Putting it in Perspective:
The TpT of November 2012 is quite different from the TpT of a year ago. We have grown into a fast-moving, multi-million-dollar, electronic gold mine of teaching resources produced by experienced professionals with a knack for getting things done. Our million-plus customer base expects top-quality in every download. Novice sellers must catalog and absorb a virtual mountain of important information in a short time. No wonder so many newcomers stand wide-eyed for a while! It's enough to make you blow a fuse.
Take a deep breath! Look again. What you're seeing is opportunity!
You are now part of a thriving new concept, tailor-made for educators who want to make a difference. You have more than a million chances to share your ideas and improve your income. You have a support system that is 23,000+ strong and growing. Your enthusiasm, your experience, your expertise, and the TpT of November 2012 are perfect matches!
Put on your best pair of creative overalls and go to work. Transform one of your light- bulb moments into a super-charged teaching resource. Display it in your store and promote it in the social media.
You're going to like what happens next.
Welcome to TpT!
Margaret Whisnant
TpT Seller
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