If you are working on optimizing your TpT Store, a great place to focus some of your energy is on your custom categories.
This area of your TpT store can help you get people who are visiting your store to the product that is perfect for them. Which will result in more sales.
Why Do We Need to Do Custom Categories?
Let’s take my store for example.
I have around 1,000 products for various grade levels and resources.
Let’s say someone stumbles upon my color-by-numbers activity for the distributive property. And let’s face it, they love it! Because it’s awesome!
After they purchase it, or as they’re looking at it, they say to themselves, “It would be great if I could get some more of these! My 6th grade class would love them.” (And, let’s face it. They’re right!)
So they start scrolling through my store. But all of the products that they see as they scroll are not color-by-numbers worksheets for 6th grade. In fact, none of them are.
You might be thinking, no fear, they can just type into the search bar. And that’s true. But maybe I haven’t labeled it with the right term (like I call mine “adding decimals” instead of “add decimals.”) Or they type in “plotting integers on a number line,” which I don’t have, but I do have them for operations with integers.
They will NEVER FIND THEM! And I will have lost out on more potential income.
If, however, I have my custom categories set up properly, they can just look at my categories, and select “color by numbers” and “6th grade” and they can see all of the ones that I do have that would be perfect for their class.
This is why they must be done. They can generate a lot of extra revenue.
Remember that it’s easier to make more money from an existing customer than it is to find and convert a new customer.
In other words, getting someone who has already purchased one of your items to click on your custom categories, explore, and buy something else is much more likely to happen than for someone to find your product organically and make a purchase.
So your custom categories can be a gold mine!
What Custom Categories Should I Have?
Consider the scenario I laid out above. This is how the majority of customers will interact with your custom categories. They’re looking for more of something you offer – for what they teach. So I recommend making custom categories around your key types of products, as well as the grade levels that your products are for.
Types of resources might include: labs, coloring worksheets, book reports, centers, guided notes, lesson plans, or a certain type of worksheet or in-class activity.
Also, think through some of the subjects or standards, that you have resources for. Or those that cover a multiple grades, or that are highly searched for. For example, for my math teacher store, decimals and fractions are resources that many grade levels search for, even if it’s not in their curriculum. So I have a custom category called fractions. This category covers many standards, like operations (add, subtract, multiply, and divide), converting fractions to decimals, mixed numbers, word, problems, etc. I put them all into this one category.
How Many Custom Categories Should I Have?
Too many categories will be overwhelming for the customer, and they might get lost or give up.
However, the more you have the more likely it is for your customer to find exactly what they’re looking for.
I would like to quote Albert Einstein. “Everything should be as simple as possible, and no simpler.”
So make as few custom categories as you can get by with, and as many as you need to help your customer.
How to Create Custom Categories
Click on Product Listing from the dropdown menu.
On the left side will be several options. Scroll down to the one that says “Custom Categories.”
At the bottom of the Custom Categories section, it will say, “Manage your Custom Categories.” Select that option and then start creating your custom categories.
Select the “Add new category” button. Then start adding your categories. Then go into your resources and start assigning them to your custom categories.
You can now add a description for your custom categories, which I recommend doing.
How to Use Emojis in Your Custom Categories
Custom categories look nice and will help draw your viewer’s eyes to it. This will help them find the perfect resources for them, which will make them more likely to purchase.
To add emojis, there are some that you can copy and paste right into your title.
A great place to find emojis that you can copy and paste into your custom categories on Teachers Pay Teachers is https://emojipedia.org/. I have tried many on this website, and they all seem to work. The emojis are organized by category, but they also have a search feature.
Other websites will do this as well, just Google Search “Emojis copy and paste” to find others.