How to Use Your Blog to Get More Sales on Your TpT Store

All of the information in this post is taken directly from my online, video-based tutorial, How to Start a Blog for your TpT Store.

First, recognize the function of your website. It is a centralized port from which people can access all of your various platforms. So all platforms need to point to your website, and your website needs to direct them to your other platforms, specifically your TpT store.

This One Simple Step Doubled My Sales the First Month

The first action step that I recommend is adding a “Shop” tab to the top menu of your blog – or another term that sparks curiosity – and make it a redirection to your TpT store.

If you go to my website, you see that the last tab says “shop” and by clicking it, you will be taken directly over to my TpT store.

To do this, download the redirection plugin and follow its tutorial, which is very easy.

Promote Your Social Media Pages

As previously mentioned, you want your customers to interact with you on multiple platforms and you want to be able to reach them in various mediums. If they’re not going to your page, maybe they’ll see your Facebook posts, or Instagram lives, etc. So get them over to your other mediums.

The second action that I recommend is to promote your social media platforms in your sidebar. Remember if your readers are on your page from their phone (which these days is about 75% of your traffic) it will show up at the bottom of the screen.

You can do this from the customize screen or the appearance tab. Usually, it’s going to be under your widgets menu, sometimes it’s under another menu option depending on your theme. To do this, simply pasting an image in the widget of the sidebar menu and then link the image to your social media page. I do not recommend downloading a plugin, because this will make your website run slower.

Your sidebar menu should also promote at least one of your TpT products – again, we want our readers to go to our TpT store and become fans of the page, as well as customers. So use your widget to promote your best stuff.

Keep Them Coming Back

The next thing I want you to do is to think about why people come back to websites. They do this because they find value. It’s okay to sell from your website, but you need to also provide value without selling.

In my free class, how to start a blog for your Teachers Pay Teachers store, we created our first blog post to promote a TpT product. In that post, we also taught the reader of our blog how to overcome a struggle and then we provided a resource to help them do that.

Your blog posts should be helpful to your readers on their own – without the reader making a purchase. It’s okay to advertise things in your website, and it’s okay to have posts that are simply for the purpose of selling, but if you don’t provide value without selling, your readers will not come back.

Take this blog post for example. You will note that there are no items for sale. It is completely to add value. The goal is for the reader to find the content valuable and return to the website. And to help you do that, I have two free offers that require you to enter your email address. When you do, I will be able to keep in touch with you. Hopefully, you’ll gain enough value from the emails and website that when the time comes for me to offer you a product, you have positive sentiments towards the brand, and trust me enough to move forward.

So write posts that help the readers on their own, without making a purchase.

Cast a Wide Net

The third thing I want you to consider is how people find a webpage. Normally, it’s through finding something engaging. Let me give you an example. There’s a YouTube channel I follow called Super Carlin Brothers. They make videos speculating about or analyzing Disney movies. The videos are entertaining, and I enjoy watching them when I have a few minutes of down time.

Now, I don’t spend a lot of time on YouTube (I think I follow 4 channels). So how did I find their page?

Well, one day I was wondering why Whinnie the Pooh is called “Pooh” – which is just a nice word for poop! So I did a Google search and their video was one of the top things that appeared in the search bar. I watched their video, and found it enjoyable. At the end of the video, I was recommended to some of their other videos, which I found intriguing, so I watched those as well. Eventually, I became a fan and liked that page.

My point? I liked their channel because of the content and quality of what they were producing, but I never would have found their content had I not been searching for Whinnie the Pooh.

Application: people will stumble onto your page for various reasons. So make sure you are making blog posts about lots of topics relevant to your niche.

Take my website: Teach Create Sell. It’s for TpT’ers, so I have blog posts on how to write a good product description, how to make a cover image, should I purchase the free or paid account, and of course, how to start selling on Teachers Pay Teachers. These posts provide good value to my readers, but they are also my way of casting a wide net.

Someone may be trying to start a TpT store, and they don’t even know that they need to take a course, but they are investigating whether or not they should purchase the premium account. And they stumble onto my page and start investigating the content, and hopefully become a customer. Or maybe they’re wondering whether or not they need to purchase the premium membership, and as they’re searching online they find my blog post on that, and so it goes.

Your blog posts need to do the same, help attract the right customers to your blog (as well as keep them and help you make sales). To do that, write blog posts on lots of things related to your niche and your products.

Keeping Customers

When I was in sales they used to show us a graph that showed how much your chances of making a sale increased with every contact of a potential customer. The point was that the more interaction you had with the customer, the better chances you had to make a sale. So they wanted us calling back our customers.

For internet marketing, how can you get your future customer to reengage with your content? It’s great if they’ve liked and followed your Facebook or Pinterest page, but the best way to keep interacting with them is to get them on your email list.

Start thinking through how you will get your customers to subscribe to your email list. An easy way is to install a plugin, like Constant Contact, which allows readers of your blog to enter their email address to receive updates when you post a new blog, or to get on your email list (so that you can send them follow-up emails).

A better way is to provide a free product in exchange for their email address. This is called an optin. There is a plugin called Optin Monster that’s pretty good. There are also paid services, like Convert Kit or Mail Chimp that will also do this.

Since you are just getting started, don’t dwell on this just yet. But eventually, you’ll want to get here. For now, write good blog posts that provide value and promote your products.