There are two ways to get more customers to your Teachers Pay Teachers store and products.
One. The paid way.
You can pay for advertising on various social media platforms that will generate you good traffic to your TpT store. Of course, there are other places to pay for advertising, like on other people’s websites or Podcasts. You could mail flyers. Another popular place to purchase traffic is on Search Engines, like Google.
But usually, the most effective form of paid advertising is through Facebook, Google, YouTube, and Pinterest.
The benefit of paid traffic is that it is immediate. You will quickly get customers to your store when you purchase them through one of these platforms. The downside is that as quickly as they come, they leave, and you will need to continue to pay to get customers this way if you don’t have a long term strategy that includes some of the things we mention below.
Click here to read an article to help you decide if you are ready to start paying for traffic.
The second way to get traffic to your TpT store is for free.
Again, the easiest, and most efficient way to get free traffic is by utilizing social media. There are other ways, like word of mouth, or getting links from other websites or TpT stores, but generally, your best method is through social media and through Search Engine Optimization (which we will discuss at the end of this post).
Social Media
Here are some ways to get customers from your social media accounts without spending extra money
DO NOT SPAM
Warning. Spamming people can be effective in the short term, but it is not a long-term solution. For example, I once found a very large educational group on Facebook. After joining, I posted a link to my TpT product (I had very few at the time) and made a quick $15! What a great return on one post!
Excited, I quickly posted a link to a second product. However, this link did not generate me any money. Instead, it got me kicked out of the group, deleting my chances of making any more money from this group in the future. So don’t spam people.
How to use Pinterest to promote your teachers pay teachers products
If you’re going to learn one platform, it should be Pinterest. Pinterest does not behave like the other platforms because it’s more of a search engine than a social media hangout spot. People come to Pinterest to get ideas, learn things, and spend money. Pinterest users spend money on average more than users of any other platform.
To begin, get a Pinterest business account and create several relevant boards. Post to each board at least every day.
As you become a more proficient Pinner, and have more products in your TpT store (and perhaps a blog), increase the number of boards you have and how often you Pin to them.
How to get customers to your teachers pay teachers store with Facebook
Facebook is still the king of social media. It has way more accounts than any other platform, more active users than any other platform, and has more new users than any other platform (meaning it’s still growing!)
Besides this, Facebook has been around longer than the rest and it is the only platform to earn profits year after year, which means it has the longest life expectancy of all the platforms.
Facebook also has groups, which are the new message boards of the internet. You can post something in a Facebook group and have it be seen by hundreds or even thousands of potential customers – but again, I don’t recommend spamming.
To get customers using Facebook, first create a business account for your TpT store and post on it once (or twice) a day. Then, list your business page as a place of employment on your personal page.
Next, join some relevant Facebook groups and become a contributor in them.
Post meaningful things regularly, answer questions, and add value to the group. This is called becoming a group expert. After you have established yourself as an expert, it’s okay to occasionally drop a link to your product – especially if your answering a relevant question. Sometimes, I will ask a question in a group, just so I can put a link to my product in the comment section after it has received some good engagement.
By the way, I have a new course on Organic Facebook Growth for TpT Sellers.
In it we will learn the strategies for Organic Facebook growth, I’ll give you tons of templates for your posts, we’ll make Reels and Memes together, I’ll give you a content calendar, and so much more.
Learn more about Amplify by clicking here.
How to use Instagram to promote your teachers pay teachers products
Instagram seems to be the fastest growing Social Media platform, as well as one that is loved on by many TpT’ers. It’s a visual medium that makes showing off your cool products very easy. The issue is that Instagram currently does not have a way to link from your image to your product. So TpT’ers are forced to encourage people to click the link in their bio (and they only get one). Hopefully, this will change soon. But for now, Instagram is still a great place to gain a following and get traffic to your TpT store – just make sure your TpT store is setup well.
Also, if you have a blog, it will make this process much easier, since the link in your bio can be to a blog page specifically designed for this, where you post images and links to your best products.
Make sure to spend some time learning about hashtags and Instagram live if you are going to invest time on this platform.
How to use Reddit to promote your teachers pay teachers products
Reddit has over 10 million users each day. Posting on it is quick and easy. Just find a relevant subject and post links to your products.
But beware. No one likes being spammed, and anonymous links to paid products is just that. Reddit users can hide behind weird names with no affiliation to who they are so the platform does become the comment section of the internet with all sorts of foul things being said.
If you’re going to post here, develop thick skin and learn not to respond to the haters. Also, a great strategy is to have a blog and create good content that also has links to your products. This will get more clicks and more likes on Reddit, resulting in more traffic to your TpT products.
Twitter, SnapChat, Tic-Toc and whatever comes next
Social media platforms continue to pop up (and die). If you are quick to get in to a new platform you can have a leg up on the competition and can leverage your position to get a lot of traffic. Especially if it’s a platform that grows and becomes large.
But all platforms are different so you will have to spend time not only learning how to get a bunch of followers, but also how to get them from your social media page to your TpT store and to the product in your store that’s best for them.
None of this is bad, and could result in a huge payoff. But it is a risk as you are spending a lot of time and energy learning a new platform and trying to become an expert on it, when it may not last. I’d recommend starting with a more established platform (like the ones mentioned above), but that does not mean it’s a bad idea to try to grow an audience on a new platform – in fact, it may turn out to be the best thing you ever did!
Your Social Media Strategy
Pick one social media platform and become proficient at it. The one you pick should NOT be Pinterest. I recommend starting with Facebook, but if you’re already active on Twitter, Instagram, or something else, start there.
Once you have picked your platform, build your business page and start becoming an active member on the platform. Work on creating engagement, asking questions, and creating shareable content all in an effort to build a following. Then leverage that following into traffic to your store.
Start Your Pinterest Business Page
At the same time, start your business Pinterest page and boards and post to each board at least every day.
Once you have become skilled at both of these two steps, then you can branch out to a second social media platform.
Search Engine Optimization – An Even Better Strategy
A Search Engine is just that, a place where internet users search for things; like Google or Bing.
SEO is optimizing your page or product’s page on TpT for Search Engine. In other words, making it much more likely to show up in Google Searches than other pages or products.
If you do a good job with your Search Engine Optimization (SEO), people will continue to find your product well into the future, for free!.
Unlike paid advertising, that lasts a short period of time and as long as you spend money, or a social media post that disappears in a day or two, your search engine results will last forever. People will continue to type questions into Google for a long time, so if your product ranks well in their search results, you will continue to get good traffic to your store or webpage.
To get good rankings on Search Engines, you need to include words and phrases that are likely to be searched for by people who would benefit from your product.
For example, if you’ve made a science worksheet on the life cycle of a butterfly, what words might a teacher be typing into Google who could use your resource? Perhaps they’re asking a question, “How to teach my first grade students about life cycles.” Or maybe they’re looking for “fun activities to learn about stages of life.” Or “classroom activities for first grade science.” These are, of course, just random examples, but hopefully the point has been made – you need to think through the different terms and phrases someone is searching for that will want to find your product.
Once you’ve discovered the key words and phrases that will work best for teachers who could use your product, you need to include it in your descriptions both on the TpT product page as well as on your Pins (and on your posts in social media – but people aren’t normally searching social media for key terms and phrases). So how can I embed all of those phrases into my product description? Click here to learn more about writing great product descriptions.
Make sure you are using words that are a good fit for your customer, otherwise they will quickly leave your page after arriving. This quick departure (called a bounce) is detrimental to your SEO ranking. For example, don’t include the word free in your description if it isn’t free. Once they arrive and see that it’s not free, they will leave, and your product will cease to get a good ranking – even on it’s other words and phrases.
One last note. Your TpT products are already registered to show up in searches on Google, Bing, and other search engines. But if you have a website of a blog (which I do recommend) these search engines don’t know your webpage exists if you haven’t registered it with them. I teach you how to do this in my free class on how to Blog for your TpT store.
Your Pins also need to have good descriptions.
Just like your TpT product page, Pinterest Pins are already linked to Google, so they will rank well on searches. If you don’t believe, go to Google and type in a resource for your class, like “Comma Rules Lesson Plan,” or “Ancient Greek Mythology Activity.” The highest-ranking results will most likely be on Teachers Pay Teachers or on Pinterest. So make sure you spend some time writing good product descriptions for both.
Another Great Strategy
Get a blog. Blogs also do very well in searches on the internet, and they get more views on Pinterest then TpT Pins.
Besides this, having a blog will give you more opportunities to take advantage of key words and phrases within one blog post. And since you can write multiple bog posts, all referencing different TpT products, you will have many opportunities to get good SEO rankings for a product due to multiple posts.
Blogs have many more advantages for your TpT store. Read why your TpT store needs a blog by clicking here.
Or, if you already believe me when I tell you that your TpT store needs a blog, you can enroll in my free, video-based, online course: How to Start a Blog for Your TpT Store.
A Road Map
Feeling like that was a lot of information all at once? Where to begin? Should you blog? Email market? Focus on Social Media?
In the Traffic Lab, we have a Road Map that guides us through this process.
If you’ve been considering enrolling in the Traffic Lab, now is a great time. It includes courses on email marketing, blogging, copywriting, and organic FB growth. Plus a weekly virtual meetup, premade templates and emails. Guides, tutorials, bonus trainings, and so much more.
Check out the Traffic Lab by clicking here
