The Rebranded Teacher
The Rebranded Teacher
Your First $100 on TPT - A Step-by-Step Guide
Ready to make your first $100 on Teachers Pay Teachers without a big audience or ads? We walk you through the exact three-step plan that launched sales in a saturated pre-K niche: build one purposeful product you truly believe in, duplicate that winning structure across new themes, and time smart seasonal resources to test demand fast. Along the way, you’ll hear how a month-long, low-prep dinosaur unit outperformed cut-and-paste competitors by solving real classroom and homeschool pain points—print-and-go, repeatable activities, and clear skill coverage.
We dig into the mechanics of building a product line that compounds: keep the layout and skills consistent, swap themes to meet student interests, and make it easy for buyers to grab month two and three in the same visit. Then we use seasonal spikes as a laboratory. Holiday resources bring quick traffic in less competitive windows, helping you diagnose whether your problem is visibility or conversion. If views are low, focus on SEO and cover clarity. If views are healthy but sales lag, fix previews, thumbnails, and descriptions to improve the add-to-cart moment.
You’ll also learn a dead-simple TPT search test to validate demand before you commit: find niches where top listings have strong reviews but page one still includes zero-review products. That gap means you can rank early with a new listing. We pair this with a strategic freebie—a high-quality sample that feeds discovery and encourages follows on the download page. For output planning, we recommend an early catalog split of five evergreen and five seasonal resources, then shifting back to evergreen once your data points to what works.
Want help putting this into action? Grab the free step-by-step guide linked in the show notes, complete with check boxes to keep you moving. If this strategy helps, subscribe for weekly tips, share the episode with a TPT friend, and leave a quick review so more creators can find it.
Dowload the free guide here!: https://rebrandedteacher.kartra.com/page/your-first-100
Check Out My YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/laurenfulton
My Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurentschappler/
My Other YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LaurenATsch
Free Rebranded Teacher Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/749538092194115
Welcome to the Rebranded Teacher Podcast. My name is Lauren Fulton. I'm a full-time teacher, author, and seller on Teachers Pay Teachers, and I help other teacher entrepreneurs grow their TPT businesses in a way that's purposeful and sustainable. So if you're looking for actionable, step-by-step ways to grow your business, you're in the right place. Let's get started. A year and a half ago, I opened my second TPT store called The Busy Homeschooler. And within two months, I had made my first hundred dollars in that store. Now, again, this was my second TPT store. So my first TPT store consistently in the top 1% of sales month to month on Teachers Pay Teachers, but this is my second store. Completely different niche, much more saturated, and I was still able to make that first hundred dollars within the first two months with no audience. And in this episode, I'm gonna be sharing exactly how I did that. Plus, I'm gonna give you a free guide that's gonna help you get your first hundred dollars in sales on TPT. Let's go ahead and get started. So the very first thing that I did was I created a product that I believed in. And I feel like this is probably the most important. If you don't feel confident in the product that you've created, if you've just slapped something up there to call it like, hey, it's my first product, it's there, then I feel like it's really difficult to get the confidence that you need to keep going. But when you put out a product that you really believe in, that you know is good, you know is high quality, and you know that parents or teachers are really going to be able to utilize this resource and get a lot of help and benefit out of it, it really kind of changes the game, but it also kind of sets you on a really good path. So the way that I did this was I created a resource for my daughter. I created a set of dinosaur worksheets. It's like over a month of just basically a dinosaur pre-K curriculum for like a month. So lots of different activities for letter recognition, letter sounds, number recognition, counting, all of that good pre-K stuff. Now, pre-K is a really saturated niche, but because I was teaching my daughter and because she was really into dinosaurs, there really weren't a lot of dinosaur preschool resources out there that was kind of comprehensive. There were a few units where I could piece together things here and there, but I just really wanted something that was all in one package and that made it really easy. And I wanted something where the games were repeatable, the activities were repeatable so that I wasn't having to constantly explain to her this is how you do this activity, and every single day having to go over directions over and over again. I also knew that I did not want anything cut and paste. I did not want to touch another glue stick or another pair of scissors, like no thank you. So I created this resource and felt really confident in it because I knew it was not cut and paste, it was low prep, it was print and go, and it would last a month. So as a parent or even as a teacher who had students who are really interested in dinosaurs, I could grab the entire packet for a very reasonable price and I wouldn't have to think about what my child was going to be doing in school for the next month. Now, the other side to this is that because of the way that I had set it up, I could easily duplicate it. And this is the second thing that you really need to think about when you're creating that resource. So if I create one product that I really believe in and then I have to go back to the drawing board before I can create the next product, it will ultimately kind of stunt my growth because I need to be able to know that if a buyer comes to my store and they find that dinosaur packet of worksheets, that they could go and get the next month as well. And they don't have to go find somebody else to get the next month of worksheets and activities. So I was able to quickly and easily duplicate this product, still practicing letter sounds, letter recognition, counting, and number recognition, still practicing all the same skills, but with a different theme. So I went with like a transportation theme. My daughter was also really into cars, and then we did a summer theme over at ants, and you get the point. So basically, I was able to easily duplicate this. So that if somebody came to my store and they really liked the way that that unit was laid out, they really liked that month of worksheets, they could go ahead and purchase additional months while they were there. So this allowed me to fairly simply create more resources that I really believed in. So first starting by creating a product that you really believe in. And then second, making sure that that product is something that you can easily duplicate. Because if it's successful, you want to be able to replicate its success and you want to be able to give more to your buyers. And I hear people say all the time, in fact, I just looked at a comment on my YouTube channel that said this very thing. And that is, I've got these resources, I believe in them. People are downloading the freebie, they're even making purchases, but they're not following my store and they're not leaving reviews. Well, what happens is when you do these two things, when you create a resource that you believe in, it has a purpose, it has a point. It's not just I bought a template and I filled something in. And that's not to say that that's wrong or that you cannot do that, but when you really believe in that product, most of the time that means that you're bringing something special to the table and you're bringing something that's going to want to make buyers come back and purchase specifically from you. So when you do that in combination with creating additional resources that they can purchase from you, this is gonna open the door wide open for people to come in, find your product and say, oh, she has more like this or he has more like this. I'm gonna go ahead and follow their store so that when they create new resources or when they create new themes or when they expand this product line out, then I can go ahead and purchase more from them or I can remember to come back to them. This is also gonna be where you're going to get people who want to leave reviews so that they can get the credits so that they can make more purchases from your store, which is ultimately what we want, right? So when I create a resource that I believe in and I make sure that it's easy to duplicate, then I'm setting myself up for long-term success to get some of those secondary things that I want. Primarily, I want sales. Secondarily, though, I want more followers and I want feedback so that I can get more sales. Number three, you want to make sure that you are creating seasonal resources. Now I'm not saying stock your store with seasonal resources. In fact, the first few resources that I would create would probably not be seasonal. I would start with some evergreen products, but then I would start to pepper in some seasonal items. What I love about seasonal items, and I've said this before, I'll say it again, is that with a seasonal resource, it allows me to get some data pretty quickly. So if I create a product that is seasonal, I am gonna get a short term. So that's the downside, is it's short term, but it's also a positive. I'm gonna get a short-term surge or should get a short-term surge of views or eyeballs on that seasonal resource because there are gonna be more people searching for it. And typically, seasonal products are less competitive. There are fewer of them than there are evergreens. So usually there's more space for me to find a little hole in the market, even in a really saturated market when we're talking about seasonal resources. So I want to create a few seasonal resources and with that search, it's gonna give me some data. Hopefully, it's gonna give me some sales. That'll be great, right? But it's also gonna give me some data. It's gonna tell me how my conversion rates are doing. It's gonna tell me whether or not my search engine optimization is good, if I'm getting views. If I'm not getting views during time where there should be a surge, then that tells me I probably need some SEO work, some cover work, things like that. I should get some really good data, some really good feedback from the market on how I'm doing and how I'm presenting my products. That is one of the plus sides. The second plus side is that you really should see some sales coming in from that. And bonus, if these seasonal resources tie in to your evergreen resources, then this could lead people to coming back to your store over and over and over again because they may purchase that seasonal product or find you through that seasonal resource, but love your resources enough to come back for those evergreen resources. So this is what I would do create a product I really believe in. Make sure that I can easily duplicate it to create more resources like it so that buyers can come back for more. And then finally, I would go ahead and pepper in some seasonal resources so that buyers can purchase some of those seasonal items and create more opportunities for buyers to find me during those little seasonal surges. Okay, so let's talk about this because I know that this is gonna be the next question that's gonna come up. The next question that's gonna come up is what ratio do I create this in? Like, am I creating like four evergreen resources and three seasonal resources? Is there sort of a ratio that I should aim for? Here's what I would do. If I'm creating my first, let's say 10 products or even my next 10 products. Let's say you have 20 products in your store and you're like, yeah, none of these are doing well. And I didn't follow any of these rules. Let's just start over with your next 10 products, okay? I'm gonna create about five evergreen resources, and then I'm gonna create five seasonal resources. Probably gonna do one for Thanksgiving, one for Halloween, one for Christmas, one for New Year's, and maybe like one for Valentine's Day. So I'm gonna kind of try to hit some of the really big holidays. Now, if we're watching this and we're already past some of those holidays, there's still St. Patrick's Day that can be really big. There's still the end of the school year. Sometimes Earth Day can even do really well. So there are still plenty of holidays that you can try to hit. And then there are even like some summer themes you can try, something like that if we're already into summer. But I would create probably like five seasonal resources for every five evergreen for the first 20 products. Ultimately, I would have 10 evergreen resources, 10 seasonal resources, and then I would go back to just creating evergreen and use the data that I've gotten from my seasonal resources to say, okay, conversion rates are good, conversion rates are not good, my views are not good. If I see across the board that for my seasonal resources, views are not good, and views are not good on my evergreen resources, then I know, okay, probably like an SEO cover problem. If I'm getting good views, but it's not converting, then I really want to work on improving my conversion rate, whether that's through updating my previews, updating my thumbnails, updating my product descriptions. And that's gonna give me some data for maybe why my evergreen resources are not selling for me. Now, before we end this, I want to go back to something really important that I said in the very beginning. And that was that I knew there weren't a lot of preschool resources that were dinosaur, but I knew a lot of kids really loved dinosaur resources. And so I want to show you something that I did that is truly like the key to helping you find where there's going to be a market for your resources. So I went first dinosaur preschool worksheets, and I'm typing one-handed here. So I typed that in and I looked and I could see that the very first search result is 972 reviews, which tells me that this is selling. The next one, also selling, third, also selling. And then it starts to like steeply drop off because there's just not a lot to choose from. And you can see that my resource, one, two, three, four, five, six, my paid product is resource number six in search results. And I knew that this should show up on the first page because if I continued to go down, I was seeing resources that had no reviews show up on the first page. So if you see resources showing up on the first page with no reviews, but the top has a lot of reviews, that tells you that people are purchasing these resources. So there's demand for the product, but there's not enough competition to keep you from being on the first page. So I knew if I put out a brand new product with zero reviews, it had a shot at making it on the first page. And sure enough, it's kind of wormed its way up to the top, as well as my free resource, which is just a sample of the paid product, which by the way, these free samples can lead to a purchase for your paid product. That's another tip right there. And it can also help you get some reviews because, like this freebie right here is my most viewed product. In fact, it used to, you could see, I'll go to my product statistics and see if I can find it's been, it doesn't say how many times it's been downloaded. This is free. Let's see here. Here it is. Now, this is it. This is the free one. So it's it's been downloaded almost 7,000 times. So this one gets a lot of downloads and it gets me a lot of traction. Now you can see that because of the way that TPT now has it, where you can download it direct from search results, that probably like a thousand people never even go and look at this. So that part is a little bit of a bummer. And I feel like, but you they still like when they download it, they still go to that download page where it says find more on TPT, and you can see like it still advertises some similar products to this resource on teachers pay teachers that are paid, like that are in my store and that are paid. And it tells them, like, hey, you can go view this person's store, and it gives them the option to follow me right here after they click that download button. But you can see like a thousand people at least didn't even click to open that, they just clicked download, which is fine. But this is one of the ways that you can make sure that before you create that product, even if you really believe in it, you want to make sure that when you're creating it, that there is a spot for it in the market, that there's demand that people are looking for it, people are purchasing, and that you can actually show up on the first page of search results for it. So doing a little digging with this, like I tried a few other themes. Like I tried a unicorn, was one that was suggested to me, typed in unicorn preschool worksheets. You can immediately see there's not as much demand by looking at the number of reviews for the very top search result. There's only 20 reviews as opposed to like almost a thousand. But then you see, like, definitely you could make it on the first page, but there's just not a lot of movement or activity that seems to be happening with that. And so I chose not to make a unicorn theme. Transportation was another one. Actually, I don't even think it's in my store, but it's made. I created that one and it had a little bit more traction, like 38 reviews, five reviews, 22 reviews, three reviews, 12 reviews, three, four, three, two. And then you keep kind of keep scrolling and then you get into zero reviews. So that would be one that could probably get a little bit more traction. Oh no, I did post it, and it is on the first page. So it's right there, and that was how I determined, like, okay, I could make it on the first page, and it does look like there is some movement for this on TPT, especially when you kind of try to pop in like an alternate keyword, like vehicles, preschool worksheets, and see that there's a little bit of demand for that as well. So just kind of like taking a look at what's on the market and making sure that there's a spot for that resource before you fully commit to it, or at the very least, I would say before you go to expand that product line. You can create that first resource that you really believe in and it may not have like the most traction on TPT. That's okay. When you go to duplicate it, go ahead and do that keyword research and kind of look around on TPT and see this theme that I'm wanting to make or this product that I'm wanting to create, is there a spot in the market for me where I can show up knowing that there are buyers looking for this and knowing that there are buyers actively purchasing this theme on TPT. So just quick recap but create a product that has a purpose, that has intention behind its design and a resource that when a teacher, parent, or seller, whoever your market target audience is, when they purchase that, they can see and experience the difference between your resource and another resource on TPT so that they will want to come back to purchase more. Now, in order for them to come back and purchase more, we have to have more for them to purchase. So that's where we're working on creating more resources that are like that product. So duplicating that resource into different themes or for different topics, expanding it out. Okay. And then finally creating seasonal resources so you can get a quick influx of sales and a quick influx of data to kind of evaluate how your business is doing. Those are the three things that I would be doing to make my first hundred dollars on TPT. In fact, those are the three things that I did to make my first hundred dollars on TPT, and you can do it too. Now, if you want a guide to do this, a free downloadable guide that's gonna help you with check boxes and all of that good stuff so that you can quickly follow through and implement this plan in your business. You can find it in the description down below. It's absolutely free. Just click the link down below, put in your name, email address, and we will send it right to you. Thanks so much for being here, you guys. Make sure you are subscribed to this podcast because I put out weekly content to make to help you grow the TPT business of your dreams and make sure to download that free guide. And if you're driving, you're gonna want to download that as soon as you get wherever you're going. Thanks so much for being here, you guys. I'm gonna see you right back here next week.