The Rebranded Teacher
The Rebranded Teacher
TPT Trends and Predictions for 2026
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The ground is moving under TPT sellers, and 2026 will reward those who adapt with speed and intention. We dig into a clear playbook: use AI to produce cohesive volume without sacrificing quality, turn quick wins into cash flow, and reinvest profits into durable assets like email lists, signature bundles, and curriculum that AI can’t easily clone. The aim isn’t to flood the marketplace—it’s to build product lines that cover multiple levels, formats, and standards, while aligning previews, tags, and SEO to how teachers actually search.
We also pull back the curtain on data. Guesswork is out, targeted creation is in. Tools like Seller Spy and Your Data Playbook help you spot real demand, validate keywords, and avoid time sinks. As creation gets easier, the edge shifts to picking the right problems: standards that are under-served, seasonal spikes worth batching, and long-tail search terms your store can own. We share how to use “sell now, build moats” thinking—launch timely resources to generate revenue, then channel that money into evergreen lines and audience growth that compound over time.
Classrooms are changing too. Teachers need resources that teach students to use AI responsibly: brainstorming ethically, checking accuracy, and refining drafts with rubrics. That opens powerful niches—from dyslexia-friendly reading sets and behavior supports to multilingual scaffolds and executive function tools—where generic AI falls short. Expect niche stores to beat generic catalogs as buyers prioritize fit and pedagogy over breadth. We also break down the new hiring model: fewer generalist VAs, more specialists and project managers, with AI handling repetitive tasks while humans focus on quality, accessibility, and strategy.
We close with a wishlist for better TPT analytics, including improved search insights and preview metrics that help sellers optimize faster. If you’re ready to future-proof your store—blend AI with craft, let data steer your roadmap, and build offers that last—this conversation is your field guide. If it resonates, follow the show, share it with a TPT friend, and leave a quick review to help more sellers find us. What’s your bold prediction for 2026?
Watch This Episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/qlER9Upq_o8
Check Out My YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/laurenfulton
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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. Let's talk trends and predictions for 2026 for TPT sellers. If you're new here, hi, I'm Lauren Fulton. I have been selling on TPT for almost 10 years, and I'm consistently in the top 1% of TPT sellers. And I create videos that help you become a top earner on Teachers Pay Teachers. Now, let's talk about trends and predictions for 2026 because this year I'm pretty excited. I am feeling more hopeful than ever for not only my TPT business, but mostly just my business in general. There are so many things off of TPT that I'm working on right now and things that never would have been possible before, and I'm just super excited about them. But and most of that is all made possible by AI. So let's get into it. And while not all of the trends and predictions that I have revolve around AI, many of them do. Number one is that AI will not be a nice to have, it will be a need to have in order to be a success, successful seller on TPT. If you think about the sheer volume of resources that are available and the number of creators who are creating resources on TPT, I feel like back in the day, like a benchmark, you would start to really see some sales kind of take off around 50 resources. And I think that that number is gonna go up as TPT becomes more and more saturated and becomes easier to create high quality products. Now, I'm not saying that AI is going to create the high quality products. I'm saying that sellers having the ability to use AI will help them create higher quality products faster. Now, do I think that AI at some point will be able to generate high quality products by knowledgeable creators who are using AI to create their resources? Yes. Will 2026 be the year that they come out polished, professional, perfect? I don't know, but I can tell you we're probably not too far off from that. And so volume, this is something I never thought I would say, but volume I think is gonna be really important for the TPT seller. Now I'm not telling you to go stock your stores with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of little bitty quick, fast, easy to create resources. That's not what I'm telling you to do, but I'm telling you to start thinking about creating in volume. So while yes, you want to make sure that you have resources in your store that are something that would be very, very difficult for AI to replicate just due to the nature and the complexity of it. Meaning, like if you have a whole unit on something, or if you have, meaning like creating whole units or curriculums or things like that that would be a lot more difficult where AI is just not there yet, those are going to be really important items to have in your store. But I think whenever you're creating, say, a quick Valentine's Day activity, instead of creating one, think about how can I create 20 Valentine's Day activities so that I'm able to capitalize on those sales. And one of the things that I would start to think about, and this is point number two, is that smart sellers are going to think about how can I make money now, the most amount of money right now, and use that as a leverage to grow a business that AI is gonna have a harder time competing with. This is something that I think about where it's like used to, I would have made sure like the product that I'm putting up is gonna stand the test of time, like it's gonna sell for the next 10 years. And I don't really think that we're gonna be able to say that as much anymore. For some resources, yeah, I think that's gonna be true. They're gonna be selling 10 years from now. But for a lot of the products that are put on TPT that teachers impulse purchase, those things I think probably not gonna be selling for the next 10 years, at least not the way that they are right now. So when I think about creating resources, I'm thinking this may not sell super well for the next five or 10 years, but how can I create and use AI to help me create in such a way that I'm able to create a volume of resources, a high volume of resources that I can put out pretty quickly and I can make money right now on those products and I can use that money and leverage it in such a way that's going to be reinvested back into my business to help me create longer-term forms of revenue for my business. Okay. So thinking about things that you want to invest in, whether that's growing your email list so that you have the whether that's using Facebook ads, investing in Facebook ads to grow your email list so that you have something else to market later on. Should TPT resources not become your main thing in five or 10 years, whatever that may be, for me, it looks like a variety of different things that I'm not gonna tell ya. But um, but yeah, like just planning out ways that you can make money right now to reinvest back in your business to make money long term and to stabilize your business long term. Now, number three is both a trend and a prediction. So there's this increasing trend in using AI-generated tools for SEO, for search engine optimization, for finding products that you can create and finding gaps in the market and resources that you can create. So, one really big one is seller spy and then a lot of YDP tools like your data playbook tools. This is, I think, gonna become something that is a necessity. Not right now. I think you can still start to create on TPT without having any of those things, but I think not too long from now, it's gonna be pretty much a necessity. It's gonna be part of the strategy that you have to learn in order to create resources on TPT. Now, the good news is this isn't gonna make life harder for creating resources because creating the products themselves themselves becomes increasingly simpler as we get access to more and more AI tools as AI becomes bigger and better. So it becomes a bigger asset to our business, which helps streamline sort of the product creation process and make creating the resource itself a lot simpler. But I think what's gonna happen is it's going to be kind of like, you know, right now, in order to thinking about people who make turn-on-demand workbooks through Amazon, they have a specific tool to identify categories and topics that would sell well. And I think that we're gonna see that become a necessity in 2026. Like it already is something that I would strongly advise new sellers to learn is to identify gaps in the market and not just create to create or create things that you think would be fun or interesting or things that you love. But I think that that's gonna become a must-have. Like I think that having SEO tools, having all of the data analytics and all of that kind of thing, I think by the end of 2026, it's pretty much gonna be a must-have for anyone who has over 50 products on TPT. It's just gonna be something that you have to invest in and it's gonna become a part of what you do. Otherwise, in order to compete with all the people who are paying for these tools and utilizing these tools efficiently and effectively, you are gonna have to spend a lot of time dissecting data on your own. Number four, I think AI is gonna change how teachers teach. I know that a lot of teachers are already adapting their curriculum to AI and what they buy, but I think there's gonna become a whole new niche for AI-related resources and tools for teachers. So if you can imagine creating lessons on how to use AI effectively or ops for teaching students how to master AI or things like that, this is gonna open up a whole new world, a whole new niche market for TBT sellers. And this is something that if you are really gifted with AI, you're still in the classroom and you know how it's affecting teachers, whether that's how to use it to help you write an essay or how to use it to help you write a short story. I think that there's a time and place for AI, and students need to be taught what that time and place is. Maybe it's helping you generate ideas or taking the idea that you have and helping you refine it so that you can write a better short story. But creating guides for teachers and students, creating lessons, creating activities that revolve around AI, that's gonna be a whole new niche market. And I think if we don't see that popping by the end of 2026, I think for sure we're gonna see it in 2027. It's just gonna be something that all teachers have to have, like how to use AI tools responsibly in pretty much every subject area. Number five, I think we're gonna start to see niche and specialty stores really beat out generic stores. And this might be something that's a little kind of a slow growing trend, but I think that as time rocks on and AI becomes more and more powerful, I think we're gonna see this more and more. Because if you think about it, most tools historically, even like really great games or even really great tools that are on the internet, like math games or reading games or typing games or whatever, they're made for the Gen Ed population. And so I think as we start to see AI tools that are created, it just makes sense for the vast majority of creators to create and tailor their offerings to the Gen Ed population. And I think we're gonna see a rise in teachers wanting to give really cool experiences and opportunities to their specific students or students that they have in small group, dyslexia-friendly resources, behavior tools, all of those kind of things that will work. And I think that there's gonna be an increase in demand for those resources because they're going to find that a lot of AI-generated content is just not gonna work for them as well because it's not gonna be as well thought out and it's gonna be made for the masses and not for their specific kids. So I think that some of those stores, more niche stores, are going to remain a whole lot more stable if not see an increase in sales. Next, I think AI is going to reinforce a an already existing divide between adapters and resistors. So there are those in the TPT space, as there is with any space that kind of resist a lot of the changes that are coming, they complain about AI generated content being sold on TPT. And I'm gonna tell you if you're reporting stores for AI generated content, unless that AI generated content is like wrong, then there's no sin in selling AI generated content. There's nothing wrong with that. So if you're looking at content on TPT and you're like, oh, that's just generated by AI or that's an AI store or whatever and getting upset about it. And you know what? First of all, if it really bothers you, you might want to just like protect your piece and just not not look at it. But I think it's just gonna get worse. Like if that's something that bothers you, then it's gonna really bother you by the end of 2026 because it's gonna be everywhere. And I don't think that we can expect TPT to remove content that is generated by AI. And some may argue with me on that, but I don't know how they could enforce that long term. And I don't think that it would be lucrative for them to enforce that long term. So they may do it now, but as time rocks on, they're not gonna be able to tell the difference, and neither is anyone else. So I think there's gonna be this growing divide between people who have been selling for years on TPT and are used to things being a certain way, they're gonna start to see their income decrease as more resources, the market becomes more saturated with more and more resources as creating becomes easier and faster for teachers and sellers and it's gonna create more competition. Honestly, it's not gonna be a great thing for those who don't want to adapt. So if you're in that camp or you've been resisting and you're like, oh, every year I'm watching my sales go down more and more, and I don't think it's the economy, I think it's the algorithm, I think it's all this. You know what? It's a combo. It's all of the above. And but if new sellers can sell on TPT, then so can you. And if new sellers can make a way on TPT and start earning more money, then you you can get some of those sales back. Where there's a will, there's a way. So I would start trying to adapt, use AI, start to create more resources. And I think we're just gonna see that need more and more sellers who have grown used to just kind of letting, not letting the money flow in because they're obviously working really hard and they always have. But sellers who've been used to kind of working at a steady pace, where they're gonna find that they really need to change and adapt their strategy, and they may be pretty resistant to that. And honestly, a little bit upset at everyone except for themselves for where their business is at. So, my trend prediction recommendation is that as you start to see things happening in Facebook groups, an increase in negativity or whatever, I would just leave those Facebook groups. And I think that we're gonna start to see an increase in positive seller communities where there are sellers who are just out there really trying to make things work, helping and supporting each other along the way, and not being critical of how others are choosing to grow their business and create the resources. Lastly, I think AI is going to, and I hate to say this one, this one kind of makes me sad, but I think it's gonna change the VA game. And it's already happened. As sellers are able to work more efficiently, the demand for outside help is going to go down. So a lot of people are, you know, cutting back on using VAs or having employee or employee hours just due to the rising costs of running a business and maybe a decrease in income just from all the changes on TPT over the last couple of years. Some of the other reasons why we might see a decrease in this is gonna be just because why would I pay someone to do something that AI can do for me for free or something that used to take me a long time, now I can do by myself relatively quickly. So I think that we're gonna see for menial tasks, I think we're gonna see that the demand for VA work for those kind of generic tasks or just ongoing generic tasks are gonna kind of go away. And I think though, that in its place, we're going to see sellers start to hire people for hyper specific skill sets. I think there are gonna be a myriad of tools that are going to improve workflow for TPT sellers and make so many things so much easier for them rather than all the things that like you would do before in your business that you're like, well, only I can do this. You're gonna be like, well, actually, not anymore. Now I'm gonna hire out some of these higher level skills and what I can get AI to help me with and automate, I'll do those things myself very quickly. So I'm not having to pay anyone to do that because they're simple and they're easy. And I'll hire out some of the more difficult tasks with the money that I've freed up for some of these more menial tasks. Anyway, just a little prediction that I have is that we're gonna see a decrease in sort of not generic VAs, but VAs who wear a lot of hats, but an increase in VAs that complete very specific tasks for TPT sellers. And in that same vein, I think we might see more project managers who come into the TPT space, even for smaller sellers to help them manage then VAs and workflows. So, like if we're creating something with AI, it might pass through more hands than it might normally pass through. And so hiring a project manager to kind of oversee all of that, start to finish, I think we might see more of that in 2026. What are your predictions for 2026? What do you see happening both with AI and in the TPT space? Drop them down below. One thing that I would love to see that I don't know if it's gonna happen, is I would love for TPT to add in tools for TPT sellers that help them determine how to get their resources to rank better in the search engine. I'd love to see them offer some of those tools that would be really easy for them to create so that sellers don't have to pay for them. And I would really, really like to see them add product previews to the dashboard so that we can sort and see how many preview views a resource gets by date. That would be amazing. Drop your comments down below. What do you think about some of these trends and predictions? What do you see happening in 2026? Thanks so much for being here, you guys. I'm gonna see you right back here next week.