Teacherpreneurs, Raise Your Hand
Teacherpreneurs, Raise Your Hand
172 Repurpose and Prosper: Leveraging TPT Success for Digital Course Creation
What if you could transform your expertise into a lucrative digital course? This episode will show you how to take your top-selling Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) resources and turn them into engaging, high-demand courses. I share my personal journey towards financial stability and multiple income streams, underscoring the importance of overcoming self-doubt. You'll discover that everyone has something valuable to teach, and with the help of practical resources like Amy Porterfield's free guide, you can start your own digital course journey today.
Using audience engagement tools such as Google Forms, SurveyMonkey, and Instagram polls, we'll discuss how to gather valuable insights to create courses that truly resonate. We also talk about the importance of repurposing your best-selling TPT resources into comprehensive courses to ensure high demand. By identifying and capitalizing on your unique expertise, whether it's a specific grade level or a specialized skill, you can develop courses that stand out and meet the needs of fellow educators. Join the conversation and learn surprisingly simple ways to share your knowledge and achieve great things together!
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Surprisingly Simple Ways to Turn Your Knowledge Into a Digital Course
Welcome to Teacherpreneurs. Raise your Hand. Episode 172, from TPT to digital courses turning your expertise into online learning gold. So today I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about a digital course.
Speaker 1:If you're thinking about digital courses or you're thinking I need another form of income, I need another thing that I can put my energy, put my time, put my creativity to, and I need it to be more than than just TPT and I don't mean that as a bad thing, because I think TPT is so wonderful and I'm so thankful for all that it has been able that it's done for me. I just know that it's been a rough year. I spoke about this at the Teacher Seller Summit. If you had a chance to see that I talked about. You know that my income was decreasing on TBT and so I need to have I can't have all my eggs in one basket.
Speaker 1:I've got to have a variety of things going on so that when I'm having a rough year it's not the end of the world, so that when I'm having a rough year, it's not the end of the world, especially because I'm the only person taking care of myself, like it's all me. There's no extra person here helping. So I need to. I need to have it all together. I need to figure it out. So there's a variety of things that I have going on in order to keep my head above water, and creating a digital course is just one way that you might consider for yourself. Hope you stick around.
Speaker 2:Welcome to Teacherpreneurs. Raise your Hand where bold teachers rise up and transform into successful teacherpreneurs who are destined for greatness. What exactly is a teacherpreneur, you might ask? Well, webster's Dictionary defines the term as um. Okay, it's not yet a word in the dictionary, but hear you me, it will be one day. In a nutshell, a teacherpreneur is both a teacher and a business person, and we're here to help you be better at both. So, without further ado, from One Tired Teacher and Trina Debery Teaching and Learning, here's your host, trina Debery.
Speaker 1:Hey, so I don't know what was happening with my microphone, but I I think I told you in last week's episode that I have started a third podcast with my daughter, Emily. It's mind your heart. So we're hoping that you're minding your heart on Mondays and taking a little bit of time for yourself, for your mental health, for your mindset. Maybe you want to hear a mom-daughter. You know little bit of little fun and you know whatever. So hopefully you're Minding your Heart on Monday.
Speaker 1:And so when I'm recording Mind your Heart with Emily, we're using a different microphone. I love my microphone, but it is one that you have to be like up close to the microphone, and I have another, I have a second microphone and it is a Logitech, I think it's called, and it you can be a little bit further away, so you don't have to speak so close to the microphone. And we're recording our our podcast for a podcast, but we're also recording it for YouTube, for video, and so, although it's just us sitting there and the angle of the camera on the first episode, I was like oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:I look so bad, but I have to get past. I have to get over that. Anyway, I have to, like myself, love myself. That's really important and we're we talk about that. We're going to talk about that even more. So, anyway, I had the wrong microphone and I'm like wait a minute, I don't even have that microphone here, like that microphone's at Emily's, so I'm not sure why it was picking up a different microphone. So it sounds terrible at the beginning and I'm doing too many podcasts to redo things all the time.
Speaker 1:So I'm sorry about that little hiccup in the beginning, but I do want to tell you like today we're going to talk about digital courses and some ideas for generating course ideas, because sometimes it's just simply that's the thing that stops us in our tracks. We don't even know what we want to do a course on or if we have a course within us, and I think that we, I think sometimes we sell ourselves short, we don't think that we are an expert enough or we don't think we know enough to teach something to someone else, and I think this is a limiting belief that sometimes we believe about ourselves. So I want to talk to you about that today, but also I want to share with you, because you know how I am a proud partner with Amy Porterfield. She just released a freebie, and this is a different freebie than the one that I've been sharing for the past two weeks. This is called three steps to unlock your digital course idea.
Speaker 1:Oops, using AI. That's not the one. That's the one I've been sharing with you, so you can still grab that. It's still available, and all you have to do is go to Trina Devery teachingandlearningcom. Forward slash AI course. All one word AI course. But that's not the one I'm going to talk about today.
Speaker 1:The one that I am going to talk about today is some surprisingly simple ways to turn your knowledge into a digital course. My goodness gracious so I'm having a rough day today. Surprisingly simple ways to turn your knowledge into a digital course, and this freebie can also be found on my website and it's Trina Devery teaching teachingandlearningcom. Forward slash digital course. All together, no spaces digital course. So hopefully you can find that easily and let me tell you a little bit about it.
Speaker 1:This is a freebie and it will be for teacherpreneurs or anyone that wants to create a digital course who is more. You are more aware of digital courses than maybe you thought and maybe you've even considered creating one, and maybe you've even tried creating one, but it didn't have this success that you were hoping. So this guide is going to walk you through how to take what you love or what you have experience in or expertise in, and turn it into a profitable digital course. It is the start of helping you begin to see the possibilities to creating a course and that you, you, you and your beautiful self have something to offer. So if you want to grab that trinadeveryteachingandlearningcom forward slash digital course all one word. So hopefully you check that out.
Speaker 1:All right, let's get on with the show. One word, so hopefully you check that out. All right, let's get on with the show. Okay, so let's talk about some ideas to actually generate ideas. So I know that sounds funny no-transcript ways that you can start to generate ideas. Because if that's your hang up, if that's your barrier, if that's your obstacle, then let's knock that down. Let's kick that barrier down, let's kick that obstacle down. Let's put those self limiting beliefs aside and really think about what and how you could actually create, what you could do, what ideas do you have?
Speaker 1:All right, so the first thing to do this is really simple is to survey your audience. Survey your audience whether you're on Instagram or you're using email lists. There are so many different things like Google Forms is really helpful that you can send your audience a quick Google Form. You can use SurveyMonkey to gather data. You can put a little poll on your Instagram stories. This is a fast way of gathering information. You can leave a little question sticker on your Instagram stories and let them give you some more ideas and thoughts on what, what they are thinking or what they are needing. You can offer an like, giving them a free resource or discount if they participate in your survey, because you definitely want to encourage participation. So you surveying your audience is really a great. It's really a great idea for your existing audience. Then you're kind of like listening to your existing audience Plus, you're kind of planting a seed that something is coming and you you're finding out in advance what topics they are most interested in.
Speaker 1:You might ask questions about their biggest challenges, what skills they want to develop, what kind of support they need in their teaching careers. This is going to give you a wealth of information, whether it's to create more you know products on TPT or it's to go deeper, dive deeper with a digital course. So that is just one simple thing that you can do is ask your people. Ask your people what they need, what they want, what they're interested in, and then, as you're creating this digital course, you're still checking in with your people periodically, that way they feel like they're part of the process and again, you're seeding it. You're seeding the idea, you're planting the seed, and they are thinking. They feel like they're going along with you. By the time it comes out, they're ready to purchase and they're excited. So this is just one thing that you can do. To kind of start generating ideas is to turn to your audience and simply ask them All right, let's talk about idea number two what's another way to generate ideas, and that is really to repurpose your popular resources.
Speaker 1:So look at some of your top selling resources on TPT and think about how you can help expand them into a comprehensive course. For example, this is a course that I created on Makerspace. I looked at my resources and you know what I wasn't great about. Looking at my top selling, I looked at the ones that I cared about the most, the ones that I felt like I had a connection with and that I felt like I want to talk about this, and that's one way of doing it. However, that probably leads to not being as successful as you want to be, so you want to do the opposite of that. You want to look at what sells really well and what you can teach around it. If a particular resource is popular, it's a sign that there's a high demand for that topic, which is the thing that you really want to pay attention to. You might want to talk I really wanted to talk about makerspace. I really believe that every classroom should have a makerspace, whether it's at home or in a classroom or a media center or a STEM classroom. I believe in makerspace, but that is not a popular topic. Some people don't even know what makerspace is, and so I'm like fighting an uphill battle on a regular basis, and that that's exhausting. So you don't want to do that. You want to look at things that have a high demand, things that are popular. So don't do what I did. Do like learn from my mistakes and do and and look at your, look at it, look at your, what you already have, and think about how you could make it. Take it deeper You're going to break down this resource or these resources into.
Speaker 1:Like, maybe it's a line of resources? Is that what's that word? Yeah, line of line of line of resources, that is. Does that make sense? I don't know why. I'm like that's, I'm drawing a blank. Um, a product line, that's the word. Product line. Oh, menopause.
Speaker 1:Anyway, you're going to break down this line you know product line into modules or units. Or you know, you're going to add video. You're going to teach them how to use your resources. You're going to teach them things that have to do with your resources. You can include interactive activities and assessments and you can do all this to create a full-fledged course and at the same time, you're kind of hinting at your resource. So your resource can be a part of the solution. Once they understand how to do it, how to implement it, how to run a math workshop or how to run a reading workshop or how to do, you know, high engagement questions or whatever, then they can have your tools as part of the solution. So just a thought. So those are two ideas repurpose your popular resources and surveying your audience.
Speaker 1:And then my third idea to generate some ideas is to identify your unique expertise. Hmm, your unique expertise. Now, don't think to yourself, I don't have a unique expertise. I'm a general, I'm a early childhood generalist, or I'm which is, like you know, early childhood teacher. Or you are a generalist, like maybe you're. You know, you're certified to teach kindergarten through fifth grade or first grade through fifth grade. Mine is actually first grade through fifth grade. I did my national boards in early childhood, so in that case I could include kindergarten.
Speaker 1:But anyway, that's beside the point. What are you an expert in? And it doesn't mean like, maybe you're an you are an expert in teaching a specific grade level, and maybe you're going to get really, really niche, specific, and that's okay as well. But think about the things that you're really good at. Reflect on your own experiences and skills that really set you apart. They set you apart in the classroom. They set you apart in your product creation.
Speaker 1:What do you do exceptionally well that other teachers struggle with? Here's an example of something that I do really well that other teachers struggle with, and that's to create sub plans. I know that sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? That's actually one of my best selling products. So do I want to create a course on teaching sub plans? Maybe. Or you know, teaching other teachers how to do that, possibly, but I think we get stuck in that, like teachers get stuck in that they you know they come to school sick, they push the Tylenol on their kid and send them to daycare anyway. Sometimes we do these things because we're like I just don't want to write the sub plans. It's just so much work, it's just so frustrating. But this is really easy for me. Like this is something that comes easily for me. This is something I do well.
Speaker 1:Subs used to leave me notes and tell me how great my sub plans were. Could I please give them to my colleagues? Because they didn't love some of their sub plans and I'm like whoa, so I didn't even feel like I was good at it. But I got so much feedback from, from subs and substitutes that I was like well, maybe I am good at this. So think about it can be something as simple as that.
Speaker 1:What do other teachers struggle with that you do really well and you don't have to be a full-fledged? I don't feel like I'm a full-fledged substitute expert. Like I just feel like I know a little bit more than maybe the person across from the hall for me. So that's the thing. You only need to know 10% more than the, than another guy than the other person. This could be, you know, this could be, you could. Maybe you know a little bit more about classroom management. Maybe you know a little bit more about integrating technology or creating engaging lesson plans.
Speaker 1:So you're going to outline the key aspects of your expertise and how you can teach these skills to others through a structured course. You're going to include personal antidotes and practical tips to make this content relatable and valuable. And that's just the beginning, my friend. There's so much more to learn about courses. But sometimes we really are like blocked by how we can even come up with an idea. So hopefully one of these suggestions got your brain thinking, allowed you to think hmm, you know what I can survey my audience, I can look at my top producing resources, I can think about what I do, have a unique expertise in. So those are a few ideas, a few ways to like hammer out a possible course topic. So once you have the course topic, that's when you can start to really dream, imagine, manifest that course. So that's coming soon, but for now, hopefully it's got your brain started.
Speaker 1:All right, this was a shorty episode only, you know, only like 16 minutes, which is pretty short for me. Normally I go a little bit longer, but, but I wanted you know I'm going to be with you every week. I don't want to take up all of your time, but I do want to talk about some things in the next couple of weeks. Next week I'm excited because we have a guest coming on the show and we'll see you next Tuesday. Remember, if you are interested in Amy's freebie, you want to hear from an expert. I'm sure she's going to have some different ideas than I came up with, so you're going to want to grab this guide.
Speaker 1:Surprisingly simple ways to turn your knowledge into a digital course. You can grab this at trinadeboreyteachingandlearningcom. Forward slash digital course. All one word Take care and remember. Teacherpreneurs, I am proud to stand among you and, if you're feeling it, I'd love for you to rate, review and subscribe to the show so you don't miss a thing. You can also catch me on Facebook at Teacherpreneurs Raise your Hand, or on my website, trina Devery, teaching and Learning. Teacherpreneurs, raise your Hand. I'll catch you next time. Bye for now.