Embark on an extraordinary journey with Nicole Abercrombie and her Teachers Pay Teachers Store: Teaching Fun with Mrs. A. We'll unwrap the secrets to transforming a modest $4 beginning into a bustling online education business poised to potentially eclipse a traditional teaching income. Nicole opens up about the pivotal choices she's facing, weighing the joys of classroom teaching against the allure of her growing entrepreneurial success. Her story is a testament to the tenacity and creativity of educators who dare to dream beyond the school walls.
In this candid conversation, we traverse the intricacies of email marketing, an indispensable tool for any small business owner aiming to skyrocket their sales. I'll share my philosophy on following the money trail and why doubling down on your profitable products could be the game-changer you need. Nicole's savvy approach to growing her email list, including the use of collaboration events, is a roadmap for others to emulate. Plus, get ready for a deep dive into the tactical execution of email campaigns that blend educational content with subtle product nudges, ensuring your messages resonate and convert. Whether you're a teacher with a side hustle or a full-blown entrepreneur, this episode is brimming with actionable insights to fuel your journey toward financial independence and professional fulfillment.
Nicole's Teachers Pay Teachers Store - Teaching Fun with Mrs. A
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Teaching-Fun-With-Mrs-A
Embark on an extraordinary journey with Nicole Abercrombie and her Teachers Pay Teachers Store: Teaching Fun with Mrs. A. We'll unwrap the secrets to transforming a modest $4 beginning into a bustling online education business poised to potentially eclipse a traditional teaching income. Nicole opens up about the pivotal choices she's facing, weighing the joys of classroom teaching against the allure of her growing entrepreneurial success. Her story is a testament to the tenacity and creativity of educators who dare to dream beyond the school walls.
In this candid conversation, we traverse the intricacies of email marketing, an indispensable tool for any small business owner aiming to skyrocket their sales. I'll share my philosophy on following the money trail and why doubling down on your profitable products could be the game-changer you need. Nicole's savvy approach to growing her email list, including the use of collaboration events, is a roadmap for others to emulate. Plus, get ready for a deep dive into the tactical execution of email campaigns that blend educational content with subtle product nudges, ensuring your messages resonate and convert. Whether you're a teacher with a side hustle or a full-blown entrepreneur, this episode is brimming with actionable insights to fuel your journey toward financial independence and professional fulfillment.
Nicole's Teachers Pay Teachers Store - Teaching Fun with Mrs. A
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Teaching-Fun-With-Mrs-A
Welcome to the rebranded Teacher Podcast. My name is Lauren Fulton. I'm a full-time teacher, author and seller on Teacher's Pay teachers, and I help other teacher entrepreneurs grow their TPD 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.
Speaker 2:We are continuing our coaching call series and today we're talking to Nicole Abercrombie and I am so excited to chat with her about her story. She has some big goals for her business in 2024. She wants to replace her teaching income. We're going to be talking about some strategies to help her work her way towards that goal in this coming year, and we're going to be talking about some strategies to help her work her way towards that goal in the coming year, both with some things that she can do inside of her TPD store and also some things that she can do with her email marketing. We're going to be chatting about that with her. You absolutely do not want to miss this. Let's meet Nicole. Hey Nicole, how are you?
Speaker 3:I'm good, Lauren. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2:I'm great, I'm so excited to chat with you. I'm so excited to talk about your store.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm really excited too. I've listened to your podcast forever, so I'm really excited to be here. Well, this is awesome. I'm glad you're here.
Speaker 2:Let's just start with you telling us a little bit about yourself, your niche, kind of your TPD business, what your journey has looked like so far. Just kind of give us a little overview, like a history, of your TPD business.
Speaker 3:Okay, my name is Nicole Abercrombie. My store is Teaching Fun with Miss A, and for the longest time, I had my store be Miss A, because my last name is Abercrombie and none of my second grade students could say it. So I have been on TPD since 2017. Actually, I was looking back at my dashboard and for the whole year of 2017, I made $4. So it was kind of like, wow, what a journey.
Speaker 3:But I started my store probably in my third or fourth year of teaching and I taught second grade. I've taught second grade and I've been a school counselor, and so I started it, basically because I was spending so much money on TPD already. I was using resources all the time, especially my first couple of years, when you know your first year teacher and you're trying to figure it out, so you're like I just need something to help me manage everything. And so after a couple of years, I was like, wow, okay, maybe I could do this too. And so the teacher taught beside me. We were always coming up with fun activities, coming up with things. So we're like I was like maybe I just throw one up there and just see what happens. Start my own store. And so that was January, I think, 2017, I started and basically put a couple of resources up and nothing ever happened. So I was like, well, that was great, so let me kind of move on, and so I would make $0.30 here, a dollar here, and so it kind of just fell to the back burner for me, and so I kept teaching for a couple of years.
Speaker 3:And then I had my first daughter. I have two daughters, and so I was pregnant with her, and so it TPD fell off the back burner for I mean, it was I didn't even think about it. And so once I had my daughter, ella, and was kind of in the newborn life, I decided to step back from teaching. This was a couple of years ago, so once I had her, I was like, okay, maybe I could make this a thing, like maybe I could actually use the things that I'd already put up, because I'd probably put up 50 or 60 resources and just not really done anything with it.
Speaker 3:And so that's when I kind of really started to take my store seriously and I feel like I've gone through seasons of life of I had another daughter too, so I had two daughters at this point, and so I've gone through seasons of being really serious of. I want to turn this into a business and then either having a baby or life, and so I think now I'm at the point where I've had my two girls and one my baby just turned one, so I'm like, okay, now I feel like it's a time that I can get back serious on my store. And that's one reason I reached out to you is because I would love some help, because I don't have a ton of time and I'm planning on going back into the classroom in the next year or so, and so, yeah, I would love just your, your help with my next step in my TBT journey, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Can I ask? This is probably a little bit personal, so if you don't want to answer that, this is fine. But when you say like you're probably going to go back into the classroom within the next year, is that because the TBT business isn't doing as well as you would need for it to be in order to stay out of the classroom, or is that just kind of that's always been? The end goal is to go back into the classroom. That's a great question.
Speaker 3:My main reason is because I just have always been a teacher. I don't know why, that's just always been my heart, I loving a stay-at-home mom and I love staying home with my girls, but for me I was always going to go back into the classroom. I've been, I feel like, fortunate to be able to stay at home and my TBT store is starting to do well that. I've kind of my mind of okay, could I do both? Could I eventually go back in the classroom, which I feel like is very much my heart, but then also have because you know, teaching is not oh yeah, it's going to have this also as well kind of to supplement when I go back into the classroom. So I don't know how I answered your question but it does.
Speaker 2:And the reason I ask is not just to pry into your personal business, but I feel like no, you're good trying to balance goals and expectations, depending on what your end goal is in terms of do I wanna be out of the classroom forever.
Speaker 2:Because if you said to me, oh no, my heart is being a stay at home, mom, I wanna be here forever, then I would say, okay, then we're gonna go full force, we're gonna spend all of our time, every waking moment that you have.
Speaker 2:You're gonna be working on your TTT business and you're gonna make this happen.
Speaker 2:But if you tell me, oh no, my heart's in the classroom, I wanna do both, like I wanna be a mom and I wanna be a teacher, like that's great.
Speaker 2:So I would say, like don't spend every waking moment that you have left of this time with your daughters, you know, trying to work and building that business when the income doesn't have to be at the same level quite as quickly. So that's kind of why I asked that question as sort of a prequel to what we're gonna go into today, because you know everybody's goals are different and that's what's so great about TTT is that it can be so many things to so many different people but at the same time, like not really interested in burning you out unless we absolutely have to right so we can kind of take a little bit of a slower approach, but for sure we still wanna help you meet your goals for 2024,. So tell me a little bit about that. Like in the goal for 2024, where do you want your business to be at the end of the year and what are some things that you'd like to accomplish?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I think for me, my main goal is to replace my teaching salary. That's kind of always been the goal in my head of can I replace this? Because I am gonna be home for a year, two years maybe, until at least my babies may be in preschool, and so my goal is how can I match that? I just know for our family, especially with me staying at home, that would be so incredibly helpful, and so that's really my goal for 2024 is to match my teaching salary, add more products, because I think that would help. So, yeah, that's my main dream and goal. So, all right, so let's talk about what you're doing so far.
Speaker 2:So we've got your TTT store, which we're gonna look at here in just a minute. You've got 87 products in your TTT store. Talk to me about marketing. Do you have marketing avenues that you're pursuing right now, like, do you have anything in the works?
Speaker 3:So I do have an email list. I started one after I attended the teacher seller summit that was the summer, which I was obsessed with. It was amazing, but I started one, and so I think I have around 800-ish email subscribers, which is you know, and so, honestly, that's my main marketing thing. I had an Instagram when I was in the classroom, but I have not posted on it, which maybe I should start. I haven't really posted on it since I left the classroom and so because I don't really know what to post, because most of the time I'm at home with babies with no makeup just running around, and so really, email is like the one thing I have right now.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you're feeling really comfortable with email in terms of like you would feel comfortable spending some time investing and growing and pursuing that, and maybe a little bit less sure about the Instagram marketing, like what that would look like for the next couple of years, which is understandable, definitely. Both would be doable for anyone listening who wanted to do both. But I would say, in your particular situation, when we've got like 87 products in the store, probably want to spend a little bit more time putting the products in the store versus juggling two marketing platforms and learning two of those. But let's start by just taking a look at your store, looking at what we have so far, and what we'll do is, if you're listening to this on podcast, obviously you can't see a TPT store audit, so you can watch the full audit on YouTube. There will be a link to that down inside of the show notes, but we will come back and we'll do like a little recap of some of the things that we saw inside of your store together. But let's go ahead and let's take a look at that store now. Okay, all right, so we are back and we've taken a look at Nicole's store and we just pointed out a couple of things which I highly encourage you to go and to watch the full audit on YouTube.
Speaker 2:But a couple of things that we talked about were. Number one, like not repeating those keywords. So a lot of times we'll do something like Thanksgiving writing activity and then you had like Thanksgiving writing prompt, also in the title. Right, but understanding that we can, we don't have to reuse that Thanksgiving writing again. We can just write something like Thanksgiving writing activities and prompts and then that will allow us to have more characters left to use additional keywords.
Speaker 2:We also talked about the importance of filling everything out that we can fill out.
Speaker 2:So filling out that page count, filling out the teaching duration, making sure to fill in standards if applicable, and really just kind of taking care of some of those core things and including a value grab on your cover. So making sure that, like if, for example, you have a product that includes multiple activities or multiple writing prompts or 100 and something pages, that that is something that you're putting on the cover so that when the buyer is inside of TPT search and all they can see is cover, price, cover, price, that they're really able to look at that cover and justify the price. Or look at that cover and say, oh, that's a really good value. I'm going to go and take a closer look at this particular resource, so really making sure that we've got those value grabs down. We also talked a little bit about while we were inside of your store. You mentioned and I kind of like to talk about it here for just a second as well you mentioned like not knowing whether or not you wanted to focus on math resources or writing resources and tell us why.
Speaker 3:again, math was my favorite subject when I taught second grade, but I feel like I've created math products and I've created writing because I also needed those in the classroom. But writing is what sells the most for me because I think there's a need, I think there's a ton of math and there is writing too, but I really feel like my writing products have been my best sellers, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we talked about with that. If you are brand new or you're still growing your store like Nicole, you're not new by any stretch of the imagination.
Speaker 2:You've been doing this for a long time but you're still working like you've got 87 products, so you've got a lot more to create to really fill those shelves. So when we're still in that stage of I'm still growing my marketing, I'm still filling my shelves, I think following the money is usually where I land on that and that's what I told you like just follow the money, create the writing activities because you know they're going to sell organically. And then, once you've built up your marketing, then you can kind of pursue that passion. And I know not everyone would agree with me on that and that's okay and I know there are some people who will pursue that passion niche and it really pays off for them. But I'm a play it safe kind of person and if something's selling for you, you just keep doing more of what's working, like you're doing more of what's working until you get to a spot where it's like, okay, I don't need the organic traffic for my math resources. If it is a little more saturated, that's totally fine, because I've got my own method for driving traffic, which would be coming back to that email marketing that we were talking about earlier.
Speaker 2:So 800 email subscribers is really good for you, having just started it in the summer. So we're recording this and it's November, so that's not that long. Teacher Sellers Summit was in July, so you've had a few months. You're at 800. Did you do a collab event Like how did you get the subscribers?
Speaker 3:I did. I did a collab event from the Teacher Sellers Summit, one of the. I think it was one of the speakers who spoke on the email class, melissa Melissa.
Speaker 2:Cidermans.
Speaker 3:I'm pretty sure. Yes, she's fabulous. And so I just signed up for it on a whim and I in my mind I was like I don't know if this is going to work, but it doesn't hurt to try, and so I think I added maybe 700 subscribers during that event, because I think I started about 100. So for me, it was well, it was well worth it. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:Okay, so perfect. So I would say, for sure there's a okay, there's a rule of thumb that I have, and this is not necessarily like hard and vast same rules going to work for everybody or anything like that, but just like a very general like. If I'm going to try to math it out and try to somehow or another calculate how much I should be making off of my list or how much I could be making off of my list, my calculations are 10 cents per subscriber per month. So if you're making 10 cents per subscriber per month, then you're doing pretty well. If you're making more than that, you're doing great. If you're making less than that, we've got a little bit of a problem. So somewhere in there something's broken down. So, with 800 subscribers, then I would say if you're bringing in about $80 a month to your TPP business, you're not doing too bad, right. At the same time and I see that, look on your face you're like oh no, I need to work on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So first of all there's that oh no, like I need to work on that, there's that. But then there's also like well, even if I hit that, it's just $80 a month, right, right. And again, this is not a hard and fast rule. I feel like that rule of thumb gets to be a little bit more predictable as the list gets a little bit bigger, because we're working with a smaller pool of audience whenever we're first starting, and you'll also notice things like you'll do a Cyber Monday sale and you might make $120 that month, and then the next month you might make $40, and then it just kind of like evens out, right. So it doesn't mean that every single month it's going to look like that, but in general that would be kind of what I would expect.
Speaker 2:And I do remember when I had 800 subscribers on my email list, that was about what I was bringing in. It was somewhere in that neighborhood, but it wasn't always the same. So sometimes it was a lot more, sometimes it was a lot less. It just depends. But that's about what you could kind of expect. But then that also gives you a really good idea of where you would need to be probably in order to really start to hit your goals. Okay, so probably want to work on in this coming year. I would probably do a couple more email collabs and I might even do one on your own, like organize it on your own, okay, yeah, yeah. And one of the things about organizing it on your own is that you can go and you can do recruiting for yourself, so you can go and pick people and you'd be surprised at how many people would say yes who have an existing like large audience on Instagram or large Facebook group or something like that, and they're really interested in growing their email list. And when you recruit privately, kind of like behind the scenes, like that, it allows you to be a little bit more picky and to choose people who have a little bit of a bigger audience.
Speaker 2:Okay, now, this is kind of intimidating for some people because they're like, well, wait a second, because, like, my audience isn't that big, so like, why would they want to work with me?
Speaker 2:But the truth of the matter is, is that, like you're bringing the elbow grease, you're doing all of the work to set this up and, as you know, with Melissa's item and like she charges I think somebody said the other day $25 a month to be for her to run all of that stuff. I think it's what I saw, it's the number that I saw and it's kind of ongoing. So like you have to have enough people in the group all paying like that amount of money. But and then they have to like I mean she'll run it for you, but like this is free right, like they're not having to do anything except you know, post the graphics that you give to them and you know. Like you're doing it all for free and they're really not that hard. Like you just need a landing page and an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of everything and some graphics to spread around. So it's really, it's really not that bad.
Speaker 3:Okay, cool, that's a great idea.
Speaker 2:So I would definitely try that and try to boost those numbers up a little bit. Another thing that I would do is focus on those emails. So, while you have 800 people, go ahead and start doing and I'm going to repeat this, I think I've said this now a couple of times and probably a couple of episodes- so anytime I talk about email.
Speaker 2:I probably this is going to be the third one that it comes up in, but repetition is good. Maybe somebody needs to hear it three times. So this is what I would do. I would send six emails, create a series of six emails. Two of those emails are just going to be straight up sales email. Here's the problem you have. Here's the product I made, here's what it's going to do for you, here's where you can get it, and you can get it in the next, for the next 24 hours, it's going to be 20% off. Right, go get it right now.
Speaker 2:And when I'm saying short, I'm talking like eight sentences, tops, we're talking like a very, very short, maybe 10 sentences, no pictures, just short, sweet, to the point. Right, yeah, just an email. Okay, we're going to do two like that. Okay, we're going to do two more that are still sales pitches that are very similar to that, but give a little bit more detail and introduce it with like a little bit of a personal story and I don't mean like a lengthy personal story, just like back when I was a second year teacher, I was getting observed and I made this crucial mistake and from that point forward I said I was never going to make the mistake again and I remedied it by creating this resource to help me avoid whatever. Right, if you're struggling with this same type of problem, here's the product. So we're just I mean, we're literally, it's like the short one's just a little bit longer, a little more personal a little bit more detail.
Speaker 2:And then here's where you can go buy it, right, okay. And then we're doing two. I'm doing my thumbs now like, anyway, we're doing two, we're doing the five email, five and six, and they don't have to be in the same order, but we're going to do two emails that are soft sell emails. So these are going to be informational emails with a soft sell built in so it can be about the same product. So you could do three and three. So think like one of each for one product line and then one of each for the next product line. Okay, you're going to make sure you're using UTM codes, tracking codes, for every single one of those In the soft sell. It's going to be mostly like here's valuable information that you can use and if you want to implement it quickly, you can use this product, but you don't need that product because you've got the information right, that kind of thing, okay, so we're checking it in there. It's a soft sell.
Speaker 2:We're still going to do the button, the call to action, at the end, like if you want to go shop these and make it easier, you can go grab it right here. We're still going to link inside of the text, but it's going to primarily be an informational email, okay, and what you're going to do is you're going to take a look at, after you've sent all six emails Now, we're not sweating it in between time, like, we're not going to be like looking at these stats and going, okay, what does this mean for my next email? We're not going to think about that. Okay, but at the end of that series, we're going to take a look at three things. We're going to take a look at your UTM codes. Which ones brought in the most money, which ones got us the most clicks? And for clicks, don't look at the UTM codes, look at whatever's in your email stats. Like, look for that, those are going to be more accurate.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:And then we're looking at open rates. Open rates are just gonna be for like your subject lines. It's really mostly just gonna tell you about the subject line. It's not really gonna tell you about which content they, you know, responded to the best or anything like that. It's just gonna tell you like which which subject line to like the best yeah okay, and you could do a mixture with those subject lines too.
Speaker 2:You could kind of diversify those. You could do two that are very straightforward, like openness, like quick sale, something like that. Two that are very like, not necessarily niche centered, but like you don't want, don't let this happen to you, you know kind of like that, something like, oh yeah, yeah interesting, like, yeah, borderline clickbait, but for sure, like you know, we're delivering on the inside, right, right.
Speaker 2:And then the third one would just be like something kind of niche specific, like just really making sure that we're like you're. Are your math students struggling with this? Are your second grade writing students struggling with this? Right To where it's a little bit more niche specific and it's a little bit more focused. And so, with those open rates, I'm looking at which type of, which type of subject line are they most drawn to and do I see any patterns there?
Speaker 2:But then, on the inside copy, you're going to learn something about your audience. You're going to learn what type of email are they enjoying the most? Okay, maybe, for I think for most, for the vast majority of anyone who performs this, they're going to notice that the short to the point sales email and the other, like hard sell email, both of those are going to probably perform the best in terms of conversion. Right, because I'm just giving them one thing to do, but you may find that one performs better than the other between those two. And then, with your informational one, see like, are they still clicking, are they still interested?
Speaker 2:Because I still need to send informational emails with soft sales, like I still need to do that regardless, but like if they don't seem interested at all, then I'm not going to feel pressure to send like two of those every month. Do you know what I mean? I'm going to send them a little less often. If they're really responding to those straight for sales emails and they're clicking and they're interacting and they're engaging and they're purchasing, well then that's meeting their need, that they have so those. That just makes me, puts me, in a mindset where I can like guilt-free, say they like this, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Right, this is what the people want.
Speaker 1:Like I'm just going to give them what they want, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah what they want Right.
Speaker 2:So that's what I would say in terms of like, making sure that your email marketing is going to be effective. If you send those six emails, that's going to give you some good data back and you'll be able to kind of test that a little bit more.
Speaker 3:I do have a question for you how do you feel about freebie emails? Because sometimes I feel like, okay, I need to send those more often.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm maybe-.
Speaker 3:How do you feel about?
Speaker 2:them. I like them. I think you should send a freebie every now and then, but I think it's also important to remember that you don't want to send them for sure not every week. I would say once a month is linty. But you can also do a freebie like maybe one month it's just a free resource, and maybe the next month it's like hey, if you purchase any of these products from me, send me a screenshot, I'm going to give you a free resource. Oh, cool, okay, you know what I mean. So like, if you've purchased any of these resources or if you leave me a review, give you a free resource. If you show me that you followed my store, send me a screenshot that you followed my store, I'm going to give you a free resource. Oh, that's a great answer. You can also do an exchange. It doesn't always have to be just straight up I'm going to give you a freebie just because you woke up this morning, kind of thing. Can?
Speaker 2:be like no, right yeah you know I'm not gonna work Exactly. Yeah, for sure. Okay, that's a great idea. So 2024, for sure.
Speaker 2:I would do another email collab. Definitely make sure that, if you aren't already, make sure that you have a page for your lead magnet, like an entire page for your lead magnet inside of your products. Okay, I would start with, if you haven't done that yet, I would start with your free resources that are in your TPT store. Put them there first, then put them in your best sellers and then add them, go back and add in to others, like, as you have time. Okay, that'll help you get some organic. You can also, if you do Pinterest, you can also pin a pin to your landing page. You can create some pins for your landing page. If you want to do something like that, I would say maybe don't take the plunge into Facebook marketing until you feel like you've, until you've done one more event and you feel like you've got a pretty solid handle on getting that ROI for your email marketing before you start putting money into that.
Speaker 3:Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, okay, I'm excited. I feel less scared. Yeah, that was an email, so this is good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. So we're just making small changes to the products that you're creating. You're continuing to focus on product creation and I feel like, between those two things like creating, continuing to create new resources, high quality resources where they can continue to find you and they have more spots to find you and then growing that email list that those will be the two things, those are gonna be the two biggest things that are gonna get you to that goal of replacing your teaching salary.
Speaker 3:Okay, thanks so much. Yeah, absolutely Any other questions for me. I think that's it Okay. I feel like that's really good information and I feel, cause that's what I was kind of thinking. I was like I need more products and then I need to figure out how to email that it actually returns what I'm doing. That makes sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, this is doable. This is for sure doable. Yeah, yeah, well, thanks so much, nicole. I sure appreciate you being here for sharing your goals with us, and where can listeners find you and connect with you if they wanna learn more about you, learn more about your store?
Speaker 3:just connect with you. In general, you can. My store is teachingfunwithmissa. I do have a website, teachingfunwithmissacom. I haven't started blogging, so that could be another step down the road as well. There you go. Yeah, but I do have an Instagram. But yeah, that's pretty much Awesome.
Speaker 2:Well, thanks so much. I'll link to those down inside of the descriptions. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 3:Thanks so much for having me. I've loved being able to talk to you about everything, so thanks so much, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for being here. We got weekly content for teacher entrepreneurs who are growing their TPD businesses, and we're trying to help you grow it in a way that's purposeful and sustainable, just like this in our talk with Nicole which, by the way, this is part of a coaching call series, and we've got more on the way. Thanks so much for being here, you guys. I'll see you in the next video.