Overcoming Fear and Standing Out in the Teachers Pay Teachers Marketplace with Paige Espenshade

Ever felt the chill of fear creeping into your creative process, especially when it comes to sharing your work with the world? Teachers Pay Teachers entrepreneur Paige Espenshade joins us to unravel that feeling, as she shares a treasure trove of insights from her decade-long journey in the educational resource space. With the candidness of a close friend, Paige recounts her early triumphs and the daunting challenges that followed, including the paralyzing fear of copyright infringement. She also reflects on the transformative power of life's milestones, like marriage and a change of scenery at work, which ultimately guided her towards a niche in Christian education resources. Her story isn't just about overcoming hurdles; it's a beacon for anyone looking to find their unique voice amidst a sea of competition.

But how do you stand out when it feels like every idea has been taken? Listen as we break down the art of differentiating your offerings while embracing the collaborative spirit that comes with a competitive market. We'll reveal how to conduct efficient market research and wield the tools of branding and keyword optimization to ensure your educational resources don't just blend in but shine brightly. Plus, learn why it's imperative to align your products with your passion, and how to confidently expand your reach through niche marketplaces. Paige's journey, filled with actionable advice and the rise of her brand "Paging Through Lessons," is a masterclass that promises to guide you through the noise and steer your TPT business towards success.

Paige's Store Audit on YouTube
https://youtu.be/H488DlNMEbI

Paige's Teachers Pay Teachers Store - Paging Through Lessons
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Paging-Through-Lessons

Paige's Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/pagingthroughlessons

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

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: 0:25

We're still going strong with the coaching call series and I'm so, so excited for you guys to meet Paige Espinjade. She has a really unique story. She's been on TPD for nearly 10 years. She's been on since 2014. She gets started back when she was a student teacher, but she really hasn't made the progress that she's wanted to make in her TPD journey because of fear. She's been afraid of being accused of copying or maybe accidentally copying somebody, and she's kind of let that fear keep her from creating the resources that she would love to create and share with the educational community. And I'm so excited to have her here today because I know that this is an unspoken fear that a lot of people have and there's no reason why you should feel this way. So we're going to talk to Paige about that today. We're going to take a look inside her store and we're going to give her some really practical ways to get over that fear, but also to make sure that the resources that she lists sell All right.

Speaker 2: 1:15

Let's go ahead and let's meet Paige. Hey, paige, how are you? I'm great. How are you? I'm great. I'm so excited to chat with you today. Start by just telling us a little bit about you and your store, because when I was looking through your survey that we had you fill out, I noticed that you've been. You're going on 10 years, like you're coming up on a 10-year anniversary on TPD, and it seemed like maybe you stalled out a while back. So talk to me about this. What's?

Speaker 3: 1:42

going on, yeah. So honestly, I actually started my teacher's paid teacher store when I was a student teacher. I was working at a school that one of the fifth grade teachers is actually in upper elementary. She's a pretty big name and she had a friend who was my co-teacher and so we kind of were just like talking and my co-teacher really loved this cute it was a weather dog that I did. It was my special education placement and one of my students loved dogs and would only pay attention when you could tie it in a dog. So I went home, I found clip art. I made this adorable little weather dog for him and she was like you should just put that on teachers pay teachers. So I did and I was like okay, that's great. And ended up, truth be told, it was a senior in college and I wasn't necessarily thinking full picture and even really thinking copyright. So that actually since has been taken down specifically because it was a lot of movable pieces and it was a gray area on copyright. So that was part of where my struggles kind of began, just trying to figure out how to be the best I could be with my store. So it started in 2013.

Speaker 3: 2:53

And I went into my first year of teaching, and anybody who's been a first year teacher knows how crazy that year is. So I kind of took a little hiatus, but my store just kept making money because again, that was up there and I thought to myself, wow, this is really cool, I could really continue to do this. But then life set. In the next year I got married and moved and of course that meant moving schools, moving positions. You have another first year teacher year, and so as time went on, I ended up transitioning a few times. I actually was just counting it the other day. I'm hoping this was the final move, but in the past five years I've been at five schools.

Speaker 1: 3:31

Wow.

Speaker 3: 3:32

So my career has been hectic to say the least, and once I started trying to focus on being the best teacher I could be in the classroom, I stopped focusing on teachers pay teachers.

Speaker 2: 3:45

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 3:45

But the other thing that I quickly found was kind of like my niche. I really like Christian education. I've tried public school and find that I really like being able to pull my personal faith into education. But so many of the Christian resources are very old school compared to the populations of churches and the leaders you see now. So once that's what I started focusing on, I also felt like I wasn't pulling in as many people because there's not as much of a market for that. So my store has been I wouldn't even say fizzling out like it's actually steadily grown this past year, but it's not a crazy successful store Like I get a decent amount for extra spending money, but it's nothing that's anything to write home about.

Speaker 2: 4:33

I guess it's the best way to put it.

Speaker 2: 4:34

Yeah, okay, so all of this makes sense, and I think that this is what you just mentioned in terms of putting that first resource up and then later finding out, like, in terms of copyright, you know everything. It's a little bit murky. I think you just described something that a lot of TPT sellers experience, and I know we talk about it, so I don't want to say like nobody talks about it, but very few people just come right out and share and say like, I did it too. Do you know what I mean? Like, but I mean I did it too. Like I absolutely did it. I had a big name seller have to reach out to me and say you're using a trademark term. Take that down. You know what I mean, and it happens. It's very common because, like you said, you're fresh out of school. You didn't really learn anything about copyright, trademark, you know all of that kind of stuff in terms of creating your own resources, and so it's like a whole new ballgame, a whole new world to learn about, and you don't know what. You don't know when you first start. But that kind of I think leads into one of the things that you mentioned in your survey when you were talking about what you feel like is your biggest obstacle, and which we'll talk about here in just a second.

Speaker 2: 5:39

But first, what are your goals for the coming year? Taking all that into consideration, you've had a very eventful career so far in terms of, like, all of these moves, all of these fresh starts, like all of that, that's a lot on your plate. So, when you're looking ahead to 2024, what are you thinking? Like? This is what I want to accomplish in my TPP business. This is what I want things to look like at the end of the year. Like, what are you envision for yourself and for your business in 2024?

Speaker 3: 6:05

So, actually part of the moves that I made in 2019, I left a school and a position that was a private school for public and actually this year I not only re-entered back into that school that same classroom but also that same position. So I feel like I'm more primed for the Christian education niche than I was, because I have so much more of a passion for it and I also just I have found some really great ways to actually teach, and then I want to share that with people. I gained a master's with an instructional coaching certification, and so my goals for 2024 are honestly just not only to bring back new Christian resources and actually get back into creating, but to get to that root of how are we going to make education fun and how am I going to be able to not only do that but help other people make education fun with not as much of the headache of how do I implement half of these lessons.

Speaker 2: 7:05

Yeah, absolutely Okay, so I love that. So your goal for 2024 looks like to you creating more resources, really honing in on your new passion, your new found passion, and bringing that into the resources that you're creating. And, of course, that I'm sure involves, like you would like for those things to sell right, like it's not, like, oh, I just want to create these and have this, or I want to actually make some money with these resources because you're spending time, your precious time making them. What do you feel like is the biggest obstacle when it comes to actually following through with that? Like, not just creating the resources for you to use in your classroom, but actually getting them listed on TBT, feeling really confident with those listings and bringing in some money?

Speaker 3: 7:48

Truth be told, I am a fear based person sometimes and I think one of the things that really has gotten me in the past is not only like the copyright, but I've also I've had experiences in the past where you know people have maybe questioned where my ideas have come from. And that is just one of those things that once it happens, even if you can defend it and even if you know that it is such an original idea and you were so stoked about it, somebody who has done something similar and better could so easily try to take that. And it's one of those that, because it happened in the past, it's been really hard to get back into something without doing a deep dive rabbit hole. On teachers pay teachers Okay, is there something like this? Is that too similar to what I was thinking? Is somebody going to be able to say that this is something that I took and I took a spin from? Because, let's be real, teachers pay teachers is so great that so many educators use it and so many educators have ideas, and it just become like the sticky territory for me that, as much as I love making the resources, the fear is what I really just need to get over.

Speaker 3: 8:56

I can find the time. I'm just. I can also talk myself out of the time.

Speaker 2: 9:00

Yeah, absolutely Okay. So let's talk about that, because it is hairy and for sure, like you obviously rightfully so like you want to be creating original resources, you don't want to be copying anybody. Like those are things that you don't want to do, and like you are so scared of doing them that it's actually keeping you from doing anything, which we don't want. And I think there are a couple of things that you have to keep in mind first, and I'll show you a little bit. We're going to do a little dive into your store here in just a few minutes, but I'll show you how to do some quick market research to just kind of see Does this product already exist on the market? If so, that's fine, I can make another one. But how do I make mine better? Because to me, the bigger fear is I'm going to put a resource out there and not only is it already on the market, but it's better than mine. So I've basically just wasted all my time, right, because who's going to want to buy mine if theirs is better? It's okay to have a product on the market that's very similar to somebody else's. That is not to say that it's okay to copy. It's not to say any of that. There's nothing new under the sun. Like I'm not going to come up with something tomorrow that nobody has ever thought of before, right, somebody else along the way is going to have the same type of thought.

Speaker 2: 10:14

A good example of that is when I was in probably my second year of teaching. I'm starting to like branch out and try new things and feel really excited about teaching itself, and I came up with an idea and I'm not a Pinterest person, I'm not a blog person. I don't have any clue where I would have seen this anywhere before, but I was like we're going to do speed dating and I like paired everybody together and like we rotated, right, and I was so excited about this idea. We were at a professional development. I shared, oh yeah, like I did this speed dating thing and this lady was like oh yeah, I saw that on Pinterest a while back and I was like what? I was like somebody else had this idea and like several other people at the table were like yeah, I think I saw that too, right. And they're thinking like this chick just saw this on Pinterest, right, and I'm like, no, this was my original idea and I'm like new teacher crushed because I think I'd come up with this phenomenal idea and truly I had never seen it anywhere before but there was nothing new under the sun. Like somebody else had already had that idea too, and it just so happened that there were lots of teachers who had been doing this, and I just didn't know because I was new. And I think that that's something that we just have to look at and we have to say, ok, but wait a second.

Speaker 2: 11:21

The speed dating game with my students was a great idea. It worked. It worked really well in my classroom, and when I went home and looked it up, I was doing things a little bit differently than how teachers traditionally implement that in the classroom. And so when we have an idea that already exists on the market, it's a fresh opportunity for us to look and to say, ok, what am I bringing to the table that's going to make this different or better and different in terms of maybe more suitable for a specific group of people or a specific group of students? So in your case, it may be an idea that's been on the market for use in the secular classroom, but you're bringing it into Christian education, you're putting your own spin on this and you're making it so that it's going to meet a specific need for a specific group of students. Or it could be that you look at that product and you're like this is really great, but you know what would make it even better would be if they had opportunities for diversification built into the product itself, and so you're kind of taking it to the next level.

Speaker 2: 12:25

I've always said and I have to remind myself of this more than anyone else is that competition is a good thing, even if somebody is competing with me. And at the end of the day, if I look at something and it's already on the market, that is my opportunity to make something better or, again, to make something different. If somebody competes with me, then that's my cue that I've got to step it up. So whatever I was doing, I got to do it better right. Competition is a good thing. It's only going to make your business stronger. It's only going to make your business more durable in terms of weathering the economy and things like that. It's only going to make it better.

Speaker 2: 13:02

So, kind of having that mindset shift because I'm in an A&R 6 as well, I'm extremely motivated by fear. Like fear is my primary motivator. I'm afraid of doing anything that's going to make anybody think that I might have been copying them or even building off of their idea, that kind of thing. Extremely worried about that and at a certain point I have to step back and I think you'll be able to identify with this because you're a Christian and you'll know what I'm talking about. But bringing those thoughts captive and just saying no, that's not reality, that fear that I have is not reality. I'm going to bring that thought captive and I'm going to say God gave me this idea for this product. I am going to use it and I'm going to create it in a way that is honorable before him and honorable before others, and if anybody wants to question it, that's between them. Like I'm just going to leave that to God, like just I'm not even going to worry about it.

Speaker 2: 13:57

So, taking that and reminding yourself of that and then moving forward, let's take a look at your store and, because we want you to be able to list these resources, list them confidently. So we're going to look a little bit about how to do some market research quickly, because it does not need to be a time consuming, like all consuming task. This doesn't need to be hours and hours of research. Okay, and then the next thing that we're going to do is we're just going to take a look at once that product is created. How can we make sure we're listing it in a way that's actually going to bring in revenue and make sure that we're getting paid for that time?

Speaker 2: 14:34

So what we did is we took a look at your store, we did a little bit of market research together and we talked about a couple of things. The first thing that we talked about was, when you're doing that market research to see whether or not a product already exists on the market, you like, set a timer Don't make this a really long drawn out process 30, 45 minutes tops to do a deep dive. And while you're in there doing that deep dive, you should also be able to go ahead and start making notes of additional keywords, search terms, that you can use when listing that product later on. So you're kind of killing two birds with one stone. We're not just spending 30 to 45 minutes of research, looking at other resources to see whether or not that product exists. We're seeing like how can I make mine better, how can I make mine different? And then also, when I list this product, what are some additional keywords that I can use to hopefully get found in search. So we're making really good use of that time, so it doesn't feel like I'm just wasting my time.

Speaker 2: 15:27

And then, another thing that we talked about was that, once we've done that research, to just let it go that time, that space in between, when you've done the research and you've made the notes on how your product needs to be different, what you're going to do to create a resource that stands out in the market and competes with current resources without copying, then between that time and the time that you upload that resource, we're not going to worry about what happens in between, whether or not somebody has uploaded a new resource since then. Right, because you've done your due diligence. You've not intentionally copied anybody. There's not anything that's going to like. No one can really accuse you of that and even if they can, there's not anything they can do about it. Your conscience is clear. We're going to relieve ourselves of the feeling that we need to be God and know everything before we can list that thing and we're just going to go ahead and we're going to list it.

Speaker 2: 16:15

And then we took a look at your store itself, the listings itself, because obviously, once you've done all that work, you've done the research, you've created the product, you've got it ready to sell we want it to actually sell.

Speaker 2: 16:25

And when we took a look at your store which, if you're listening to this via podcast, you can check out the audit of her store on YouTube and you'll find a link to that down inside of the show notes.

Speaker 2: 16:34

But when we took a look at your store, a couple of things that we mentioned were making sure that you're choosing colors or your branding that allow you to have a bold color on the title of your cover your cover title because pastels, things like that, that kind of blend to the white, make you have to kind of like stop and swim to a little bit to read, make it a little bit harder.

Speaker 2: 16:54

So really choosing some nice big, bold colors to go in or to be a part of your branding palette can be really helpful and then utilizing those on the covers.

Speaker 2: 17:03

The other thing we talked about was utilizing all of your keyword characters and really making sure that you're not just picking a title that's like four or five words long, that we're using all the keywords that we can so that we're able to show up for multiple different search terms and that will allow us to get more views inside of the search engine. And then, when they do see us, they can read the covers, because everything's like big, bold colors on the cover. So everything get you more views, get you more traction. So let's just kind of let's kind of wrap this up we have a goal of creating a lot of resources in 2024, resources that align with this new passion that you have, with this new brand strategy that you have. And we're getting over the hurdle of listing those things and, you know, with the fear of someone thinking that we're competing with them. And then we've talked about, like, how you can make some changes to your current listings and to future listings to hopefully help them get some more traction.

Speaker 3: 18:00

Tell me, is there anything else moving forward in your business where you're like okay, I've got this other one little like, also there's this, but Honestly, I really don't think so because, like I said, I have specific time, I have downtime and the times that I've went and been like, oh, I have this great idea, I have my list going on my computer, but every time I put my list up when it's time to actually work on it, it's like but then I just don't know. I didn't do the research for each one. So really, at this point, as much as I'd love to set a goal for a monetary amount or honestly, even like an amount of followers on anything social media my teachers pay teachers, anything like that I'm not present enough because I haven't put anything up. And as nice as it is to have passive income, at this point my goal just needs to be to get back to it so that I can actually see, now that I have like my set niche, what can I do with it.

Speaker 2: 19:01

I love that. I think that's perfect. Just setting that goal of getting back into it, getting those resources listed, getting over that fear, enjoying what you're creating again. I think that that's going to be a really big deal for you. One other thing that I thought I would mention is I've heard from some sellers in the Christian space that there are some other marketplaces that they'll find traction on. So like made by teachers is one, so maybe even just thinking about listing those on other marketplaces as well. Yeah, cause it's just, it's obviously a little bit more of a niche area, but there's still plenty of Christian educators out there who are looking for incredible resources. So really excited for you All right. Well, I can't wait to hear back from you mid 2024, end of 2024. You'll have to keep us updated. Where can listeners find you if they want to check out your store?

Speaker 3: 19:50

and connect with you. Honestly, everything is labeled as paging through lessons. Just play on my name so you'll also see page espin shade. I technically have a YouTube channel. Maybe I have two shorts on there because, again, just haven't really gotten into that. Instagram is most of the time where you'll find me, but other than that, just search paging through lessons on teachers, pay teachers.

Speaker 2: 20:11

If you're curious about any of my stuff, Awesome, and we'll put links to that down inside of the description. Thanks so much for being here, paige. I sure appreciate it.

Speaker 3: 20:19

Thank you for having me. I really appreciate your time.

Speaker 2: 20:21

Thanks so much for being here. You guys, if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to share it with a friend and stick around, because we've got a lot more coming, so make sure you subscribe. I will see you right back here next week.