Mastering the TPT Marketplace: SherrI Miller's Journey to Success on Teachers Pay Teachers and Productivity Insights
Apr 01, 2024
Lauren Fulton - The Rebranded Teacher
Unlock the strategies that transformed Sherri Miller from a classroom tech expert to a digital education powerhouse on Teachers Pay Teachers. In our latest episode, Sherri spills the secrets to her decade-long journey and her remarkable ability to pivot her business model to ride the wave of demand for both digital and print resources during a global pandemic. Her forward-thinking approach to revamping her TPT store illuminates a path for online entrepreneurs seeking growth and resilience.
Dive headfirst into the art of productivity as we dissect the 'seasons' method of content creation, a game-changer for those looking to avoid burnout while juggling multiple projects. Sherri and I lay out actionable advice for balancing the creation of new TPT products with the essential task of revising older content. By employing a strategic revision ratio and leveraging sales data to prioritize updates, we demonstrate how you can streamline your workflow, amplify your output, and keep your digital storefront fresh and competitive. Prepare to have your mind decluttered and your efficiency supercharged after tuning in to our conversation.
Unlock the strategies that transformed Sherri Miller from a classroom tech expert to a digital education powerhouse on Teachers Pay Teachers. In our latest episode, Sherri spills the secrets to her decade-long journey and her remarkable ability to pivot her business model to ride the wave of demand for both digital and print resources during a global pandemic. Her forward-thinking approach to revamping her TPT store illuminates a path for online entrepreneurs seeking growth and resilience.
Dive headfirst into the art of productivity as we dissect the 'seasons' method of content creation, a game-changer for those looking to avoid burnout while juggling multiple projects. Sherri and I lay out actionable advice for balancing the creation of new TPT products with the essential task of revising older content. By employing a strategic revision ratio and leveraging sales data to prioritize updates, we demonstrate how you can streamline your workflow, amplify your output, and keep your digital storefront fresh and competitive. Prepare to have your mind decluttered and your efficiency supercharged after tuning in to our conversation.
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.
Speaker 2:
We are back at it again with another coaching call, and this week we have Sherry Miller. She is absolutely fabulous. She's been selling on TPT for over 11 years and she wants to talk about balancing all of the different pieces of marketing product creation, product revision, how to make sure that you're doing all of the things without feeling like you're bouncing from task to task to task and I'm so excited to chat with her because I know a lot of TPT sellers feel the exact same way, so let's meet Sherry. Hey, sherry, how are you? Hi, lauren, I'm great. How are you? I'm great. I'm so excited to talk to you today. You've been selling on TPT for how long I think I've read 13 years.
Speaker 3:
Is that right? Well, I started in the beginning of 2013.
Speaker 2:
So it's almost 11 years, Okay that's where I'm getting the 13 from.
Speaker 3:
Right right.
Speaker 2:
Years, a long time. So tell me a little bit about your TPT journey so far, what your niche is, kind of what that's looked like for you so far.
Speaker 3:
Okay, so just for a little bit of background, I started teaching elementary, second and third grades back in 95. And after about 10 years in the classroom, I became a technology specialist for my school division. So I did that for quite a while where I worked at different schools in the division. I went into classrooms and I helped teachers with integrating technology.
Speaker 3:
And in 2012, I had a teacher who I worked with quite often. She was really into using, you know, all of the different resources and such, and I would make lessons for us to do together while, you know, co-taught and modeled for her. And she said to me, hey, you really should check out this website I found, called Teachers, pay Teachers, and I was like, oh, ok, I guess you know, at some point I'll take a look at that, you know. And it was actually a couple of months later before I actually set out and did take a look. I remember being over Christmas break, you know, when you have a little bit of time to do something and I thought, well, this is, this is kind of neat, maybe I'll, maybe I'll give it a try. And so in January of 2013 is when I opened my store and posted my first couple of resources and from there, you know, I just you know I did start making a little bit of money and I, you know, just posted kind of here and there and just slowly grew my store.
Speaker 3:
And then, probably about 2018, is when I thought, okay, there's really a lot of potential here and I'm going to really try to dig in. So I started taking it more seriously, thinking of it more of a business than just a little bit of a side hustle. So that's where it started to grow more. And I do have because I was a technology specialist I do have a lot of technology and digital resources. That's the majority of my store. I've started adding in some more print with it as well. So most of my resources for K through five but the majority of them are based like second, third, fourth grade, because those are the grades that I taught previously.
Speaker 2:
Okay, awesome. Now, when you say technology resources, are these like resources for a technology specific class? Or are these digital resources for math, language arts, things like that?
Speaker 3:
Yes, yes, yes, so my position as a specialist was to help the teacher integrate it into their content areas. So I would create math, you know, grammar science resources that used or utilize technology. So they are digital resources, but they're based on core content.
Speaker 2:
Can I? I'm going to ask a couple of questions about the digital content and the printable resources, because you said you're adding more printable resources now. I'm assuming when COVID hit 2020 came along, you were living large right Like was doing quite well right.
Speaker 3:
It was.
Speaker 2:
And I'm assuming now too. It's probably doing a lot better than it was prior to COVID. But are the print resources? How are they doing for you in comparison to the digital resources right now?
Speaker 3:
Well, what I've started to try and do is take what I have in digital and create print versions of those and I include them in the one resource together. So, as I'm making sales on those, I'm not sure if they're buying them because they're digital or buying them because they're print, because they're together. So, you know, the digital definitely exploded when COVID hit and it was. It was really kind of neat to see that. Unfortunately, it's kind of interesting that that year I didn't have a whole lot of time to work on my store because I was, you know, still in the school system and as a technology specialist, I got quite busy trying to help, you know, all of the teachers learn how to become online teachers.
Speaker 2:
Basically, as you know, had to happen. Absolutely, yeah, that makes a lot. So talk to me about 2024. As you're looking ahead into the next year. What are some of your big goals for 2024? Things that you maybe shifts that you'd like to see happen in your business, things that you would like to accomplish?
Speaker 3:
Well, I definitely want to keep growing my store, keep adding new products and updating some of the older resources that are in there, and I did just recently start a blog. I actually had a blog many years ago and didn't really do a whole lot with it and that kind of went by the wayside, but I decided to dive back in to blogging. I got VA, who was wonderful and helped me build a new site. It is now out there. So I want to build that and keep going with that, and I want to do some video and maybe some YouTube and integrate it with my blog on technology tips and continue to teach teachers how to use the technology for integration. So those are some of the things that I have as goals for next year. I want to continue to do things like keep growing my email list and working with some more social media.
Speaker 2:
So, when it comes to meeting those goals because obviously you've got a lot going on, you've already got your email list you want to continue your product creation. We're talking to YouTube, we're talking blogging a lot of different things, it's a lot of things. It's a lot to juggle. What would you say would be the biggest hurdle that you think you're going to have to overcome in order to meet those goals and get your business where you want it to be by the end of next year?
Speaker 3:
Well, time, of course, is always a huge hurdle which to focus on, or how much time to allot to each part. That's where I struggle. I feel like I'm mostly organized, but at the same time, my friend Amber, my TTT bestie, who I meet with, she tells me all the time you have plenty of ideas, because I'm always talking about all of the different ideas that I have for new products and updating older products and you know. Just trying to figure out the best ways to allot my time and where I should focus them.
Speaker 2:
So in a second here we're going to take a little look at your store and just kind of see before, and it's just something that I like to do. Even if your primary goals are not to completely go back and re-overhaul or do things in your store, I do like to take a look because if we're going to spend a lot of time on the marketing end which sounds like a big goal for 2024, with creating YouTube videos, having the blog post, growing your email list and all of that we obviously want to make sure that those resources are optimized so that when we're driving traffic there we're not just wasting our time. So before we do that, when we're talking about time, how much time are we talking about? Are you still in the classroom? Are you full-time TPT? Are you working five hours a week on your store, 40 hours a week on your store? What are we working with here? Some?
Speaker 3:
full-time.
Speaker 2:
TPT now, okay, so we've got plenty of time to play with when we're talking about juggling all the things. So we'll get to how to juggle and how to prioritize after we take a look at your store. I know you mentioned you want to do some more product creation and continue in that vein, so we're just going to go, we're going to have a little look at your store. Obviously, for those who are listening on podcast, what we're going to do is we're going to go do that quick look at her store. We're going to come back and I'll do a little recap for you, but you can watch the full audit if you want to take a look at that. So we'll, we'll come right back, okay, so we took a look at your store and we just talked about a couple of things we talked about.
Speaker 2:
Your covers are wonderful, which, if anybody wants to go and look Sherry Miller, her covers look amazing. If you want to see some really great examples, particularly for digital resources, I think a lot of times with digital items, some people really struggle with how do I showcase that digital resource, and I think you've done that really beautifully. And then we talked about keywords, specifically, where you're choosing keywords that buyers would type into the search engine. But making sure that when you're ordering those keywords that you're choosing which ones are engine, but making sure that when you're ordering those keywords that you're choosing which ones are going to have the highest priority to you and putting those really close together. So, for example, if it's like multiplication fact, activity, that I'm putting multiplication fact and not putting a whole lot of other stuff in between that and the word activity, when activity is gonna be the higher searched term.
Speaker 2:
So we kind of talked a little bit about keywords. We talked a little bit about maybe modifying some value grabs on your covers, but other than that, everything looked fantastic. So now let's talk about driving traffic and balancing all the things. Can you tell me a little bit about your email list? Where you're at with that?
Speaker 3:
Yes, I started my email list, I guess about a year and a half ago. I, you know, of course, since I didn't have a blog or really a form of long form content, I've been using social media sporadically I'm not very consistent with that either and Pinterest and so forth, and you know some couple collaborative groups that I've been in to help me grow my list. But now that I've tried to start my blog and I want to try to, you know, do more consistent, maybe Instagram or, like I was saying before, videos or so forth I'm hoping that that will drive more to join my email list.
Speaker 2:
So let's kind of make a list here. We've got email, blog, youtube, social media or is social in Pinterest. I heard you say Pinterest in there somewhere.
Speaker 3:
Pinterest too.
Speaker 2:
When we're talking about social media, because you said you're kind of like hit or miss on that. Like that one's not as consistent. Is that something that you're wanting to keep or is it something that you want to let go?
Speaker 3:
You know, I definitely feel like I need to let some things go, but I have a hard time with deciding which direction or what to let go, I guess.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, yeah. I think that if I were going to let one of those go, it would be social media, but that's a personal preference. So if you decided in 2024, like, okay, this is the thing that I'm going to let go, I would probably pick that one Of all the things that you have. I think that you have enough going on to not have to keep up with that if you start to feel like you're drowning. That said, there are some really great tools and plans out there. Ashley Mickelson's Insta Planner is one that comes to mind. She's got that. That's an incredible tool for teacher authors to give you prompts and all that kind of stuff, but it's still going to be a lot to manage.
Speaker 2:
Alongside of product creation, one of the things that I recommend is to work or to focus in batches and in seasons, okay. So one of the things that I love to do is I love to focus on okay, this is my YouTube and podcast season and I'm batching out all of those episodes, doing all of that, and then I'm stopping that. Not necessarily that it stops. I mean, I do have a break during the year, but like I'll go from November 15th to probably March 15th without doing any recording and because the they're already, the episodes are already created, so just kind of working in seasons and working in stages, and one of the things that's really great for that is product creation. So product creation is one of those things that, if you're not doing this already, I would strongly recommend taking breaks from it. And I'm not talking about, like product creation one week, no product creation the next week. I'm talking about really hitting the product creation hard for a month or two and then taking a couple of months off and not doing any product creation while you focus on something else. And I found that for me personally, with a lot of irons in the fire, that has been something that has really helped me, because then I can say, okay, we're not doing product creation right now, we're not focusing on that.
Speaker 2:
And so in this interim, where I don't feel pressure to create anything because I'm not even allowing myself to do it, what I don't feel like I have to think of a new idea. I don't feel like I have to think of a new idea, I don't feel like I have to finish that project or anything like that. In that time I can focus on batching YouTube videos or I can focus on writing several blog posts. I can do those things, so I don't feel like I'm bouncing around from task to task, which is kind of what you talked about earlier. As you know, as a teacher, one of the things that's really really difficult as a teacher is when you have multiple different classes that you're teaching throughout the course of the day, which you were elementary, so that's what you did every day. It was like we're math, we're reading, we're science, we're social studies, everything.
Speaker 2:
And even bouncing grade levels? Yes, yeah, absolutely, and it's one of the most mentally exhausting things that you can put yourself through. But as business owners, we do that to ourself all the time because we feel like we need to consistently be upkeeping everything, and that's really not the case with all the forms of content that you've mentioned, with the exception of social media. Every single one of those can be batched and scheduled out product creation, your emails, your events, your big email events I like to do those big email events when I'm not doing product creation too and same for your YouTube and your blog pins on Pinterest. All of that can be done in one section and then move on to the next thing. If it were me and I were going to juggle all of those things I say that like I don't, but I do have a lot of help, so I don't want to pretend like it's just me doing it, like it's not. So if it were me and I were going to juggle all of those things, that's exactly how I would do it. I'd be like January I'm writing emails for four months, so for four months I don't have to think about doing anything else. Or maybe I start with a blog post, since it's a longer form of content. And then the next month, when I move into emails, I'm just chopping those blogs up into different emails and then I'm focusing on that.
Speaker 2:
So I'm taking like two, three months off of product creation and I'm breaking that two or three months of time up into like these two weeks or these three weeks. I'm just writing emails these two to three weeks. I'm just creating pins for Pinterest. These two to three weeks. I'm taking those blog post ideas that I've already written, got all of those done and I'm just going to bite the bullet, fix my hair and makeup every day for a week and sit down and record all of those videos, right. And then you don't feel like, oh, I've got this and I've got this and I've got this and I've got to fit all those pieces together. So if it were me, I would look at for 2024, creating a schedule for yourself that looked like what am I doing during these chunks of time and what am I not doing during those chunks of time, and really holding yourself to the what I'm not doing. I think that's the hardest part. I think that's the hardest part. I think that's the hardest part.
Speaker 2:
Definitely definitely yeah, and kind of batching that out. But for sure you know, continue to participate in those collaborative events to grow your email list. Keep doing little things that are going to really help you. I mean, you know the email has probably been the most powerful traffic driver for you. I mean it just anybody who's doing email pretty much knows that. Yeah, and focus on making sure that your blog posts that you're writing are going to support your email Not all of them, obviously, but make sure you're supporting your email with those blog posts and pins for the blogs and pins for the landing page for the free, all of that stuff that you already know how to do and that you already know to do. And I think for you it's probably just going to be a matter of sitting down and figuring out those long-term schedules where you're not trying to do all of the same things at the same time.
Speaker 3:
I definitely think you're right about that, because I've known for a while I need to batch those out. And then you just get that whole overwhelm, like I need to get this going, or I need to batch those out. And then you just get that whole overwhelm, like I need to get, I need to get this going, or I need to get that going, oh wait, I need to stop now. And I got to write that email and yeah, and then I feel like, oh, my goodness, I can't get focused because I'm everywhere.
Speaker 2:
Yes, well, and the starting it is really hard too, because in order to start that batching progress process, you have to stop something. And so when I first kind of started this, one of the things that I had to do was say it's okay if I don't put a blog post out. You know and for me it wasn't blogging at the time and I can't remember what specifically was I think at one point I didn't send emails for a couple of weeks and I was like it's going to be okay if I don't do it for a couple of weeks. I have to do this, and it's email is probably not the one that I would recommend. I'd take something else off the table, you know. But you know what I mean Product creation, social media.
Speaker 2:
Just tell yourself, you know what. I'm just going to bite the bullet and I'm just going to spend start with one task, like the emails or like the blog, something like that, and then just start with one week, maybe, maybe just one week to get ahead on something. So then you have two weeks to focus on something else and then you have three weeks to focus on the next thing, if that makes sense.
Speaker 3:
Yes, it does, definitely. All right. I did have another question for you about the product creation and revision realm. So you know I've been on TPT now for a while and so I still have. You know, if you dig down in my store, I still have some products that are really old and need serious updates. I, back in the beginning of October, I knew, you know, in the back of my mind I kept saying I've got this one that was a Halloween theme. You know I really wanted to redo and I finally sat down one day and I just redid the whole product, gave it a whole new you know facelift, included both digital and print, you know new cover, thumbnails, preview, the whole thing. And it really did well in October because I think it, you know my my thinking is it was an established product back years ago and it had some ratings and so forth and it boosted.
Speaker 3:
So how much time where should I? Spend. I'm trying to figure out, you know, between creating new things or updating the older stuff. Yeah, that's something maybe I should batch a month of.
Speaker 2:
Yes, that's exactly what I'm going to say. Yeah, that's another thing, like, just sit down and make a list. I've got blogging, I've got videos, I've got this, I've got this. How much time can I allot to each one of these things? And how much time do I feel comfortable taking away from, say, product creation and or product revision and then fit in seasons of time where you're not doing anything other than the product creation or product revision? And I would batch it. I would do one month where you're just focusing on product revision and going in with exactly what you did, going in and focusing on those seasonal items first. That might be able to get a little bit more traction. But yeah, I wouldn't intersperse it, I wouldn't mix it with the product creation, because it interrupts that train of thought, it makes you feel like you're juggling again.
Speaker 2:
But I really think, once you sit down and you pull that calendar out for 2024 and you think, okay, how many emails? If all I'm doing is writing emails 40 hours a week, how many emails can I write in three weeks? You're going to find like you can write a lot of emails in three weeks. And then you're like, okay, email marketing is completely off my to-do list for six months right, because of three weeks and then, once you get to that place where you're like, oh, I only have to do one thing right now. It's going to give so much freedom to your brain. Your brain is going to be so happy, yeah, and I think that you'll see where you're going to have plenty of time to go in and to do that product revision and to really focus on it and give it the attention that it deserves.
Speaker 2:
I know some people do it at a ratio of, like every five new products, I'll revise one old product, and whatever works for you works, you know. But I think, especially when you're full time TPT, sometimes it's just easier to think to sit down one time, go through all of your data and see, okay, what was selling really well and fell off the wagon. I'm going to look at the top two sellers for every single month, january through December. I'm going to make a list of all of them. I'm going to do all the research, make a list of every revision that needs to be made to those products and then I'm going to spend the next month completely revamping every single one of those resources. It makes it a whole lot easier than going back and forth, like, okay, now let's look at January, and then like the next month, okay, now let's look at February. And continuing to go back to that, it makes it a lot simpler and I think it makes it a lot quicker and a lot more efficient.
Speaker 3:
When you can do that, I do feel that way and I feel like that I'm constantly trying to play catch up. Oh, I've got that one product. You know it's hanging here in the back of my head. You know, I know that next month it's gotta be done and I just can't.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely, yeah, yeah, absolutely, I love it. Do you have any other questions for me?
Speaker 3:
No, I don't think so. This has been really helpful and just it's been great to talk to you.
Speaker 2:
Well, it's been great to talk to you, Sherry. Thank you so much for being here today. Yes, thank you. Thanks so much for being here. You guys, I'm putting out weekly videos for TPT sellers so that you can grow your business in a way that's purposeful and sustainable and without spinning your wheels. So make sure you like and you subscribe. Thanks so much for being here. As always, I will see you right back here next week.