The Rebranded Teacher
The Rebranded Teacher
Monetizing TPT Resources through Print-on-Demand Workbooks with Krystal Griffith
Unlock the secrets of transforming classroom resources into profitable print-on-demand workbooks with our inspiring guest, Krystal Griffith. As a teacherpreneur, Krystal reveals her transition from special education to skyrocketing her Teachers Pay Teachers creations to Amazon bestsellers, proving that with the right tweaks and SEO savvy, educators can significantly amplify their income streams. Learn how you might adapt your TPT content to reach not just teachers but an expansive audience including parents and grandparents, as Krystal shares the nuances of repackaging educational materials for broader appeal and navigating the intricacies of licensing compliance.
In this session, we also peel back the curtain on the Virtual Teacher Seller Summit, where Krystal and over 40 experts offer a treasure trove of knowledge on digitally expanding your educational business. Whether it's mastering Instagram, finessing email marketing strategies, or converting lesson plans into various online products, this summit is a goldmine for educators looking to level up. Hear about the workbook that made a modest impression on TPT but soared to impressive profits on Amazon, and get a glimpse of the potential awaiting you in the world of e-commerce educational materials. Join us as we explore these avenues and more, packed with actionable insights for every teacher with an entrepreneurial spark.
Get Your Tickets to Teacher Seller's Summit!
https://rebrandedteacher.kartra.com/page/hM1199
Krystal's Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/checkinwithmrs_g/?hl=en
Krystal's Free Facebook Group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/tpttopod/
Krystal's P.O.D Playbook for Teacher Authors:
https://krystal-s-school16.teachable.com/p/p-o-d-playbook-for-teacher-authors
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 it.
Speaker 1:If you've been looking for ways to take your TPT resources and turn them into other streams of income, then this episode is for you, because today we have special guest, crystal Griffith, who is going to be talking about taking your Teachers Pay Teachers resources and turning them into print-on-demand workbooks. I was so excited, but by the end of this podcast, crystal had me enrolled inside of her course and I am about halfway through it right now and I've already made my first workbook and I'm getting it ready to publish on Amazon. I'm so excited about this and I want you guys to go ahead and meet Crystal. Hey Crystal, how are you? I'm doing so well. Thank you for having me Listen. I am so excited for today's conversation. Like I can't even tell you how curious I am to learn more about what it is that you do and what you teach others to do. But before we dive into all of that. Can you just go ahead and start us off by telling everyone who you are and a little bit about you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, my name's Crystal. I'm a former special education teacher. I started on TPT in 2015 when I wanted to stay home with my own kids and I knew almost right away that I was going to need the income to come from more than one place to feel comfortable depending on it. So I kind of set out almost immediately to find a second way to make that happen, and so that led me to workbooks, so repurposing my Teachers Pay Teachers resources into workbooks using print on demand. And yeah, it's just grown from there.
Speaker 1:How long have you been on TPT?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I started in 2015. So I was working full time still, and probably within two years I got pretty close to replacing my teaching income, but I didn't feel comfortable diving fully in because our family depended on my income and it felt too scary to have it coming from one place.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. And so what year was it that you started the workbooks?
Speaker 2:I actually didn't start directly with workbooks. I started with writing fiction, which is something I still do it's more than half of my income and I had to learn a crazy skill set to write fiction because it's really competitive. You know, I put out a book a week for an entire year. I had to learn all of the SEO and all of the marketing and ads and I thought like this is awesome, but it's a little bit exhausting. So I found myself taking that skill set and being like what if I applied that to workbooks? And what I found was like kind of this wide open lane. So the first workbook I published was 2020. And it didn't really do a whole lot. Even with COVID and people being at home. Nothing kind of happened until I got serious about applying all the SEO strategies that I had learned to the workbooks and then they took off. So that's kind of how.
Speaker 1:I got here. So first I have to back up because I have to ask. You said you were writing a book a week. First of all, how big are these books? And that's really probably not really pertinent to our conversation today, but I just between like 20,000 and 30,000 words, so they're pretty short.
Speaker 2:I feel like eight or nine chapters, so it's almost like the story continues, you know.
Speaker 1:Okay, so I'm assuming you're self-published, then because you're self-publishing these books, right? Because otherwise like it would take up so much time, and so, as you're self-publishing these books, were they print-on-demand books? What was that process looking like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so those books I used in the beginning exclusively Amazon, kindle, direct Publishing and they were mostly eBooks. And then when I would get because they're all in a series, so you get to like five or six books in a series and then I would publish that as a paperback I've since then branched out to using an aggregator which will publish to kind of like your big five publishing houses, so Kobo and Barnes and Noble. It pushes them out to libraries and all of that sort of thing for you with my fiction. But for print on demand I still use Amazon exclusively because their reach is unmatched and their SEO tools are unmatched. Everything is kind of built in for you, so it makes it a really easy place to start, did you do any print on demand with the books?
Speaker 1:Is that where you kind of got the idea for the print on demand workbooks? Is that kind of how that came into play?
Speaker 2:Yeah, amazon Kindle Direct Publishing kind of works similarly for eBooks and workbooks. It's the same algorithm and it's the same kind of ranking system. So whether you do like an eBook version or a paperback, you're kind of working underneath the same umbrella to figure out, like how do I make this show up when people are looking for it?
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's, that's fascinating. So when you started with this workbook, can you talk to us about what a workbook is? What's the difference between a product that I'm putting on TPT and a workbook?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, I think what goes inside of the workbook is slightly different than what you would put on TPT. Because when you're putting something on TPT, you're talking to another teacher in a very jargon-heavy, specific way, right, you're using like standards and you're using all of those buzzwords that we know other teachers are looking for. But when you're putting something on Amazon, you might be talking to a grandma who just knows that her grandson needs help with writing. So when she goes to Amazon, she is not typing in those standards, right, she's typing in sentence writing practice. So I think that the customer is a lot different and the product ends up being different because of that.
Speaker 2:It's still really high quality teaching resources, but you're going to package them in a different way to meet your buyer where they're at, and so I think that's one of the big differences. And then, of course, the other difference is, like one of them, they're getting a digital download on TPT, but if you are uploading something to Amazon, kdp and it's a paperback, you're uploading the file just like you would for TPT, but when someone buys it, the print house closest to that person is printing it off and shipping it for you. So on your end, it's a similar process. You're just like refreshing your dashboard and seeing how cool your day was. But for the buyer, they're actually receiving a physical workbook in the mail that they can sit down with their kiddo and kind of go through.
Speaker 1:I actually just received one of these in the mail. I didn't know when I was purchasing it that it was a print on demand workbook. My little three-year-old and I were going through the fruits of the spirit and so I found this little like dot marker, a little workbook where you know it's like patients, you know dot in the letter P or whatever super simple, very short workbook and looking at it I wouldn't have known necessarily that it was print on demand unless I had been aware that there was a thing. And I opened it up and I was like this looks like a TPT product with a few things stripped out of it. It looks like a simplified TPT product and they just printed it. And, sure enough, I turn it around and it's like, oh, it was printed somewhere near me in Texas, you know, like that kind of thing.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, one of those POD workbooksbooks and I was really impressed and very intrigued. So if somebody wants to start with this because the one that I got was actually quite short, I was surprised it maybe had like 12 or 15 pages in it. It really was not very long at all. If somebody wants to start with a print on demand workbook, what are we talking about here in terms of length, like how big does this workbook need to be? Does it need to be like what we're seeing with Scholastic, when they're producing a 300-page pre-K workbook? What does this need to look like in terms of size?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I think the first thing to do is there's actually a free page count publishing cost calculator on Amazon. I always start there, so I look at what's already selling in that category and for those keywords that I know I want to rank for, and then I work backwards how many pages are they having? Am I seeing between 40 and 80, or am I seeing between 100 and 300? Then I take that number and I go into the calculator and I say, okay, if I print 78 pages with this trim and these margins, what's my printing and shipping cost? And it may be $4. Okay, great.
Speaker 2:Then I know I need to charge at least whatever for my book so that I'm within the profit margin that I want to be in. So it's a really good place to start, because 78 pages might be a $4 printing and shipping cost, but 76 pages might be a $2 printing and shipping cost. So it really changes your profit margin for each sale, and so I think you want to be within the realm of what the hundred bestsellers are for that category. But I think you also want to then take those broad numbers, go into that calculator and figure out a number that works best for you, because you really don't, if it's going to affect your profit margins dramatically just adding or subtracting a page or two. That's something you really want to be aware of, kind of going into the process.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so there's a lot of work that goes into this. This isn't just like take your PDF, upload it somewhere and they print it out. Can you tell me, time-wise, what are we looking at to do this right To take, say, a set of like a product line, say up a product line of different worksheets for fifth grade right, fifth grade math, and I want to take that product line of different worksheets for fifth grade math. I want to consolidate it together into a workbook. Time-wise, what am I looking at there?
Speaker 2:So I think there's two ways to go about it. One is that you have this backlog of products and you want to go back through them and kind of reimagine them, and that takes longer because you may have to reformat, you may have to resize. I think that generally you could do it in a week of, you know, a full week. But I think almost a better way to do it, and where a lot of people are finding success, is they start in a template like a new product line, whatever you're going to do next on TPT. In a template that would work for both print on demand and TPT. You do the process as you would and then you would just add a single day or a single work session or block, or however you time. However, you break up your time at the end, where you duplicate the file and then one of them becomes a TPT product and you're going to add a lesson plan and all of those good teacher words, and then you're going to take the second version and you're going to add instructions for use and a note to parents and create it into a workbook. So I think that's the way that is recommended.
Speaker 2:I recommend for most people to start, unless you are like, yes, this is going to be my new thing, I'm going to dive in and go back and in that case I would say it takes me about a week per workbook to do it right, to get the keywords in order, and then it is reformatting. You know how you get to the TPT products and you get to the certain place where you're like, oh my goodness, if I have to do another space or comma, it's that. I don't want to give you any false promises. There is that, especially if you're reformatting old stuff, it can be really worth it because when you think about the work it takes to create a brand new product line and all the research that goes into it, versus taking something that already exists and repackaging it into an entirely separate audience, it's been really worth it. But but yes, it does take time. You have to have like time and energy to put into it, especially the first one, because it can be cranky.
Speaker 1:So for most people you would say I'm not saying like, don't, but it might be easier to, instead of going back to older resources, start with your next product line and just create a product line that would work for both TPT and print on demand. Can you give me one example of something that you know? You mentioned the formatting might have to be changed a lot from what you would traditionally do from TPT. Can you give me an example of something that would be different that I would really have to watch for when creating a resource for print on demand?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think a big one is clip art. So you have to make sure the clip art you're using is licensed to be sold with print on demand and on Amazon, and it's been mixed reviews. So since people have been going through this process with me, they've been reaching out to a lot of different big TPT clip artists and I would say it's almost half and half with whether or not they allow it. A lot of them do allow it. You just need to make sure you purchase an additional license. So I think that's a big thing because if you are working with a clip artist for a lot of your products and they say no, mine cannot in any way be used for print on demand, you're having to either replace it or delete it. So that can be a big hurdle. As far as the products themselves, you can create them right inside of PowerPoint eight and a half by 11, just like you would for a TPT product.
Speaker 2:Sometimes the margins are wider for workbooks so you may have to go through and reduce your margins or increase your margins, that sort of thing, and that can get pretty tedious. The other thing is the back matter is a little different margins or increase your margins, that sort of thing, and that can get pretty tedious. The other thing is the back matter is a little different. So since you're using a printed workbook, you're not going to necessarily have that page at the end that links to your opt-in or links back to your TPT store. You can make a QR code and say hey, parents, if you liked this, scan this QR code. You'll get on my email list and you get a free additional lesson plan, and I think you should do that.
Speaker 2:But it does take more time, right? Because now you're kind of going through your back matter, you're changing out your links to QR codes. So those are the kinds of things that like independently aren't too crazy, but when you start looking at it as a whole project you're like okay, well, yeah, that's more time, that's more time. You know, none of it is hard. I think the hard part is getting the keywords and SEO figured out and stripping back the teacher jargon, the actual mechanics of changing the products. Not hard, but can be very tedious.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. So that's really good to know. That's really good to know, especially about the clipart, because I saw that discussion happening in your Facebook group about the clipart and that's that's really good to know. That's really good to know, especially about the clip art, because I saw that discussion happening in your Facebook group about the clip art and I thought, oh my gosh, like that basically like not to say wipes out, but like that really makes everything a lot more difficult, because then you have to go back in where did I get this clip art from? And then specifically go to that artist and ask permission or go in and replace and find a suitable replacement, which may mean completely changing things up. So like if I'm creating a math problem and I can't use that piece of clip art, I might have to change up the math problem and all of that or create clip art myself.
Speaker 2:So and by that I don't mean like the creative clip art.
Speaker 1:I mean a lot of times in math we'll purchase a graph or something like that for people listening, like I'm not saying copy an artist or anything, but like create your own graphs or create your own yeah, your own pieces to go into your own workbooks. That sounds like it could be pretty intense. So talk to us about the payoff. Like, what kind of success have you seen, experienced? Can you talk to us about, yeah, what you've seen on that end, on the payoff end?
Speaker 2:So I have one workbook in particular that I pulled out of my writing intervention curriculum on TPT and I stripped it way, way down to sentence writing practice and that workbook on TPT has made not very much money. It's not one of my bestsellers and it's not even really in my main wheelhouse, which is high school special ed, but on Amazon I got the keywords right and that workbook has made over $50,000 by itself. There is an ad spend, there is marketing. You know it's not just upload it and you're done, but it's. It's blown away the maybe $2,000 it's ever made on TPT. And I have on the flip side, you know, products that are just doing okay on Amazon that are killing it on TPT. So there's not a huge correlation and it kind of gives an opportunity for those products you ever make, the products that you're like you guys.
Speaker 2:I know this is good, Like what is happening. I know this is so good and maybe it's the audience because maybe parents think that it is good. Right, A lot of my special ed products that I have turned into bigger workbooks maybe a 200 page workbook also sell in class sets so they don't sell as frequently as the smaller workbooks but it doesn't take very many people purchasing a class set of workbooks at $18 a workbook, with a $4 shipping cost to have a pretty good day, and so I think there's a lot of pockets of gold there. There's a lot of pockets that are just not saturated and I think, as a TPT community, it's a really big opportunity, because the high quality nature of our resources like being teachers who are educated in this, who have practiced and use this in the classroom to then turn around and put them on Amazon and make them accessible to parents who are trying to help their kiddos at home is a service to that audience.
Speaker 2:I will die on that hill, you know. I think it's needed and I think people are looking for it, and I don't just think they're looking for it. I know they are because I use all their SEO tools and I know exactly how many people every month are looking for certain things that just don't exist, or the competition on a scale of one to 100 might be four. If we had the capability of searching that sort of thing on TPT, I imagine you wouldn't find very many pockets of competition for you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, absolutely Okay. Like I'm massively I mean I was intrigued before we talked, but now I'm just like how can I fit this into 2024? You know and I'm sure other people who are listening are thinking the exact same thing Like how can I fit this into my goals and my plans for this year? Before we hop off, you're going to be at Teacher Seller Summit. You actually reached out to me I am you connected with somebody else who had been on the podcast before and they told you. They said, oh, lauren would love to have you on the podcast. And I absolutely was so excited when you reached out and you said I do this. I teach people how to create workbooks and never have heard anybody talk about this before. And I was like yes, please Like.
Speaker 2:please come on the podcast. Oh my gosh, lauren, I have been so excited to come on and chat with you.
Speaker 1:I was like freaking out, I was thrilled, and then I reached out to my business partner, brooklyn, and I was like we have to have her at Teacher Seller Summit too. And so you're going to be at TSS. You're going to be teaching people more about how to create workbooks. Can you tell us a little bit about what your session is going to be about? When it's going to cover? Yes?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, thank you so much for letting me be at TSS. I'm just so excited for it, yeah. So I'm going to be taking you through a couple strategies that you can use to get started. So, if you are on the fence about workbooks, I'm gonna show you the big umbrella picture and then I'm gonna show you exactly the tool that I use to find the keywords and how I know whether or not they are worth my time to create a workbook, and I'm gonna give you the link to the tool so that you can look through your own TPT store, look through what people are already looking for on Amazon and see if you can find an intersection, because that intersection is where a lot of success can happen. So in my session, I'm going to give you every single tool you need to do that.
Speaker 1:I love that. I'm so excited and you also have a course right For people who want to learn how to create their own print on demand workbooks. Can you tell us where listeners can connect with you and learn more about that course?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the course is called POD Playbook for Teacher Authors and it is step by step from I think I might want to do this through SEO formatting and then on the back end through marketing and getting an advertising campaign set up with Amazon, and so I have a free Facebook group where we talk all about it. It's called TPT to POD repurposing teaching resources into workbooks and I would love to have anyone join and there's all the links to the course right inside of there.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it. Well, thank you so much for being here, crystal. We can't wait to have you at TSS, and I know that there are going to be a lot of listeners who are going to be all over this, and so I'm really excited that you came on today.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much for having me, and I would love to work with all of them, so thanks for helping me get the word out, of course.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for being here. If you want to learn more from Crystal, you can find links for ways that you can connect with her and check out her course inside of the description. You also want to make sure that you come to TSS because everything that you learned from Crystal is incredible and I bet that you're eager to learn more, and you can obviously learn more at Teacher Seller Summit. But there are other people, other experts, just like Crystal, who are eager to share incredible information with you to help you grow your business. So you absolutely do not want to miss the Virtual Teacher Seller Summit. You can get your ticket for just $129.
Speaker 1:You cannot beat that Over 40 different experts who are sharing ways that you can grow your business, both on and off of TPT, through different forms of marketing, like Instagram marketing, email marketing, through taking your resources and turning them into memberships, courses or print-on-demand works, books like Crystal and so much more. You absolutely do not want to miss it. Get your ticket down below inside of the description, and if you're listening to this, after the conference is over, it's past June 30th and you're wondering how you can attend, make sure to sign up for the waitlist so that you are ready next year when TSS returns. Thanks so much, you guys, for being here. I'm going to see you guys right back here next week.