The Rebranded Teacher
The Rebranded Teacher
If I Only Had 1 Hour in My TPT Business...
Do you think you can build a thriving Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) business with just one hour a week? Join me as I bust the myth that you need endless hours to see progress. On this episode of the Rebranded Teacher Podcast, I share a practical strategy for those who can only spare a single hour each week. By focusing on creating smaller, quicker-to-produce resources and dedicating time to keyword optimization, you'll keep your TPT store humming along even during the busiest seasons of life.
Whether you're a newbie to TPT or a seasoned seller, this episode is packed with actionable advice. Tune in to discover how to make the most of limited time by breaking down tasks into manageable chunks. I'll guide you through a month-long plan: spend the first three weeks creating new resources and dedicate the final week to refining your keyword strategy. This method ensures you continue to add value to your store and maintain momentum, no matter how hectic your schedule. Let's get productive, even on a time crunch!
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:We all want to be able to spend as much time as possible working on our TPT businesses, but what do you do during those seasons where you really just have like very little time to spend? I'm talking like an hour a week? What do you do during those weeks in order to continue to move your business forward or even just stay afloat? That's what we're talking about in this podcast what I would do in my business if I only had one hour a week, based on where my TPT business is at or the stage of business that I'm in. Okay, so let's talk about level one. I only have an hour a week to commit to my store. So first I want to say, if you have an hour a week, you can absolutely make progress in your business or keep your business afloat, keep your business moving, but your progress is going to be very limited. Okay, we're not talking about like in an hour a week, you're going to become a millionaire in the next two years, like that's not what we're talking about. An hour a week is not ideal for pretty much anyone, unless you're already like bringing in all the income that you want from TPT and you're getting all kinds of organic traffic from TPT and everything, sunshine and roses, and you really don't have very much to do, which is probably like not you if you're listening to this podcast, because why would you be spending time if you've already got everything in the universe is already working for you, right? But if that's not you, right, you're like the rest of us out here. Maybe there are seasons that you go through where life is just really busy and like all you have is an hour, like it's back to school season or you just had a newborn, something that would keep you from being able to spend very much time at all on your TPT business. So let's start with level one, stage one, of your TPT business. Let's say you just started and if you're listening to this and you're like, well, I barely started and that's me, I've got like an hour to commit, is it even worth it? Should I even do the hour Like is that going to get me anything Like? Should I even do the hour Like is that going to get me anything Like? Yeah, absolutely Absolutely you should. At level one, I'm still putting products in my store. I'm still building my business.
Speaker 1:I think that I would spend three weeks, like the first three weeks of the month, those first three hours creating a resource and working towards getting it listed, and the other hour I think it would spend on researching either keywords to use for that resource when listing or keyword optimization for resources that you already have on the market and maybe answering any q&a's that you get or tying up loose ends with that. I wouldn't be worried about any marketing or anything. You don't have time for that. Like, you still got to put resources in your store and I think that I would focus specifically on creating resources that don't take a lot of time to make and, yeah, they're probably not going to sell as well for you. But if you only have an hour a week and you have a product that takes like 10, 12 hours to make, I mean that's like three months worth of work just to get the thing listed. So I think that I would focus on creating resources that you can turn out by volume, like if I could make a small resource that would only be $1 or $2, but I could list, I could get it created in an hour. Then that fourth week I could optimize that resource as best as I could, or those three resources as best as I could, and try to get those listed. I could get three listings versus. I feel like that's a better use of time versus spending three months creating one product. I'd rather create nine products. So, yeah, I think that that's what I would do for the season of time. Again, it's a should be a season where I only have an hour.
Speaker 1:Stage one of your business. You're still growing it. You're still putting products in your store. I'd be listening to podcasts on my way to work to learn about search engine optimization, product covers, things like that. I'd be watching YouTube videos and soaking in all the knowledge and information on product creation. Seo previews covers, product descriptions, all the things that have to do with creating and listing the product. Nothing else. Not email marketing, not social media marketing, because you don't have time for that, but watching YouTube video while you cook dinner or watching YouTube video while you take a bath. I've done that. I've done that people out. How do you get it all done more and well, I do a lot of multitasking and so you can kind of fit in some of that informational piece and other areas of your life where there might be some margin or where there's opportunity to multitask without stressing yourself out or overwhelming yourself. And then you know, put that into practice. If you only have an hour a week and you're in stage one of your business Stage two you already have about 50 products in your store, you already have resources and you, yes, still need to create some products, but you also maybe want to focus on marketing or you need to do some revision. So, stage two you're past that initial just getting resources on the store shelves.
Speaker 1:I think that if I only had an hour a week, and again for a season, I would focus on updates and revisions and then I would also focus on marketing, email marketing specifically because with email marketing I can batch schedule on my emails. They can be super short, they can be really easy to write, but I can do all of that on my own time. So it's not demanding, it's not like I'm going to have to answer a lot of DMs, it's not like I'm gonna have to keep up with stories or anything like that. It's gonna be much less demanding than a lot of other forms of marketing. So email marketing is definitely the way to go if I have really limited time. So I would focus on product revisions, updating SEO, updating covers, updating previews for those resources that are already on the market to optimize them as best as I can in those small pockets of time. So I can sit down in an hour I can conduct keyword research for two different resources or three different resources and I can update the SEO for those resources. Then maybe the next week I spend some time updating some covers or updating some previews and then the next week maybe I spend that hour and I batch out three or four emails for the coming up weeks and then maybe in week four I'm creating a landing page or an email opt-in or doing something to hopefully help get more people to join my email list. So it's been half of my time working on marketing, half my time working on product revision.
Speaker 1:And you notice that I didn't say split it like that week, like split the hour up. I would do a solid hour focusing on one task, no matter what stage you're in. I wouldn't be splitting that hour up. I would just be focusing on things, different things each week in that one hour that I have and I would do as much as you can try to keep that one hour altogether. So if it's one night a week that you could set aside an hour, set aside the entire hour. I wouldn't set aside 15 minutes here, 20 minutes there. You're gonna find yourself not really able to get nearly as much done and you're gonna feel really frustrated and you're gonna feel a little bit defeated because you're not going to be able to, like, check much, if anything, off your list in small fragments of time. But give yourself one good, solid power hour. You're going to be able to get a lot done. You're going to feel accomplished at the end of that hour and you're not going to leave the hour feeling frazzled. It's going to give you the time to really wrap up what it is that you're working on.
Speaker 1:So yeah, stage two we're splitting it between product revision and marketing. If you're like, well, I'm not doing any marketing and I don't have that in me to take it on, you can split it between product revision and product creation. Okay, stage three of your business you are feeling really solid with where you're at, like you have plenty of resources for marketing. I would spend half my time, so two hours out of the four I would spend on product revisions, and then two out of the four hours I would spend on marketing. So, yeah, marketing and product revisions same thing as the previous stage, but just would not include product creation in there at all. If your stores are already full, you already have the resources that you need to market. Wouldn't focus on product creation in there at all. If your stores are already full, you already have the resources that you need to market. Wouldn't focus on product creation If you're in like stage four of your business, where you're like you know what my resources are doing pretty well. Like, yeah, there are some that could use some revision, some that could use some tweaking, but, honestly, overall things are going pretty well.
Speaker 1:I would focus solely on marketing. Like that's the only thing that I would do, and it was specifically be surprise, surprise email marketing, and so I would spend probably two of those hours really writing out thoughtful sales emails for the month, maybe doing six total emails, one a week, and then every other week they would get an additional email, and so I would batch out six emails in those first two hours and then the next two hours I would be working on ways to drive traffic, to get people on my email list. Whether that's through Facebook ads or blog posts or pins on Pinterest, whatever it is, I would be working on finding ways to get traffic to my lead magnet. If all I had was four hours a month, then I'd be spending all four hours like in the stage of business that I'm in right now. All four hours goes to email marketing. In fact, email marketing is one of the only things that I still do completely on my own for my TPT, my math business. I pretty much just do the email marketing.
Speaker 1:For the most part, somebody else writes all, creates all the resources, creates all my covers, creates all my previews, uploads them to TPT and I do need to go in and do some product revision, like I do need to do that, but right now, time is really short, and so email marketing is one of the biggest yields, the highest return on investment, and so that's why I focus on that. If you're like, well, I don't do email marketing, some of this doesn't really apply to me. Really getting to the end of this and you're thinking. Well, I feel like some of this doesn't really apply to me. I want you to consider what we've just talked about here. No matter what stage of business you're in, we're really just kind of focusing on wherever you're at in your TPT journey. You're focusing on the things that are going to give you the greatest return on your investment for time. So in the very beginning, your greatest return on investment is going to be product creation. After you've gotten those resources in your store, one of the greatest return on investment that you can get is going to be marketing your resources and optimizing your resources for TPT search and optimizing them for conversion. So really, at any whatever stage you're at, you're just focusing on those tasks that give you the greatest return on your investment.
Speaker 1:So take inventory. If you are in a stage where things are getting really busy or you're having to focus on other areas of your business, or family life is hectic, or work is hectic, school life is hectic, whatever it is take inventory of the things that are giving you the greatest return on your time investment and focus on those things only the rest of the stuff. It'll all be okay if it goes away. I promise you I don't really do Instagram or social media anymore for really any of my business ventures. I mean, I have them and every now and then I'll pop on, but I don't really do much for them and it's been okay.
Speaker 1:In fact, it's been more than okay. It's freed up so much of my time and my business has continued to grow without them. So if you are limited on time, then focus on those things that are going to make you money, and the rest of it just let it go. It'll keep for another day. Thanks so much for being here, you guys. If you wanna learn more, you can check out the rest of my videos on my channel. Make sure and hit the subscribe button so that you don't miss any future videos. I put out content every single week to help teacher entrepreneurs and TPT sellers grow their businesses. Thanks so much for being here and I'm gonna see you in the next video.