The Rebranded Teacher
The Rebranded Teacher
How to Create a TpT Product and Tips for Profitability
Unlock the secrets to creating standout Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) products with the power of PowerPoint! Join me, Lauren Fulton, as we explore how to transform your educational resources into professional masterpieces that capture attention and drive sales. Whether you're a novice or a seasoned creator, this episode promises to equip you with the essential tools—like text boxes, tables, shapes, and clip art—that form the foundation of high-quality TPT products. Discover why PowerPoint reigns supreme over other platforms like Canva and learn how to perfectly set your slide sizes for printables. Don't forget to check out our YouTube version for those crucial visual demonstrations that take your design skills to the next level.
Visual appeal is key in captivating educators and students alike, and this episode reveals the art of enhancing your TPT resources with strategic design choices. Learn how to bring subjects such as world history to life using clip art that adds depth and context, making your materials not only informative but also engaging. We dive into the importance of variety in design—showcasing diverse layouts and color schemes that signal high-value offerings and keep learners intrigued. By the end of this episode, you'll be armed with actionable insights on how to create visually stunning and functionally effective resources that stand out in the crowded TPT marketplace.
Check out the YouTube video: https://youtu.be/5w4106vLi4A
Link to Rank my Resources Bootcamp: https://rebrandedteacher.kartra.com/page/mnx229
My Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurentschappler/
My Other YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LaurenATsch
Free Rebranded Teacher Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/749538092194115
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 2:Let's talk about how to create TPT products, and not just TPT products for beginners, although I am going to cover some of the basics in this video, but also some advanced tips so that you can design with the end in mind, so that you get more sales. Let's do this. If you're new to TPT, then this first part is for you, and if you've been selling on TPT for a while, then I want you to use the timestamps inside of the description to get to the advanced section, because you already know this stuff. But let's get down to the basics. Okay, when it comes to creating TPT products, there are really only three basic tools that you need inside of PowerPoint and, yes, we're gonna create our resources in PowerPoint. Now you can also use programs like Canva. That's a great place to create TPT resources as well. But in today's video, I'm going to be showing you how to create in PowerPoint, because it's honestly, I think, the least controversial, most user-friendly and it's going to give you the most options long-term for your business. So let's get started. So let's talk about what those three things are, because they're not anything scary. You need to know how to insert text boxes, tables and shapes in PowerPoint in order to create basic good products. Now, there's a fourth thing that you're probably gonna need as well, and that's gonna be clip art. But I promise you, but all four of those things are super easy. Now, a fifth optional thing that you might need, if you're a math or a science seller, is that you might need to know how to insert equations or graphs, and we're not gonna talk about that in this video today, but I am gonna point out to you where it is so that you can find it. I promise and it's pretty self-explanatory, but let me go ahead and show you how to find those three basic tools in PowerPoint that are going to allow you to create any resource you want. Let's go Now.
Speaker 2:If you're listening on a podcast, I'm going to go ahead and tell you that the YouTube version is sharing my screen, and so I highly recommend clicking the link down in the description and going to that YouTube video, because it's going to be the best way for you to learn it. It's gonna be kind of hard to visualize what I'm explaining, but we're gonna move through this pretty quickly and I'm gonna try to explain it in a way that you're gonna be able to follow along, but, especially for the advanced section, I'm gonna be showing examples, and, while the points are still gonna ring true, you're gonna wanna see the examples, so make sure that you click on the YouTube version and watch that as well, so you can see that I have a slide pulled up here in PowerPoint and the very first thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to delete these text boxes because we don't need them. The other thing that I'm going to do is I'm going to go to design and then I'm going to click slide size and then page setup. Now I have two choices here and really the only option that I'm going to use is either eight and a half by 11 or 11 by 8.5. And I'm going to have to enter this in custom.
Speaker 2:If you're doing any type of printable resource, you want 8.5 by 11 or 11 by 8.5. And I know some people say use smaller, use whatever. I promise you standard 8.5 by 11 size works if you're going to end up turning this into a PDF, which is absolutely what you're going to want to do. So don't worry. I've been using eight and a half by 11 for years, or 11 by eight and a half, whatever. Either one works for a printable resource. Now you can also go smaller and keep the same ratio. So if you've heard somebody else tell you to use 10 and a half by seven and a half although that's not exactly the same ratio, but we can talk about that later it's okay. It's probably not gonna mess anything up, okay, but I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna do 11 by eight and a half, and then it's gonna ask you if you wanna scale the content up or scale it down. It doesn't matter what you pick. You can put scale up, scale down. There's no content on the page, so just pick one of them.
Speaker 2:Now, everything that you need in order to create a product is under this insert tab, like literally everything that you need in order to create a product, like if you want to put it on the page, it's under insert. So if you want to insert a text box, a picture, a clip art, shape, equation, any of those things, or even a graph, all of those things are under the insert tab. And we're going to start with a shape because we want our product to look super professional, and so we're going to put a shape in. That're going to start with a shape because we want our product to look super professional, and so we're going to put a shape in that's going to act as a page border. So I'm going to click shapes and then I'm going to click this little square or rectangle shape and then I'm going to drag it across the page and I'm going to make it just a little bit smaller than the page itself and then I'm going to center that on the page using the little guides that they give me, and then I'm going to go to this little fill icon and I'm going to say no fill. And then I'm going to go to the shape outline and I'm going to make sure it's outlined in black and personally I'm going to use a weight of two and a quarter point. Now I have a really nice simple page border. You can extend this page border out to the very edges of the page, but I like to have it a little bit on the inside. Just my personal preference, and you'll kind of see why here in a second.
Speaker 2:The next thing that you're going to need is you're going to need your copyright. So to do this we're going to put in a text box. So I'm going to click text box and then I'm going to click anywhere on the page and I want to insert a symbol, so insert. Then I'm going to click anywhere on the page and I want to insert a symbol, so insert symbol. And you can see frequently, use the copyright symbols right there for me. But you can just search for that Copyright, insert my copyright and then I'm just going to use my name. You can also use your business name, lauren Fulton 2025.
Speaker 2:Now, what I'm going to do now is I'm going to go to home and I'm going to format this text a little bit and I'm going to pick my branded font. And then I'm going to do now is I'm going to go to home and I'm going to format this text a little bit and I'm going to pick my branded font and then I'm going to do a background for this. So I'm going to do a white background, I'm going to fill it with a white background and I'm going to change the size, because we don't want an obnoxiously huge copyright. I'm going to change the size to 11 point font and then I'm going to drag it over. Drag it over. Now you see, when I drag it over on top of this little line, it creates a break in the border, and so now my copyright is over, nice and neat to the side. It creates a little break in the border because I filled it with a white background and it's going to look really nice when it's printed. It's not going to be obnoxious and it's not going to get in the way of the rest of my content. Now you can put your copyright anywhere you want to on the page, but you do want to put it on the page? Okay, make sure that you've put that on the page.
Speaker 2:The next thing that I want to do is I want to create a format. Now, this isn't going to be for everything, but anytime you're creating worksheets, task cards or anything that needs to be organized, you want to use a tool like a table. You wanted to use a tool like a table. Okay, and it might seem a little counterintuitive, but just trust me on this you're gonna need the table tool a lot and you're gonna love the table tool, okay, so let's say that I want to create something like a set of multiple choice, not task cards, necessarily, but a multiple choice worksheet. I can go to my table. I can click insert table. I'm gonna say that I want two problems across, but I want three answer choices for each problem. That means I need six across and I'm going to try to fit three down, so I'm going to have a spot for the problem, the answer choice. Problem, answer choice. Problem, answer choice.
Speaker 2:So that ends up being a six by six table, and you can always add more later. I'm going to extend it out all the way to the edge here. I'm going to extend it out all the way to the border and then I'm going to go all the way down. Now, at first you're going to be like, oh my gosh, this does not look right. There's no way that this is going to end up looking like a worksheet. But just trust me on this, it really does. So you're going to see, automatically, once you put that table in, it opens up the table design tab. Now, if you don't, if it doesn't automatically open up the table design tab, we're not going to freak out over that. We're just going to click table design and then we're going to say for shading that we want no fill. Again, we're going to go over to the pen color and we're gonna make sure it's black and we're gonna say we want two and a quarter point lines. And then we're gonna go to borders and we're gonna say all borders.
Speaker 2:Now, again, we're looking a little bit closer to a worksheet, but you're probably like this is nothing like what I want. Don't worry, we're gonna get there. The first thing that we wanna do is we want to shape up these tables just a little bit. So we want to make sure that we have a. So for every other one, I'm going to make the line go down just a little bit Um, that's not exactly what I wanted and then let's scooch this back up. I have a love-hate relationship with these tables. Like I love what they're capable of, but I really hate. Moving one little line at a time is extremely tedious.
Speaker 2:There we go, we're going to call that good for now, and now I'm going to show you what I can do here is I can select all of this, because I want this to be one problem Maybe it's going to be a word problem, something like that. I'm going to right click and I'm going to say merge cells. And I'm going to go and do the same thing to the next one Merge cells, merge cells. Now, you see, I'm skipping this. That's because the problem is going to go here and then the three answer choices. So this allows me to still have my three answer choices that I need while still keeping the table in check.
Speaker 2:Now, at some point, I'm going to zoom in super far and I'm going to go all the way over and I'm going to click on this table and I'm going to make sure that it lines up really nice and even with that page border. Now I can put problem number one, two, three, four, five and six, and you can see that I have a little bit of formatting issues here in terms of like, I need to make some of these a little more even and you can kind of play with that and work on it as you go. But I've got a really good framework here and then I'm going to go ahead and pull my copyright back up to the front. Now, at this point I'm noticing my copyright kind of looks a little odd there. So, not a problem, I'm just going to rotate it over. I'm just going to do like this.
Speaker 2:So now I have the three basic tools that I need in order to create a resource. I have a table, I know how to put text boxes in and I have a shape. You know I'd be wondering, well, what on earth would you do with this resource, lauren? Well, for this resource I could actually build something like. Let me show you here I have the makings to build something like this. This build the zombie where, as they answer the problems, I could put something like this up here where it's a little game at the top and down at the bottom are all of the questions and answer choices, so you can see also where I used this tic-tac-toe game. I used a table to build a tic-tac-toe game, and the really great thing about this is that it allows me to quickly and easily center things and make sure everything is aligned. And even if you don't want to use the text boxes or, excuse me, use the tables and have them showing you can still use a table as a great way to keep everything aligned and centered. Now, this is a framework for anything that you need in order to create a product that you will love and that students will love.
Speaker 2:But let's talk for a second about some advanced features. Okay, I'm going to share with you a couple of tips for creating resources with the end in mind, because ultimately, we want a buyer to fall in love with your product, and the first step to falling in love with your product is they have to see it, and when they see it, they have to find it visually appealing. Okay, so when we're designing products, we want to make sure that we're not designing boring, run-of-the-mill worksheets, things that aren't visually interesting or appealing. We really want to think about the end, which is that at some point hopefully very soon this product is going to end up on a cover page and you're going to use this product to place on your cover image. That's going to advertise your product on TPT, and the more visually interesting and appealing the product itself is, the easier it's going to make your job of making the cover visually interesting and appealing. So let's talk about some ways that you can make your product look visually interesting and appealing. Now, the first way that we can do this is very simple it's by adding clip art.
Speaker 2:I know a lot of people, even in secondary, they don't really think about adding clip art or putting clip art on something unless it's necessary. And I'm not saying just slap clip art on because it's going to make all of your problems better. That's not what I'm saying. But think about the product that you want to make and think about what would make it interesting for the student, what would catch a student's eye? Because if it would catch the student's eye, chances are it's going to catch the teacher's eye, because the teacher is looking for something that's going to capture their student's interest, whether they're 5 or 15. So capturing the student's interest is going to be really important.
Speaker 2:A great example of this is that I was doing an audit of a product for world history for a high school seller, and world history is, admittedly, extremely fascinating, but there's not a lot of clip art that's going to go along with that. Right, you're not going to be putting hearts or butterflies or frogs or anything like that on world history. However, when we searched the top resources in that niche, overall, the vast majority of them had maps and clip art on them Maps, graphs, charts, things like that. The reason is that it was visually appealing, and so the seller and I talked about different ways that she could add visual interest to her products, even if it wasn't a map or something like that, but it still be relevant to the resource itself. So if we're going to tell a story about a battle, why not have clip art of swords or knife armor or something that is a part of the history or a piece of the history? Why not take a page out of history and delve into something unique about that time period? That would allow you to lend visual interest but also keep your students engaged.
Speaker 2:Clipart is a fantastic way and simple way to bring visual interest and appeal to your product. Again, we're not just slapping things on there and hoping that it works, but when you're designing the product itself, think about how you can make your product more visually captivating and appealing to your buyer. Another way that we can do this that's really simple for you is simply by adding variety. Variety is not just a spice of life, it's also something that's gonna help you make more money on TPT. Having a lack of variety in your worksheets, or worksheets that all look the same, or pages that within your product, doesn't make it a bad product, but it does subconsciously signal to your buyer that it's a low effort resource. However, if I have just a slight variation in the way that some of my pages are laid out, small things like that can subconsciously make a large impact because there's more to look over and it signals to the buyer that there's more variety within the resource, which signals that it was a higher effort product.
Speaker 2:So let me give you a real world, practical example of this. One of the things that you'll notice when you're watching a movie or a TV show is you're going to notice that there's quite frequently a change of scenery right when we're watching a TV show or even a trailer for a movie, you're going to see that they're not going to have the trailer most of the time. Show the same scene from the same shot, from the same angle of the same person. You're going to see a variety of different scenes with different backgrounds, with different actors, with different moods maybe and it's the same thing with your resource that difference, that variety, kind of creates a little bit of intrigue, and so when you're designing the product, you want to keep that in mind. That variety is a subconscious signal of a high value product, and so finding small ways to add variety without doing much more work can be a huge win for your resource.
Speaker 2:Let me give you a really good example with a product line that I'm currently designing. So these are little game board templates and they're not necessarily anything special, although I do really like them. They are visually interesting and visually appealing. Now, I'm not going to say that I make the most interesting game board templates on the market. That is absolutely not what I'm trying to say, but I do want you to notice a couple of key things about each one of these pages.
Speaker 2:First, whenever I was designing them, I tried to make sure that I was choosing clip art that, of course, was all from the same author, so there's some consistency. But I also made sure that I wasn't just picking clip art that all had the same colors for the most part. So, for example, on this Feed the Animals game, I purposely chose the pig and the scarecrow, even though I thought some of the other pieces of clip art were more interesting for the game. I purposely picked these two because it broke up some of the monotony of the neutral colors that were in a lot of the clip art pieces. I also varied the layout quite a bit.
Speaker 2:Now, this did take a little bit more effort on my part, but having a variety in the layouts of the game board not only lends visual interest for the teacher to be like oh wow, these are three like totally different games, right which subconsciously signals that they're of higher value, but it also signals to the student who's playing the game that they don't feel like they're going to be playing the same game over and over and over again. Now, these are also very functional from that standpoint as well, because if I make all of the game boards look exactly the same, even though the rules might be different and the clip art might be different. If the layout's the same, the student might think that all the games are played the same way and attempt to play them all the same way and get a little confused. So this is a functional difference as well, because it signals to the student you're about to do something new, which not only increases engagement but it increases the likelihood that students are actually going to take the time to read the directions for this new game. Not coincidentally, when I put these on a cover like this, it looks more interesting and appealing because you can see at a glance that there's variety with each one of these layouts, that it's not all the same game, which makes it seem more interesting, more appealing, and so this type of design really helps keep the end in mind, and I knew this going into it. I knew if I put, if all of these boards look the same when I put them on the cover, buyers at a glance are going to think it's the same game with different clip art and it's gonna signal that it's lower value than seeing different layouts on that cover.
Speaker 2:Let me go back over here real quick and show you how to insert. You're gonna go insert and then picture from file and then you find the clip art pieces that you want and you insert them. Okay, so let's bring everything back together. First, know that if you're brand new to creating resources, this is a really simple endeavor. You really just know how to insert text, boxes, tables, shapes and clip art. The next thing to remember is that you wanna make sure that you have variety on your page and that you're utilizing things like clip art to lend visual interest to the page and intrigue. The more interesting your product looks, the more likely a buyer is going to actually want to look at it. So really take some time during that design process to think to yourself how could I make this more engaging, functional and interesting for the teacher and or student and, as a byproduct, make it more appealing on my cover, thus making it more sellable?
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for being here. You guys, if you enjoyed this podcast, make sure and go check out the YouTube video, and if you're not subscribed to me on YouTube, I would love if you became a subscriber. I'm working really hard to grow my YouTube channel in 2025, and I'm slowly trying to put more on-screen tutorials and things like that, which I know you can't see via podcast. So don't worry, podcast is not going away, but I don't want you to miss some of those onscreen tutorials that are on YouTube. Y'all are the absolute best and I know so many of you listen faithfully and I cannot thank you enough for that. I'm going to see you right back here next week.