The Rebranded Teacher
The Rebranded Teacher
Profitable TPT Product Ideas You Haven't Thought Of
Ever felt stuck between creating truly unique TPT resources and making products that actually get found in searches? You're not alone. This episode tackles exactly that tension with seven genius product ideas you've probably never considered—but will immediately want to create.
From weekly warm-ups where students gradually reveal mystery pictures as they solve problems, to self-differentiating maze activities that allow students to choose their own difficulty path, these ideas strike that perfect balance. They target high-traffic keywords like "worksheets," "exit tickets," and "centers" while offering something buyers can only get from your store.
What makes these resources special is their ability to engage students in unexpected ways. Imagine mini escape room exit tickets that provide daily puzzle challenges, collaborative story chains where students build narratives together throughout the week, or mystery picture activities where solving problems reveals hidden images. Each concept maintains educational rigor while adding elements of surprise, creativity, and student choice.
The most powerful insight? Creating products that balance uniqueness with searchability isn't just about standing out—it's about building a sustainable TPT business where customers return specifically to your store. Because as Lauren puts it, "If they can only get it from you, where else are they going to go?" Ready to implement these ideas in your own TPT store? Listen now and check out the accompanying YouTube video for visual examples!
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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. Fair warning by the end of this episode, you're probably going to think to yourself oh my gosh, I want to make them all, and, quite frankly, that's the goal here. I've come up with a list of TPT products that you've probably never thought of, and if you have thought of them, good on you, because, honestly, I think these are pretty genius. And here's the thing about these products they're not groundbreaking, they're not earth shattering, but they are unique. I think these are pretty genius, and here's the thing about these products they're not groundbreaking, they're not earth shattering, but they are unique. And I think one of the things that a lot of TPT sellers struggle with is how do I create a unique product that still has a place in the market? If I create a product that's too unique, then who's gonna know to look for it, and how are they even going to know how to use the product? It's going to seem so unfamiliar to them that they may not even want it anymore. On the flip side of that, if I create a product that's not unique at all, then why do buyers have a reason to come back and shop exclusively from my store? So we want to create a balance here. We want resources that will cause buyers to want to come back and continue to purchase from our store, but we also want to create resources that buyers can actually find on TPT and can find by searching through high traffic keywords that buyers would ordinarily type into the search engine. And that's where this list of resources and ideas comes into play. And let me tell you guys, they're good Like. I honestly feel like hopping off and making a few of these myself, but I'm not going to. I'm not going to. I'm going to give these to you guys.
Speaker 1:So I said earlier that the goal here is to create resources that target high traffic keywords, or keywords that buyers would ordinarily type into the search engine, like worksheets, task cards, maze activities, right, things like that that buyers would ordinarily type in, but with a twist. So here we go. Number one is creating a weekly set of warmups and bell ringers. This you would sell as a package, so you wouldn't just sell one week at a time. You might sell a month at a time or maybe even a whole year at a time, but you would sell several of them together and you could have warmups by topic, you could have warmups by semester, like spiral review, whatever you want to do.
Speaker 1:But the goal here would be to have everything all on one page. You'd have five days, one question or one problem for each day, and as students progress through the problems, they are creating an image down at the bottom. So think like mystery picture, you know, like puzzle picture art, where as they answer a problem, a portion of the picture is showing up. But in this case, rather than it showing up digitally and automatically, the students are given like a little piece of the picture that they can draw in. So if I were going to do this, I would create a circular image at the bottom of the page and in fact let me just show you a little bit about what this might look like. And so, as they're doing this every day, they get an opportunity to guess what they think the end result is going to be, what the image is going to be at the end of the week. This keeps them engaged throughout the week because even if they feel like they know what it is on day three or day four, they still want to see on day five that yes, I was correct, and get that internal satisfaction. Now here's the key. Here I can target keywords like bellwork, warmup, spiral review, worksheet, coloring activity, even target so many high traffic keywords that accurately describe my resource while still creating a unique product. Let's go through some more examples, and we're going to try to go through these a little bit quicker.
Speaker 1:My next idea would be to create a maze activity, but instead of a regular maze activity, where the students have a predefined path that they're going to go through as they solve problems correctly or answer questions correctly. In this case, they have a starting point and they have an ending point and they get to create their own path from start to end based on point value. So each individual section of the maze would be given a number in, like the upper left-hand section. It would say like this problem is worth 15 points or this question is worth 15 points, this one's worth 10, this one's worth five, however much you wanna give them, assign a point value based on the rigor of the question. So a student who struggles a little bit and is still trying to gain basic understanding of basic concepts, they can choose a path from the beginning to the end that's going to have them solving more problems but that are at an easier level. So the teacher can say you have to have a total of 50 points, or the worksheet can say you have to have a total of 50 points from start to end, but they get to choose their own path to get from the beginning to the end, whereas a student who maybe needs a little bit of a challenge, they could create a path from beginning to the end that has fewer problems but are more challenging. The end that has fewer problems but are more challenging. So students get to create their own adventure. You still get to target popular keywords like maze, activity, worksheet, things like that, while having a unique resource that is already differentiated, without having to have multiple versions, because students can self-differentiate, which makes it really cool. So then I can also target keywords like differentiated.
Speaker 1:Number three, I can create some escape room exit tickets. Now, this would involve creating a generic exit ticket, but each exit ticket has its own puzzle or secret code, something that the mystery that they have to solve and it's like a little mini mystery, like a little mini escape, a little mini puzzle. So it presents as an escape room. It still has that mystery, it still has that puzzle, it still has that intrigue, but on a much smaller bite-sized scale. These are gonna be easier for you to churn out and they're gonna be great accompaniments if you have escape rooms inside of your store and teachers can use these on the daily as part of their daily exit ticket routine. So you can still target popular keywords like exit tickets, spiral review or even create them as warmups if you want to, while still targeting keywords like escape room, mystery or even a little bit of a surprise puzzle. You get the idea. So many different possibilities there. Now, this one is a little bit more specific, to say ELAR, but I still love it.
Speaker 1:This idea is a story chain writing prompt. So each day students write one sentence based on a writing prompt so character setting, problem solution and then they pass it to a partner. So every day of the week they write one sentence or a couple of sentences and then they pass it to their next partner and by the end of the week they write one sentence or a couple of sentences and then they pass it to their next partner and by the end of the week they have a collaborative story. So this allows you to target keywords like writing prompt, daily warmup, creative writing, partner work, collaborative writing or collaborative story all kinds of popular keywords while still creating something that is unique and different but meets the need that the buyer is searching for when they're searching for those keywords on TPT.
Speaker 1:Similar to the first idea, and this one is probably gonna be a little bit easier to implement, do you guys remember when we were young and you would have those pictures that were just made up of a bunch of random shapes, and it wasn't until you started to color things in that you would start to see like, oh, there's a frog mixed into all of these random things. So you could create a mystery picture that follows the same thing. So on day one, after they've answered the question or solved a problem, then what they can do is you can tell them okay, now color everything that has the number 11 or everything that has the number two, whatever, like a random number. Each individual tiny shape within this collage of shapes has a number and as they're told each day which numbers to color in, the picture starts to reveal itself and they start to see that amongst these random shapes, when you color certain things in, it starts to create a bunny or a frog or some sort of hidden image or maybe even hidden word, which is super fun too.
Speaker 1:So if you're a math teacher, I'm thinking a really easy way to do this would be to create a hidden word and to create just a grid. So if you're a math teacher or you're trying to do this super easy without having a bunch of complicated shapes, you could honestly just do this with a grid, and so every single portion is a square and there are numbers in the different squares and they color in. Some of the numbers say like there are seven different sixes that they have to color in on day three, and as they're coloring in all the number sixes, it's revealing a portion of the picture and things are slowly starting to take shape, much like pixel art, but students are coloring in. It's on paper, it's no prep and it's printable. Again, for this I can target words like worksheet, because it doesn't even have to be a daily thing. It could just be as they solve a problem or as they answer a question, as they progress through the worksheet during that class period, the picture is becoming more and more clear and they're able to kind of fill those things in. It doesn't have to be a pixel art. I can target all of those keywords while still creating a unique resource.
Speaker 1:Next, we have an idea for, like mystery grid centers. So these are centers where each completed worksheet or activity within the center reveals a piece of a classroom display or bulletin board. So think a puzzle, a mural or a themed poster. So we've all seen collaborative posters that are super popular on TPT or team building activities. And this could be the same way where, as students complete each center, they earn a piece of a poster or earn a piece of a classroom display. They can all put together at the end. Now, how you would choose to put this together would be up to you, but I love the idea of students earning different pieces of the poster as they work their way through the centers and then they can create something together as a class. Or you could even have it to where they earn a piece of their poster themselves and they're able to put it together inside of their journal or inside of their notebook, or for each person to create their own unique poster that could be hung outside in the hallway for display. For this we get to target keywords like centers, collaborative activities, worksheets, even bulletin boards or puzzles there are all kinds of different keywords that you can use to target this again, while still creating a unique resource.
Speaker 1:Finally, one of the resources that I love and this is a digital idea is creating digital spinner review slides. So this is really great as we're coming up on the end of the year to start thinking about different ways that you can incorporate creative ways for students to review. So I would create a series of slides that have problems or questions on there for students to answer and then have a home slide and on that home slide. That home slide would have a collection of spinners that students would spin and each team would have a turn getting up to go and spin the spinners. So the first spinner might have the point value for the problem that they're about to work. So they spin it and maybe they get five points, maybe they get 50 points, just depending on whatever the spinner lands on.
Speaker 1:The next spinner might have an added challenge. So some sort of challenge like must write your answer or must work the problem or whatever, with your non-dominant hand, Something that would create a little bit of interest, a little bit of intrigue and a little bit of student engagement and some fun along the way. And then, finally, you could even have a spinner for topics. So if you wanted to have your questions or your problems, particularly for spiral review, split up into topics where each section of slides has a different topic, then, based on the topic that is spun, that determines one of the questions or what topic that next question is going to be pulled from.
Speaker 1:Hopefully, this has given you some really great ideas for resources that you can create that are going to help you stand out in a saturated market while still targeting popular keywords on Teachers, pay Teachers, and allow you to bring repeat customers into your store Because, let's face it, if they can only get it from you, where else are they going to go? They're going to come to you and that's ultimately what we want. Thanks so much for being here this week. On the podcast, you guys, if you want to go watch the YouTube video, I showed a little screen share for that very first resource, so you can kind of get an idea, maybe, of what I was talking about If you were having a hard time kind of picturing some of these. You can also visit that YouTube video, ask a question, leave a comment so I can engage with you and maybe answer some of your questions a little bit better. Thanks so much for being here, you guys. I'm gonna see you right back here next week.