The Rebranded Teacher
The Rebranded Teacher
Evergreen vs Seasonal TPT Products Which Makes More Money?!
Are you struggling to decide whether to create evergreen resources that sell year-round or seasonal resources that capitalize on specific times of the year? This strategic decision can make or break your Teachers Pay Teachers business, especially in the early stages.
Evergreen resources—those without holiday-specific elements that teachers can use throughout the school year—build stability and consistent income. They allow you to put your energy into creating one high-quality product that can potentially sell for 10-12 months each year. This approach streamlines your marketing efforts and builds a reliable foundation for your business. But is it always the best strategy?
Seasonal resources offer distinct advantages that many new sellers overlook. With lower competition and more specific keywords, seasonal products often rank more easily in search results. For example, while ranking for "multiplying three-digit numbers task cards" might be challenging, ranking for "multiplying three-digit numbers Christmas activity" could be much more achievable. What's more, seasonal resources provide rapid feedback on your product creation skills—if your Christmas resource doesn't sell during December, you know immediately that adjustments are needed rather than wondering if you just need to wait longer.
The data shows an interesting pattern: new sellers typically find faster success with seasonal resources, while established sellers build more long-term profitability with evergreen products. The ideal approach depends on your specific situation. If you're just starting and need to see sales quickly while developing your skills, begin with seasonal resources for each major holiday or season. If you create resources slowly and are playing the long game, focus on building a strong lineup of evergreen products. Many successful sellers eventually maintain a strategic balance of both. What's your experience been with seasonal versus evergreen resources? Share your insights and join us at the upcoming Teacher Seller Summit to learn even more strategies for growing your TPT business!
Get your ticket to the Teacher Seller’s Summit
https://laurenfulton.krtra.com/t/oTIxSLPqfhYf
Check Out My YouTube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/c/laurenfulton
My Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/laurentschappler/
My Other YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/@LaurenATsch
Free Rebranded Teacher Facebook Group
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:What's the more profitable move Creating evergreen resources that buyers can purchase year round, or riding seasonal trends and capitalizing on short term, but often powerful, sales spikes? In this video, we're going to be talking about the pros and cons of each, because they're both great in their own right, and how to know which product creation strategy is right for you and your business. Let's get started. When it comes to resources that you can create on TPT, there are generally two categories that we fit these in seasonal and evergreen resources. An evergreen resource is a resource that a teacher could purchase any time of the year and enjoy it without having to overlook, say, a Santa hat or a jack-o'-lantern or something like that in the corner of the page. This is a product that a teacher could make use of at any point in the year and would be searching for at any point in the year. Now, what's great about Evergreen products straight out of the gate is that because buyers are looking for them at all points of the year, that means that I could sell this resource at any time, so I can have one product that a teacher might want to purchase 10 out of the 12 months of the year, or maybe 12 out of the 12 months of the year, which is awesome, and you might say, well, yeah, so of course I would want to do that. But then we have seasonal resources and the thing about seasonal resources is, in general, your competition is going to be a little bit lower. We'll talk about why here in just a minute but you're creating something a little bit more buyer specific and typically, especially for newer sellers, you're going to see a little bit of a sales spike. So, where you might have a teacher who already has all of their evergreen resources or is really trying to stick to a district provided curriculum throughout the course of the year, you'll find that oftentimes teachers are more likely to indulge in seasonal resources when it comes to holidays, special occasions or times when they just really need that extra push, like testing season, looking for review resources, test prep resources, things like that. So because there's a little bit more of a push or a little bit more of a demand in a short period of time and the competition is a little bit lower, seasonal resources can be a really great market to tap into, because demand for your product is typically higher than it would be for an evergreen resource when matched with equal competition. So seasonal resources sound really great too, because more demand sounds phenomenal.
Speaker 2:We always want more eyes on our product and more sales on our products, but which one is better? So when I first started off, I would have told you for the first several years of selling on TPT that evergreen was 1000% the way to go. And the reason I would have told you for the first several years of selling on TPT that evergreen was 1000% the way to go and the reason I would have told you that would have sounded very convincing and honestly, it is convincing. It's a really good strategy, and that is that I love the idea of putting effort and energy into one product that can be sold at least 10 months out of the year, so at any given point in time buyers can come across my product. I can market that same product year round. Once it starts to get traction, it really takes off and it builds stability in your business, which is phenomenal, because, while I love a good sales spike, what I really value is consistency across my income. I really want to be able to count on having consistent income. It might be really great to have a $2,000 a month on TPT, but if the next month is followed by a $200 a month, that kind of stings. So when you're creating a library of evergreen content and products to put inside of your store, you're really helping to contribute to the overall stability of your business. Because if I can focus on creating some really powerful evergreen resources that are going to sell consistently for me all year long, that are going to bring buyers into my store all year long, that are going to bring me followers to my store all year long, that's going to help build stability in my business, stability in my income and help create a long-term hate to keep reusing the word stable, but stable foundation for my business, which is really really important.
Speaker 2:And on the flip side of that, with seasonal resources, you're really only getting a very short period of time that the buyer is going to be searching for that product, often a month or less. So in that case I would have to create 12 resources. Or, if I'm just looking at 10 months out of the year, I have to create 10 products, 10 seasonal products for every one evergreen product, in order to have that same kind of traffic coming into my store, at least in theory. And so when I'm talking about big bang for my time buck, initially my thought was always go evergreen, because why create 10 resources if you could just create one right?
Speaker 2:So I was a really big proponent of evergreen resources and making sure that those were stocked in the store first, because not only did it build that stability for my income and for my business, but it also really streamlined my marketing. Because rather than having to start from scratch and be like, okay, now I'm marketing Easter products, now I'm marketing this kind of product, I could market those evergreen resources, reuse that content year round. If I had an email that went out in October that did really well, I can tweak it a little bit and send it out again in April and not have to reinvent the wheel. And that was kind of my thinking. Was it made marketing easier? I had a product that buyers could find year round, built stability in my business. All of these great things that made an evergreen product just really make sense for where I was going to invest the vast majority of my time and that's what I told new sellers to invest most of their time in.
Speaker 2:But let's talk about today with seasonal resources and a few things that I've learned since then that have maybe changed my mind a little bit. So seasonal resources. While, yes, they may only sell for a month or six weeks out of the year, what's really great about them is number one when you're a brand new seller, having something take off, even if it's just temporarily, for that month, it gives you so much hope, it gives you so much fuel and it honestly gives you a lot of data feedback. Okay, it can give you a lot of feedback on what you're doing right or maybe what you're doing wrong. Additionally, one of the things that I see is it seems to be for the vast majority of sellers, it's a lot easier to rank for those seasonal resources than it is for the evergreen, because the competition is so much lower. It gives me additional keywords to rank for. So where before I might be trying to rank for multiplying three digit numbers task cards? I might not ever be able to rank for that, but multiply three digit number Christmas activity I can rank for that.
Speaker 2:It gives me an additional opportunity to be able to be found by buyers for something that they're actually searching for, even if it is a short period of time. So is it as great long term for me? Maybe not, but if I'm starting my store and I'm brand new and I'm just trying to get any amount of traction, just trying to get people in. If I'm not trying to play a long game, if I'm starting my store and I'm brand new and I'm just trying to get any amount of traction, just trying to get people in, if I'm not trying to play a long game, if I'm trying to play a short game, I'm going seasonal. To be honest with you, seasonal and market gaps but market gaps we'll talk about on another video. I'm probably going seasonal.
Speaker 2:Here's another reason I really like seasonal resources for new sellers it gives you a lot of feedback early on. So if I'm still trying to learn the basics of creating a really high quality cover, really high quality preview thumbnails and search engine optimization, being able to create a December resource in November and get that feedback straight away, where I'm not having to wait months and months and months to gather enough data, to get enough views to be able to determine whether or not my previews are effective, my thumbnails are effective, my covers are effective, all of that, if I can get that data in a short period of time even if January it's irrelevant until next December, it still helps me when I'm creating that next product in the product line or even that evergreen resource, and so what I love about a seasonal item is it's a really great way to practice search engine optimization. I can choose keywords, change them on the fly, and I know it's December, everybody's searching for Christmas resources, for everyone's searching for Hanukkah activities. These are the kind of things that I'm going to be trying to tweak and make changes to along the way, like during the month of December, so that I can get really quick feedback on whether or not the things that I'm learning in terms of search engine optimization creating effective previews, product descriptions, all of those things to see whether or not it's effective so I can make tweaks and changes on the fly. I can learn a whole lot quicker because chances are I'm going to be getting more views and more data, and if I'm not getting more views and more data, then I know that time is not the answer. Time is not the answer because right now is when people are looking, so I don't have to wait three, four, five, six months to a year to realize I'm doing something wrong. If I create a Christmas resource and nobody buys it during Christmas season, then I know that I've messed up somehow right, and so I'm able to know that that is on me and I need to be able to figure that out, and I can figure that out before New Year's or maybe even Valentine's Day, and I can try again with the next holiday. So that's one of the reasons why I love seasonal resources. They create phenomenal learning opportunity for new sellers to really hone and refine the new skills that they're learning, and it creates more opportunity for them to get traffic and views on those products because of lower competition, because I'm being more specific with my keywords. Okay, so so far we have evergreen resources are great because they build stability in your business. You create one resource that's going to be out there for 10 months, versus 10 resources that are going to be out there for 10 months, and so I'm having to do less work to hopefully get about the same results. And let's talk about that. Let's talk about results because really, at the end of the day, we're all here to make money across the board from new sellers.
Speaker 2:What I have heard is that seasonal resources have done more for their business in the beginning than evergreen resources, but evergreen resources have done more for their business long-term. So here's what I'm saying is that if you are in the very early stages of your business, you're really struggling to find holes in the market and you're like look, lauren, here's the thing. I just need to make money. Do you know what I mean? I just need to make money and I don't care what I make it on, I don't care if it's evergreen product, I don't care if it's a paper basketball, I don't care if it's selling tinfoil hats door to door.
Speaker 2:Then I'm going to tell you, start with seasonal resources. Create two to three of them every single season, do that for every month of the year, and I'm gonna tell you to really watch your stats, to really hone your search engine optimization skills, to really dial in those covers and those previews and those product descriptions. And then I'm gonna tell you to take those skills and start applying everything that you've learned to evergreen products. Okay, the seasonal resources are gonna give you opportunity to learn a lot very quickly. It's also going to help you figure out, maybe, what buyers are more attracted to. You'll start to see trends. If you're creating more than one seasonal resource per season, you'll start to see what they're more attracted to. It's going to help you get sales in a whole lot faster than creating evergreen resources on the whole not necessarily all the time, but for most people.
Speaker 2:If you're just creating traditional types of resources, you haven't found your market gap yet. You're just trying to make some money. Okay, then I'm gonna tell you to start with seasonal resources. Put some of those in your store and see what happens and then come alongside those seasonal resources with some really high quality evergreen resources that are complimentary to those seasonal items. If you're the I got time TPT is a hobby that I would like to one day build into a business Then I'm going to tell you to start with evergreen resources.
Speaker 2:I'm going to tell you to really think long-term, strategically, about how you can create products that teachers are going to incorporate into their everyday life, so it becomes a no-brainer for them to not only purchase that one resource from you but to purchase a year-long bundle of those resources from you. So I'm going to tell you to focus on evergreen products. So the answer isn't the same for everyone. I love a good evergreen resource and I think that they're the backbone of our store. Because if you really think about which is more profitable, if I can create an evergreen resource that even makes $200 a month in 10 months out of the year. That's a $2,000 a year product and having that one resource like a Valentine's Day resource or Christmas resource or Halloween resource or something like that one product make $2,000 in one month. That's usually not going to happen. So it's easier to create one really high quality product and to really optimize it to find that gap in the market to really meet a specific need for your teacher audience. It takes less time to find that gap in the market to really meet a specific need for your teacher audience. It takes less time to create that one product and then slowly over time get it to the point where it's making $200 a month or maybe even 50 bucks a month.
Speaker 2:If you think about it, if you have a hundred resources in your store, they're all averaging 50 bucks a month. What is that $5,000 a month right there? So if you really focus on creating high quality, evergreen resources and you put a lot of time, effort and attention into each one of those resources, you're more likely to get a better bang for your time buck with those evergreen products versus if I create 100 seasonal resources and they're each split up among the 10 months of the year in order for them to make $5,000 a month. Every month, the 10 resources each have to earn $500, right. So it's a little harder to get 10 resources that are earning $500 a month than it is to get 100 resources that are earning 50 bucks a month, because 50 not that bad right.
Speaker 2:So if you're just starting out and you just wanna start selling something, you wanna start learning as quickly as possible and you can create and churn out resources really fast, I'm gonna tell you go seasonal. If it takes you a really long time to create a product and you're only able to make one to two products a month, I'm gonna tell you go evergreen, because long-term you're gonna get the greatest return on your investment. But again, if you have the time and an even better strategy let's say you can create five products a month would be to create two seasonal products and three evergreen products and just keep a really nice ratio going and fill your store with both. Let me know down in the comments what does better for you Seasonal resources, evergreen resources? What do you tend to sell more of and how long have you been selling on TPT? I'm curious to see if there's a correlation between newer sellers finding more success with seasonal resources versus more established sellers finding more success long term with their evergreen products. So drop down in the comments and let us know.
Speaker 2:I also have to tell you if you really want to learn, you really want to catapult your business to the next level, then you need to get your free ticket to Teacher Seller Summit. If you haven't got it yet, what are you waiting for? Go visit the link down inside of the description. Or, if you're listening on podcast, then grab your link inside the show notes. You really want to make sure that you have your ticket there because I'm going to tell you, even if you just come for free, that means you pay $0. You're going to get access to 19 mini masterclass sessions where we have all kinds of presenters, all kinds of experts, giving you five to 10 minute tidbits mini masterclasses on how to grow your business in a way that's super powerful. For example, my mini masterclass is on search engine optimization. It's three really simple but powerful strategies for helping you search engine optimize your resources super quickly. You do not wanna miss that, and it's free. It's free.
Speaker 2:Go grab your ticket right now, before you forget, because we're in the month of May and Teacher Seller Summit is next month, so let's not wait on that.
Speaker 2:Go ahead and get signed up for that. I cannot wait to see you there. Myself and my business partner at Brooklyn, we that Go ahead and get signed up for that. I cannot wait to see you there. Myself and my business partner at Brookline. We have spent so much time. We literally talk for hours about how are we going to make it better this year. We've already come up with ways to make the meet and greets more incredible, to make them more personable, to help you get to know and to meet and to make real connections with other TPT sellers who are going to push you forward in your business. Because, honestly, we all need a friend when we're doing this and we need somebody who kind of understands what we're doing. They've been there, they've done that and they can give you some advice and they can try all things right alongside you. So make sure you grab your free ticket. I'm going to see you there and I'm going to see you right back here next week.