The Rebranded Teacher
The Rebranded Teacher
What Should I Make for My First TPT Product?!
Feeling pressure to launch a groundbreaking TPT resource right out of the gate? Let’s flip that script. We walk through a practical path that favors simplicity, clarity, and momentum so you can master the listing process, reduce stress, and build a store that grows with you.
We start with a counterintuitive truth: your first product’s job isn’t to make money; it’s to teach you the workflow. From file prep to keyworded titles, from scannable covers to persuasive previews, we break down each step and show why familiar formats like task cards, color by number, and card sorts are the smartest training ground. You’ll learn how to analyze top sellers, borrow proven visual cues, and create reusable templates in Canva or PowerPoint that cut production time and sharpen your brand.
We also unpack the hidden cost of launching something wildly original too soon. If a teacher can’t understand your product in three seconds of search-grid scanning, they won’t click. That’s not a creativity problem—it’s a communication problem. We explain how to avoid it, when to take creative risks, and how to phase your growth: start simple, lock your systems, then add unique twists with clear benefit statements. Along the way, we lean into a sustainable mindset—less pressure, more practice—and share why we’re shifting tutorials to YouTube where you can see step-by-step screens and follow along at your own pace.
If you want a playbook that turns overwhelm into action and helps you ship your next product with confidence, this is your map. Subscribe, share this episode with a fellow teacher-author, and leave a review with the one simple product you’ll publish next—what’s your pick?
Watch This Episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/mo44fdtFZII
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: 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. If I were starting over on TPT today, or if I were trying to get back in the swing of things, or if I was feeling really overwhelmed by things that I felt like I was doing wrong, then I would definitely not start off with making my best product idea. I wouldn't start with creating something super original, and I certainly wouldn't start with creating a large, complicated resource, even if that resource was something that I've been dreaming of creating for years. I'm gonna explain why and where you should start if you're creating your first resources on TPT, or if you're trying to get strategic about your TPT store and you're starting to feel really overwhelmed with all of the knowledge and information that's out there. If you're new here, hi, I'm Lauren Fulton. I've been selling on Teachers Pay Teachers for almost 10 years, which is crazy to say. I'm consistently in the top 1% of TPT sellers. I share some of my best TPT tips to help you build the TPT business of your dreams. So let's talk about expectations on TPT. When you're creating your first resources for your store on TPT, the goal of your first product is not to produce income. And I know that sounds so backwards, especially if you're a perfectionist and you want to get everything right the first time. Trust me, I get it. You don't want to waste your time creating a resource that's not gonna sell. But the goal is not necessarily to hit it out of the ballpark with that first product. The goal is to learn the process for creating and listing a product on TPT. And it can be really overwhelming to learn how to do that if you're so focused on getting it right the first time. So I'm gonna talk to you about why your first resource should be easy. Your first product that you list on TPT teaches you a lot of things. It teaches you how to upload a resource, how to write a product description, how to create a cover, how to create a preview, how to price and publish your product. It's your practice run, not your magnum opus. We're not trying to create the resource that is going to take you from a side hobby to a six-figure business. We're really just trying to learn what we're doing. And we take a lot of pressure and stress off of ourselves. And we make that process so much simpler when we start with a really easy and straightforward resource. A lot of brand new sellers really try to come out of the gate swinging. They want to be wildly original or they have a wildly original idea that's super cool and unique, something no one's ever seen before. And in order to create that resource, they have to design and create everything from scratch. They have to make the whole template from scratch. And then what happens is they get that product, it's incredible, but then it comes time to actually list that resource. And this is where I often see the disconnect. First, they go to list that product, and because it's so unique, it's so unlike anything else they've seen on TPT, making the cover and the preview for that product becomes considerably more complicated. And here's why. When your product is unlike anything you've ever seen before, it's really hard to convey that. And so learning how to communicate the unique aspects of that resource in a way that seems accessible and digestible to a teacher who's never seen it before in a preview or in the cover or in your product description kind of becomes a lot more complicated. Now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, and it's certainly a hurdle that you can overcome later on. But when you're first learning how to do all of these steps, it's a lot easier to learn how to create an appealing cover and a comprehensive preview and a well-written product description when you have something to compare it to that's already on the market. So, for example, if I create something really easy for my first product, like a set of task cards, I know what a cover for a set of task cards should look like. All I have to do is just search for task cards on TPT. And I can see what's selling, what's doing well, and I can see what buyers are attracted to and what makes that product look really appealing in a cover. But if I try to create something that's really outside of the box, like for example, when I was newer on TPT, I created this really cool product called a pentacle hunt. This was back when Pokemon Go was like super popular, but also teachers use scavenger hunts and things like that in the classroom. Nobody, though, knows what a pentagroll is. In fact, I don't even know what a pentacle is. I just found some free clip art online and they were called pentacles, and I was like, cool, I'll use these. And so I created this product where the each pentacle was worth a certain number of points and it corresponded, and the students had to like capture these pentagirls and all this kind of stuff. There was a whole story that went along with it. It was actually a really cool product and super unique. The problem was teachers didn't get it. They didn't get it. The teachers who did get it and they did purchase it, they were like, when can you create some more of these? And that was great, but there were so few of them actually purchasing it that it wasn't worth creating more of them because I didn't really understand how to communicate to them what the product was, how cool it was, and to explain it to them in a way that seemed very easy and accessible for them, that wasn't going to be a massive headache. They needed to be able to understand the product before they could purchase it and they couldn't understand it based on my preview or my cover. And in fact, from TPT search, looking at the cover, you really didn't understand what the product was, which meant that buyers were less likely to actually click on through because when teachers come to TPT, they're looking for convenience. They're not looking for something to be more complicated. And so if they don't understand what the product is or how it's going to make their lives better, then they're not going to purchase it. So this is where starting off when you're learning all of these new skills with something really, really simple and straightforward: task cards, color by number activities, card sorts, things that a buyer would be familiar with and already understand so that you don't have to master the art of communication with your cover and your preview right away. All you have to do is make the cover and the preview look appealing and learn to utilize basic skills in Canva or PowerPoint or whatever tool you're using to create that cover and preview. So here's what I want to challenge you to do. If you're new to TPT, then I want you to take some of the pressure off of yourself to be original, to be super creative. And I want you to give yourself permission to just learn. This is your time to learn how to search engine optimize your resource, how to write a product description, how to create some of those templates for covers and previews that you can utilize later on and tweak for some of those more complicated products. This is going to make the process so much simpler for you. You're gonna think, instead of thinking like, oh my gosh, how am I ever gonna do this or am I doing this right? You're gonna think, I can do this. This isn't as scary as I thought. It's going to set you up for success long term. Now, coming back to this, this doesn't mean that your product is never going to sell or that it's not going to make money or anything like that. This is just a really simple mindset shift to go from I have to create something that's perfect straight out the gate that is going to, you know, start paying my mortgage, to I'm going to create something that's going to allow me to learn the tools and the skills that I need to learn in order to create the products that I need to create later on that will start paying my mortgage. This is you giving yourself the same grace that you give to your students. In the same way that an art teacher is going to give a really, really simple project to her students when she's introducing a new medium like pastels for the first time. She's not going to expect them to immediately utilize this new medium to create Thomas Kincaid level work, right? She is going to give them something super, super simple so that they can learn this new medium, they can work with it, and they can gain the skills that are necessary in order to create an incredible work of art later on. And that's exactly what you are going to be doing with yourself. You're giving yourself permission to master and learn the basics so that you can apply those basics later on in a way that's much more stress-free. And that's the key here. None of us are here to add more pressure or to add more stress to our lives. What we want to do is we want to build your TPT store in a way that's sustainable. And one of the easiest ways to do that is to start with creating a really simple product. Now, here's what I'm gonna say: do not create 20 of these really easy products. Okay. So we're not gonna create 20 sets of task cards, 20 color by numbers. We're not gonna create, unless you're in a niche that is not saturated and doesn't have color by numbers and doesn't have task cards, which is very, very few niches, we're not gonna do that. We're gonna create a few. We're gonna master those skills and then we're gonna push ourselves a little bit and we're gonna start to create those unique and amazing resources that are gonna help you stand out on TPT, but we're gonna have a lot less pressure this go around. Thanks so much for being here, you guys, and for tuning into the podcast every single week. I want to go ahead and tell you, I'm gonna go put this plug in right now. If you are a habitual podcast listener, in 2026, my goal is to move away from podcasts. And I know, I know you're probably gonna be really bummed about that if you've been around here for years. I'm gonna move away more from podcasts and more into just creating YouTube videos. It's gonna allow me to create more content that walks teacher sellers through a process of actually doing something step by step where they can see my screen, they can see what I'm doing, and they can actually learn a little bit more. And it'd be a little bit more beneficial and helpful to teacher authors like yourself. The other reason I'm going to be doing this is I would really like to drastically cut down the number of hours that I'm recording podcasts, to be honest with you. And one of the ways that I can do that is by creating YouTube videos and not releasing them every single week. And I know that I can create a podcast and not release it every week. I understand that. But if I'm creating content that heavily relies on the seller being able to view that content or to see what I'm doing, like tutorials and things like that, then I won't be able to release those on the podcast. And so what I'm saying is in 2026, I'm looking for ways to free up my time. And that's probably where you're at too. We just added a third little one to our family. And while that has definitely been an incredible blessing and it's been so much fun, it's also been a little bit of a wake-up call to me that I have too much on my plate. So in 2026, I'm taking a few things off of my plate. That's the plan, is to create a little bit more of a sustainable approach to my marketing. So my goal is by the end of 2026 to be in a position where I'm releasing one to two YouTube videos a week and not releasing any podcast content. That's my goal. Now we'll see if I can get myself to stick with it because I do love creating content for you guys, but I really want to make sure that if I'm going to cut down on the amount of content that I'm making, that I'm making content that is going to be most helpful to you guys. And sometimes talking about SEO, talking about product creation, talking about effective covers and previews and things like that, you just have to see what I'm talking about. And so I want to make sure that you guys can see that. So, all of that to say, if you are not following me on YouTube, if you're not watching my YouTube videos, highly recommend. Go subscribe. Go start binging the content on there. Next week, I'm going to be showing three resources that you can create in Canva, utilizing some Canva templates, making them your own, and getting them ready to sell so that you can create products really quickly and easily in Canva, which is a video that has been very highly requested, both from people who are not in RTA and people who are in RTA. So I'm really excited to create more videos, create more content like that. So go make sure you're subscribed to the YouTube channel and maybe make a little habit, you know, as you're cooking dinner, as you're putting your makeup on in the morning, or as you're working on a hobby or a project, to have that video going so that you can watch it while you're multitasking. You'll find the link to my YouTube channel in the show notes. So make sure and go check it out. Thanks so much for being here, you guys. I'm gonna see you right back here next week.