Hello Tuesday! I hope your week is off to a great start!
I am creating a new 4-week series on TeachersPayTeachers (TPT) Tips. With the new school year starting, I know many of you are creating your own materials already. Why not start selling them on TPT too? Here are a few tips on getting started from a few of my favorite bloggers.
First up: Shannon from Speechy Musings
Teachers Pay Teachers Basics
First, I’d like to thank Nicole for coming up with the idea for this series, and then for hosting me as one of the bloggers! If you are just getting started with selling your own products, or looking to learn more, then this series should be really helpful.
Today, I’ll be covering some basics including what you need to start making products, what parts you should include in any product, and how to get started!
What You’ll Need
To start making and selling your own products, you will need clip art and the proper computer programs. If you own a Mac, you are in luck! All you need is Powerpoint or Pages. If you own a PC, I would recommend purchasing Adobe so that you can properly secure your products. Which brings us to the next thing you’ll need: clip art! Almost every clip art maker requires that in order to use their clip art, you properly secure it. My top 2 go to resources for clip art are Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT) and Etsy. The great thing about purchasing clip art from TpT is that you get credits, just like you would with a materials purchase. Second, TpT has a huge, growing resource of FREE clip art! How wonderful is that?
To find free clip art, go to the TpT homepage. Click on Free under the Prices header in the right column. Then, click on Clip Art under the Top Resources Type header in the same column.
This should bring up tons of free clip art and fonts. I believe that fonts are also important so don’t neglect finding a nice one!
So got your clip art, fonts, and computer program? You’re ready to go! Read on to find out what parts you need to be including in each and every product!
Necessary Parts for Any TpT Product
In order to attract buyers to your store, and follow copyright rules, there are several critical pages for any of your products.
1) First, make sure you have an attractive cover that you can use as the primary photo in your Teachers Pay Teachers store. Check out examples from my store below:
Each and every seller will develop their own style over time (including what clip art they use, their fonts, and the overall style of their products). Do this! It makes your products recognizable!
2) Always include a Terms of Use/Credits Page. These can be separate or put together on one page but both are very important. On the credits page, you should list the clip art makers that you used including fonts, backgrounds for the cover, and any pictures/clip art you used anywhere in the product.
On your terms of use page, you should include any and all terms that YOU have for YOUR products. Is it okay for buyers to share the download with their coworkers? Is it okay for somebody to host your product on their own website for download? All of these things need to be explicitly stated in your product! Something like “Do not share downloads. Permission to copy for single classroom use only. You may not resell, share, or copy downloads.” might work just fine. Some of us bloggers have started adding more due to some illegally hosted products we’ve found online.
3) The last thing all of your products should have is an instructions page. It might be clear to you how to use your product, but always include some basic directions on how to prepare and use what you’re selling.
How To Get Started
This step is going to be very different depending on each seller, but below are the steps I usually take when starting a new product.
1) Open up Powerpoint. Add a text box and write in all of my ideas. This text box will get deleted later but I’ve found it’s nice to get all of my ideas out there so when my creativity level sinks I can look back and keep going!
2) Search online for applicable clip art for my project. If applicable, search for new fonts. For example, my Articulation Menus item has over 20 different fonts in it! Purchase everything and put it in a folder titled with the name of the product. Some things you might not think to purchase, but are quite nice are things to spruce up your covers! Backgrounds, borders, and cute boxes are great to have on hand.
3) Begin the cover page and instructions page. I’ve found it works best for me if my instructions page is a working document. That means, that I’ll start it and add to it as I add to my product. If you have a long product, you might consider adding a table of contents.
4) Start making the product! If I’m making cards, I use the add shapes feature to add plain boxes with a black line and no fill. Others use the add table feature, but again, this varies with the seller!
Hopefully, in the future I’ll be doing more posts about how to make a product, but I hope that helped you find some awesome clip art and add in some important pages into your product! Please feel free to email me at speechymusings@gmail.com if you ever have any questions!
Thanks so much, Shannon! By the way, have you checked out her Articulation Menus? My kids loooove them! Stop by next week for another TPT tip!
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thespeechclinic says
September 21, 2013 at 8:46 pmThank you for this super informative post! I’ve just recently started making products to sell on TPT and I would love to know how you secure your pdf’s. I do have Adobe, but I’m not sure what kind of security is necessary. Hopefully you can give me some info, or write a post about it soon. Thanks!
Aersta
thespeechclinic.wordpress.com