I’m super excited to be taking part in the The One Thing a Day – Big, Ginger, Seller 30 Day Challenge, being put on by Ginger Teacher.
Today, as my one thing a day, I’ve decided to share my story about how and why I became a teacher -author with Teachers Pay Teachers.
It all started a few years ago…4 years ago to be exact, when my husband told me about this video segment he’d seen on CNN that morning about this teacher from Georgia who’d made a million dollars by selling her lesson plans on a website called Teachers Pay Teachers.
In the video she discusses how 90% of teachers are always juggling bills and my family was no different.
Fortunately, by the time I got home my husband had found the video on Youtube and shared it with me…
As we sat there together watching this short life changing video clip I remember thinking to myself…
“Hmm I could do that!”
Having 4 kids in today’s day and age is extremely difficult financially…and hearing her talk about juggling bills really resonated with me.
…But the thought of putting myself out there sent chills down my spine…
I remember bombarding my husband with what seemed like a million questions…
“Would anyone really want to buy my lesson plans?”
All the while secretly thinking to myself…”Is my stuff good enough?”
I really mulled it over for a couple of days, until my husband finally broke me down with his enthusiasm and pushed me to take that step and put myself out there…so I jumped into it!
A requirement to become a TPT seller is your first product needs to be a freebie. So I sat down that night and created my first free product and immediately created my first paid product.
My husband and I put the products together and uploaded them and waited…and waited…and waited…hours turned to days and days turned to weeks and NOTHING!!!
Then one day…a few weeks later my phone made this cash register sound. What the heck was that, I thought. it wasn’t a few seconds later that I got a text from my husband.
WE HADE MADE A SALE ON TEACHERS PAY TEACHERS!!! OMG!!!
We had make like $4.00, but to us…we’d felt like we’d won the lottery!
Having made that sale made me realize that there was a teacher out there using a teaching resource I had made in their classroom. I was so excited…so proud, so honored that another teacher trusted me enough to use a teaching resource I created in their class! All the fears I had had about no one wanting my stuff…gone with the simple sound of “cha-ching”.
To be completely honest…I was never really a teacher who cared what my lesson plans looked like…I spent the majority of my efforts on creating the content, rather than focusing on making my stuff look cute…before I began selling my teaching resources on Teacher Pay Teachers I made things for my classroom that I referred to as “Frankensteining” them up.
As I wrote on my about me page, I used to teach French Immersion…and if you’re a French Immersion teacher I’m sure you’ll agree that there are very few French resources out there. Every French Immersion teacher out there knows and understands that making things for your classroom is simply a required part of the job. We were given an English document and it was our job to translate it into a French resource. When all your time is spent on translating an English curriculum into a French teachable…you don’t have a lot of time to “make things pretty”.
Hence the birth of my term “Frankensteining”
When “Frankensteining” things… you take a piece from one resource and a clip art from another, and type a simpler version of the question from an English resource that I earlier translated into a French resource and tape all of them together on a piece of paper and photocopy it into a version that French Immersion students can use…. lol.
Well, when I began selling my teaching resources on TPT… I quickly learned that I needed to step up my cutesy game. Teachers not only loved products that had awesome content, but they wanted them cute as well.
As my husband says…
“Selling on Teachers Pay Teachers is visual”
Teachers who have never bought from you before have no idea how strong you’re content is, so you’ve got to grab them by the eyeballs first.
Also, when I create new products for my class, I always think in the back of my head that if this goes well in my class that I will be listing it in my Teachers Pay Teachers store and another teacher could end up using it as well..
I really examine what content my products include, how I word things, and find myself questioning every step of the way in order to create products that are not just student useful…but teacher friendly as well.
So it’s been four years since my husband showed me that video clip and while we’re not in Deanna Jump’s tax bracket quite yet, we’ve definitely heard a lot more “cha-chings” since that first one.
What’s most important for us is that we’re creating awesome products for me to use in my class for my students and at the same time helping other teachers who put their trust in me and our products.
If you’re interested in becoming a teacher-author…put your fears aside and simply CLICK HERE to get started on Teacher Pay Teacher Today!
The Ginger Teacher says
Great post! I love the layout of your blog it feels really fresh and fun!
So pleased to have found your blog 🙂
Renee says
Thank you so much for your kind words! I hope you come and visit often.