Episode Summary
I’m offering 3 super simple, super quick tweaks you can make in your business TODAY that will result in money. Pure and simple, nothing sneaky–just good old-fashioned TpT business hacks that we tend to overlook. Stop leaving money on the table!
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3 Ways You’re Probably Leaving Money on the Table in Your TpT Business
Things I’m Currently Into
Today I have a fun, quick episode planned for you. I’ll be discussing simple ways that you’re probably leaving money on the table in your TPT business. And of course I’ll also be sharing ways to avoid that. But before we get started, I was thinking back to the good old days of blogging when we were first starting out and we had all of those fun little things that we did. Do you guys remember when we used to do blog hops and linky parties? And a simple blog post could be something like filling out a survey about all of your favorite things? It was really, really fun and enjoyable. So I’m going to channel that 2014 energy here on this episode today and start off with some random things.
Let’s start out with what I am currently doing. In my personal life, I am currently watching Mare of Easttown which is a show on HBO. It’s so good! Kate Winslet is the main character and it has been the most riveting TV series that I’ve watched in a long time. And they also released the episodes week by week. So I haven’t had that level of like TV suspense in quite some time. It felt very like high school when I used to look forward to shows every single week. So I think that was part of the fun. But I am anxiously awaiting the season finale as I record this episode.
I’m currently listening to The Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo. I’ve talked about her before on this show. And she’s a constant source of motivation for me. There’s so much mindset work that goes into this TPT life. So she’s kind of like my go-to when it comes to soothing my own anxieties surrounding my business. I’m also listening to the new podcast, We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle. I’m a long time fan of hers. And there are always really great messages there as well. So highly recommend both of those.
And then finally, what I’m currently eating. I don’t know if this is normal or not, but I go on these kicks where I will eat the same thing for meals for days or even weeks in a row. Right now my thing is salads that come in a bag, like the salad kits. My favorite are definitely the Caesar salads. I’m just a huge Caesar fan. But literally any of those and then I’ll make like some chicken tenders on the side. Ah, so good and so easy. So I’ve been into that as well. I think the convenience factor appeals to me most of all. So those are some fun facts.
And something I’m looking forward to that I wanted to share with you guys is Rachel Lynette’s session for the TpT conference. If you are registered for the TPT conference, I am really excited for her session because she is doing a walk down TPT memory lane. She’s going to school us in the history of TPT which I admittedly don’t know a ton about. I’m looking forward to all of the sessions for their information, but I’m really looking forward to hers because I know she’s been spending a ton of time on the research side of that. I think it’s going to be great, so make sure you guys tune into that.
Today I wanted to share with you guys a couple little aha moments that I’ve had over the last several months. Actually I’m not a huge fan of the term leaving money on the table but that’s the only fitting phrase I can come up with to describe what I’m about to share with you. Over the last few months, I have been doing store audits on Clubhouse. We are essentially, it’s like a call-in radio show almost.
We have sellers who will join the call and say, I want you to look at my covers. Or I want you to look at the titles that I’ve chosen for this product line or just give me first impression about what you think when you see my storefront on TPT. This store auditing, in addition to building our Foundations course, has really just led me to a lot of basic concepts that I think myself in addition to probably lots of other established sellers are overlooking when it comes to running their business. These are things I’m sharing today because they’re really easy things that you can do right away in your business that will result in almost immediate benefits. So super quick, super easy, and super practical.
1. Look for Opportunities to Unbundle Your Resources
The first thing I think that all sellers should always be thinking about is not only how we can bundle our products together in our store but also how we can deconstruct our products and unbundle them. I bet that you probably have at least one larger item in your store that can be taken apart and sold as separate pieces. And it’s probably an item that you haven’t already previously bundled, right?
For example, take a look and sort your products from highest to lowest price. See if there are any standalone products that you can sell the pieces separately. For example, if you sell a set of yearly journal prompts, how can you break those packs apart and sell them by the month or even by the weeks? If you create math stations and you have math stations for the whole month of January, maybe you want to think about selling them week by week as well. Maybe a teacher is looking for just a day’s worth of math stations. How can you take things that are bigger and make them smaller?
This not only gives people more access to your products but there’s a higher chance they’ll come across your products because you’ve left a trail. Now they’re not only in your store as standalone items but they’re also linked by a bundle and all of those individual listings link to that bundle. So you’ve all of a sudden created a ton more paths to your products.
2. Use Your Note to Followers Every Month
The second thing that I think that probably a lot of sellers, especially ones that have been around for a while, overlook is the note to followers feature on TPT. We’ve talked about this one before in a post about free ways to market your TpT resources. Now I will be the first to admit that there were probably like two years that went by without me sending a single note to my followers. And it wasn’t until last summer right before the back to school sale that we had talked about it in a Facebook group. And I thought, well, you’re not leading by example if you are telling people to use the note to followers feature but you don’t use it. Like what’s your excuse for not using it?
Because in reality, a note to followers isn’t something that’s going to take up a lot of your time. In fact, if you are someone who has an email list that you send emails to, you could take the exact same text from your email and paste it into your note followers. And if you’re someone who has not been in the note to followers for a while, you’ll be pleased to know that now you can include a lot more features when it comes to formatting, you can include links and photos just like you would in an email newsletter.
So there’s really no reason not to send a note to followers. In fact, you’re leaving money on the table by not doing it. If it’s been a while, remind yourself that you can only send one note per month. So if you want to be strategic about it, think about when the next site-wide sale will be and think about if there’s a better time to do it during the month than another day, for example.
And also, I recommend using UTM codes so that you can see how successful that note followers actually is. I sent out a quick note recently and linked to three of my products. Last time I checked the UTM code, it made me $200. And it took me probably two minutes to type everything in and send it. And that’s $200 that I wouldn’t otherwise have had. So that to me is a no-brainer.
Include Freebies in All of Your Bundles
The third thing I recommend doing is to make sure that you are including freebies in all of your bundles. When you have a freebie in a bundle, someone can go to your freebie page, and they’ll see a message that says, hey, this resource is also included in this bundle.
You might go from having someone who’s just downloading the freebie to then purchasing your entire bundle. That’s a huge before and after! And again, it’s something that’s going to take very minimal effort and very minimal time. But it will gain you money over and over and over again without you having to lift a finger. It’s kind of like leaving a trail of breadcrumbs all over TPT. The more places you leave them, the more likely someone is to find them and follow them to the ultimate goal which is a purchase and then the ultimate, ultimate goal, cultivating a lifelong buyer. So you can see how a very small switch can lead to a huge impact over time.
Conclusion
And this is kind of the theme of all of these tips that I’m sharing with you today. And again, these might be things that you’re already doing. These are definitely things that are super simple and obvious. But also the things that I think we are most likely to overlook. All right, friends. There you have it. A short but sweet episode. I hope that you have a wonderful week. Let me know in the Facebook group if you have put any of these three things into action and if so, what kind of results you’ve seen so far. Thanks so much for listening and I will see you guys same time, same place next week,
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