If you ask veteran TpT sellers about the things they wish they would’ve done differently or what they wish they would’ve started doing sooner with their business, creating bundles and product lines is a pretty common answer. Why? Because product lines and bundles are a great way to increase sales in your store for multiple reasons. In this post, I’ll discuss what exactly we mean by bundles and products lines, plus all the different reasons you should make sure you have them in your store.
What are product lines and bundles?
What is a product line?
It’s defined differently depending on who you ask, but I think of a product line as a group of products with similar features that usually build upon one another. A product line can be resources that differ in content but all teach a concept in the same way. For example, a product line could be mini-books that you’ve made to span social studies topics, phonics skills, etc. A product line could also be a group of different resources that all cover the same topic like morning meetings. Sometimes these are monthly resources that all teach the same concepts, but change monthly due to themes or building on standards. You could even define product lines based on other characteristics like a specific subject area, grade level, resource format, audience, holiday/season, how the product will be used, etc.
The exact definition of a product line matters less than the big idea for why they’re useful. Basically, whenever our customers love a particular product, we want to have at least a few more options of other products they might love too. If a buyer likes Product A, it’s likely they would return to your store for Product B, C, and so on. This not only increases sales, but it also helps create loyal customers that look to you as an expert on a specific topic.
What is a bundle?
A bundle is a collection of two or more individual resources that are offered as a single product on TpT. Bundles usually include products that are related in some way, and TpT sellers typically offer a discount. You can combine up to 150 individual resources in a bundle on TpT. If you use TpT’s bundling tool, your bundle will automatically update whenever you make an update to any of the individual resources. You can feature the same resource in up to 15 bundles, but it’s important to make it clear to buyers exactly what is included in a bundle and when a resource is featured in multiple bundles.
Types of Bundles
There are different types of bundles. A regular bundle is just a collection of two or more individual resources. A growing bundle is a bundle that you add to TpT even though it’s not quite finished yet. For example, maybe you’re creating an entire year’s worth of morning meetings and you know that you want to eventually put them all in a bundle. You can list the first sets of morning meetings for January and February as a growing bundle. You would set the price fairly low since it only includes two products, but you would list everything you eventually intend to include in the bundle in the description. Buyers have an incentive to purchase the bundle early because they know they’ll pay less now and will get all of the updates as you add them in the future.
At this point, I feel like I should note that many TpT sellers have grown to hate growing bundles. By adding deadlines to your product description for when new products will be added to the bundle, you’re making a commitment to your buyers. Trust me, they’re going to hold you to it. So make sure you only create a growing bundle is you’re sure you can add all the pieces by the deadlines you’ve set. A way to get around this is to just not tell the customers it’s a growing bundle. Buyers love it when you surprise them with new updates that they get for free. And the great part is that you’re not faced with a deadline that you have to meet. Another type of bundle is a mega bundle, which is just a bundle of bundles or a really large bundle that includes a ton of products.
Are all product lines bundles? Are all bundles product lines?
Almost all product lines can also be turned into bundles since the resources included are similar in some way, and buyers interested in one product in a line are also usually interested in others. However, not all bundles have to be made up of product lines.
How Can Creating Product Lines and Bundles Lead to More Sales?
1. Product Lines and Bundles Provide Multiple Access Points to Products in Your Store
One of my favorite things about having bundles in my store is that they allow buyers to see more products than a single standalone resource would. When a buyer views a standalone product in your store, there is no guarantee they’ll see additional products they might be interested in. Yes, TpT shows other resources from your store, but buyers have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to see them now.
Now imagine a product line that is in a bundle. Customers will not only see the original product, but they’ll see the bundle(s) that the product is included in as well. It works the other way too — if they’re looking at a bundle, they see all the individual products that are included in the bundle. So instead of just looking at one product, now they’re looking at several all on the same page. Each time one product connects to another product, you’re increasing the chances that buyers may see (and want to buy) both!
One way to really take advantage of this fact is to include a free product in every bundle. Buyers are likely to see free products because many people look for free resources when they’re searching, and free products are also more likely to be featured in the TpT Newsletter. Plus, it’s really easy to share links to free resources in your marketing.
2. Product Lines and Bundles Are Helpful for Buyers AND Sellers
People love discounts, and teachers even more so. Many teachers are using their own money to buy resources on TpT, so they want to get the best deal possible. We can offer them these deals by creating bundles and selling them at a discount. It’s beneficial to use because we’ll sell more products at once, and buyers might spend more money than they originally intended because they’re getting a great deal. Most TpT sellers discount their bundles somewhere between 15% and 40%. TpT doesn’t allow you to discount more than 50%, but you wouldn’t really want to discount your products more than that anyway.
3. Product Lines and Bundles are Perfect for Using Templates, Repurposing, and Batching
Think about everything that goes into creating a new product. You have to make it, research keywords, write a description, create thumbnails, add a preview, pin it, etc. Creating templates for all of the different steps is going to make your life so much easier! I love creating a new product line because it means I can create a template that I’ll repurpose for multiple products. For example, one of my product lines is a set of biography graphic organizers. I know that once I create the template for the graphic organizer, I can use it for a ton of different people, and all I’ll have to do is switch out the clip art. This allows me to make more products in a shorter amount of time, and I can use the time I’ve saved for other tasks such as marketing or creating even more resources.
Remember that you can also basically create a product description template using the Create a Similar Listing tool on TpT. You can do this in My Product Listings. Select the product for the listing you want to copy, click on Quick Edit, and then click on Create a Similar Listing. It copies your entire product description (including the formatting), plus any standards, grades, subject areas, resource types, and custom categories you tagged in the original product. I love that it saves me so much time!
Batching
Product lines and bundles are also really easy to batch! For example, if you were creating a product line of crossword puzzles, you might gather all of the vocabulary lists first, make the crossword puzzles, make the answer keys, then the word banks, create all the PDFs, previews, thumbnails, upload to TpT, etc. Using templates and only focusing on one task at a time, you could batch create a really large set of crossword puzzles in way less time than if you were creating each puzzle completely separately. Batching the work all at once allows you to focus on a single task, making your work more productive.
Now that you know all about product lines and bundles and how they can help you make more money on TeachersPayTeachers, it’s time to start looking for bundling opportunities in your own store. Some TpT sellers even say that everything in your store should be part of a bundle. What are some creative ways you’ve used to create bundles in your TpT business? I’d love to hear about them in the comments below!
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