Back in January I took a workshop from our awesome and talented music teacher who had become a total TpT rock star. She's been at it for just about a year now and has made a TON of extra income from this venture. She spends a lot of time creating products and has a lot of really great wisdom to share. TpT has been something I've wanted to get into for a while now, but I just didn't know where to start. After that workshop, I totally had the groundwork laid. Now, I just need to really get this venture up and running!
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I was super excited about working on TpT products right after the workshop, but I soon lost steam. I've been very overwhelmed and slightly unmotivated with school stuff recently and so thinking about school stuff when I don't have to has been hard. I've also found myself overwhelmed by the awesomeness of other Tpt'ers and how amazing their products are. As much as I want this to be a success, I don't want to live, breathe, and eat TpT.
So, I want to get some feedback and advice from those of you who have products on TpT (or Teacher's Notebook). Please comment below with your own insights and advice!
How much time do you spend per day / per week on creating projects (particularly during the school year)? How do you balance this with your regular school duties and workload?
How do you decide what products to create? Do you make things exclusively that you will use in your own classroom or do you make other resources as well?
I'd really love to hear the feedback of more people. I'm part of a Facebook group, but most of us are just starting out. I figured I'd take to the blogging world since I know some of you are seasoned pros!
You can check out my store here:
Great questions!
ReplyDeleteHow much time do I spend creating products? I'd say 2 hours daily and on weekends a lot more. I actually set a timer and make myself get up and do other things on the weekends!
How do I balance this? For me it has not been a huge time constraint added to my job. My job is creating a need for products. I switched from a regular classroom this year and now I am the STEM lab teacher. So, I have less teacher-y things to do- like no report cards, no conferences, no major behavior issues to deal with, no test prep, etc.
How do I decide what to create? I design a product around something I am actually teaching or have taught already! Due to the nature of my teaching job I am constantly inventing new engineering or science activities. About three fourths of my products are things I have used before publishing. I have a large selection on non fiction text features products also. Some of these I have used and some are based on things I used last year.
I have no idea how teachers with a regular classroom and kids at home can maintain a blog and TpT store. My children are adults so I do not have that extra worry. My fur babies just lay on my desk as I work!
Hope this helps!
Carol
Teachers Are Terrific!