In this episode, Angie and April are reflecting on 2021 and setting goals for 2022. They’re going to dive into the things they want to do more and what surprising thing they’re letting go of in the new year. Join in on the conversation in the mastermind group at www.growwithusmastermind.com.
This year was a blur! It flew by. We felt like last year was one of the longest years of our lives and we’re thankful that this year was different. However, that also meant things were different in our TpT store and businesses as well. We’re sharing what business looked like in 2021 and what we’re planning for 2022.
Reflecting on 2021 in our TpT business
I don’t usually set specific monetary goals for my TpT store. I typically see a 20-30% increase in sales from year to year but because of how unique 2020 was, I really just wanted to hit the same earnings from last year.
Both April and I created a lot of new resources when everything went digital in March 2020. Teachers needed those resources. That ended up really helping with sales so we were worried that we wouldn’t be able to beat those numbers this year.
It made it really difficult to compare product to product from last year to this year, but overall, April had a 35% increase and I had a 50% increase from last year. There are a few things we attribute this to.
Hiring help
April and I have both hired people that are helping us in our TpT stores. From 2019 to this year, I experienced an 80% increase. I was doing everything on my own in 2019. April had a similar experience. From the same time period, she had a 70% increase in her business. She has added over 200 products to her store since the beginning of the pandemic and was able to do so because she has people working in her business with her.
Having help in my business allows me to focus on the things that are in my zone. I’m slow at creating new products. When I was still teaching and running my TpT store, I had to make time to do it but now that I can hire someone else to, it makes the process easier and faster. It allows me to focus on other areas and planning while hiring someone else to help implement my ideas and strategy.
This isn’t something we were able to do right away but this also allowed us to gain experience and knowledge on what sells in our stores. If we were just started out from scratch and hired help, we wouldn’t be as successful because we wouldn’t know the strategy or have the templates we’ve created over the years.
There’s only so much you’re able to do yourself and having people on your team helps.
Including more with products
We have learned over the years that sales increase when you include additional pieces with resources. When I first started my store, I would create a resource and that would be all the teachers would get when they bought it. Since then, we’ve learned that it helps to include things like teacher manuals, printables, and suggestions on how they can use the resource in their classroom. This makes life easier for them which increases our sales.
If you’re just starting out or not already doing this in your TpT store, this is a great place to start in growing your business.
Consistent marketing
I largely credit my increase in sales with my effort to market my products consistently. I started having weekly blog posts, regular social media posts and engaging my email list regularly. Years ago I thought I was doing good without blogging so didn’t think it was important, but I started to wonder if I was doing good without blogging, what could I do in sales if I was blogging.
If you can identify what products are popular and use that information in your marketing, you’re pretty much setting yourself up for success by putting these pieces in place.
2022 Goals for our TpT Stores
If you want to listen to past episodes to help with certain goals over winter break, there are links included in the sections below.
Sales goals
I generally aim for a 30% increase in sales. I’m hoping for more based on the changes I’ve been making in my business, but also acknowledge sales goals rely on doing a lot of other things correctly in business so that’s where I like to focus.
April is aiming to hit in 2022 what she did in 2021. Her focus is on being able to make payroll while keeping her additional proceeds, so she’s looking to stay consistent.
There are so many things that go into sales. It’s not something you can control like the moving pieces such as blogging and sending emails to your list, which is why I’m more focused on looking at increasing views of my blog and people joining my email list.
What April is going to keep doing in 2022
Building her email list
Her email list helps her to make money right away instead of waiting for people to find her resources on the TpT website. She is going to focus on creating freebies and creating additional opt-ins to bring people on her list. Then, she is going to use ads to get people to her opt-ins.
Related podcast episodes:
- Episode 15: Email List Building with Guest Jennifer Findley
- Episode 38: Building an Email List with Nicki from The Sprinkle Topped Teacher
Facebook ads
April is going to continue running Facebook ads in 2022. She spends around $100 a day on them and they work for getting people to her paid products.
Related podcast episodes:
Repurposeing content
April has a content calendar she uses to direct what emails she is writing and sending to her list. She then uses this same focus for her blog posts and social media posts.
Repurposing content is really easy to do and makes it easier to be active on different platforms because it helps you know what you’re writing about and sharing. You can share the same image with different messages or the same message with different images.
Running promotions
In our last episode, we talked about email promotions. This has contributed a lot to April’s increase in sales and is something she’s going to continue doing in the new year. It helps get eyes on her products which help keep the algorithms happy. She has had a few new products recently jump to page 1 quickly which she credit to the instant traffic they got from her email list.
Related podcast episodes:
What Angie is going to keep doing in 2022
I’m keeping a lot of the same things as what April has decided to keep. Here are a few others:
Blogging
This feels like the anchor that fuels everything else in my business. My regular blog posts allow me to have something to share regularly on social media and gives me something to regularly email my list about. It makes a lot of other things easier because it fuels the other content needs I have.
This is one of the best decisions I’ve made in my business over the last couple of years.
Related podcast episodes:
Instagram and Facebook
I have mixed feelings about Facebook. I thought about dropping it because organic traffic on posts seem to be pretty dead, but when looking at the data, I get a lot of traffic to my blog from both Facebook and Instagram. So, I’m going to work on tweaking my strategy on both platforms.
Instagram stories send more people to my blog posts than the feed posts do, so I’m going to work on doing more of those and less of the regular posts. If you’re someone that likes to be on Instagram throughout the day, or you’re still in the classroom and can jump on stories to show different things, this is a great option.
Carousel posts also tend to do better than regular posts. These are really easy to create. Sometimes I just put the normal image I would use as the first image and then add the preview image as the next one. Carousel posts are a great way to share a lot of information about your resources.
I’m also thinking of trying to start doing 1 IG reel each week.
Related podcast episodes:
What are we letting go of in 2022?
Using Pinterest the way we have in the past
April is letting go of Pinterest in 2022. She is still pinning organically, but she’s letting go of pinning dozens of posts a day. She has spent time testing it this year and found that her stats weren’t really changing by pinning less.
Pinterest has a lot of new content types and they aren’t prioritizing the ones with links in them. She tried some of the different things the platform wants to see and they got more views but had less traffic coming over. The vanity metrics increased but the important metrics for her business did not change. The cost vs benefit of the platform isn’t worth it for her business.
I was thinking of doing the same thing, but looking at my stats, Pinterest is still the number one driver to my blog. Pinterest to the TpT store, however, is not working anymore. But since it’s still bringing people to my blog, I’m not giving it up yet. I am going to adjust my Pinterest scheduling though and back off of the pins leading straight to TpT. My subscription is through June and then we will reevaluate.
Posting more than once a day on social media
We have also found that running Facebook ads is more effective than creating a bunch of posts that aren’t getting attention. If I was new, I would still be doing more organic posts, but now that I have the budget, it’s smarter to put the money into ads.
I am going to let go of posting on social media more than once a day. I’m not seeing the benefit of posting more than that.
Things we want to improve on in 2022
In 2022, April wants to improve at blogging and take more breaks. She wants to prioritize taking more time for herself. I want to improve on having a content creation plan and then sticking to the plan.
We want to hear your 2021 reflections and 2022 goals. Join us in the mastermind group to share them with us.
We are going to be on a holiday hiatus for the rest of the year. The next new episode will be in January 2022.