How to Find Your Niche on Teachers Pay Teachers
Inside: These are the best tips for How to find your niche on Teachers Pay Teachers successfully, so you can start making money!
Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT) is a great way to make some extra income doing what you're already doing every day. It's a really great way to share your knowledge, experience, and skills with other teachers. But when you first start selling on Teachers Pay Teachers, it can be difficult–or even overwhelming– to know where to start.
It's a common saying “The riches are in the niches” and I find that to be so true on TpT. There are millions of resources available, and it's hard to know how to make yourself stand out.
Let's explore what it means to find your niche on TpT and how you can go about finding yours.
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What Does Finding Your Niche Mean?
Your niche is the specific area you focus on. When it comes to TpT this means: grade level, subject area, and type of resource you create for your audience.
Finding your niche means finding a group of potential customers who are looking for exactly what you have to offer. When you know who your target market is, you can create products and marketing materials that speak directly to their needs.
This allows you to build a loyal customer base who will keep coming back to your store for more.
When you know your niche and your ideal audience, you'll be able to think of them when you're creating resources.
What needs do they have that you can help with? When you create with your target audience, and their needs, in mind you'll be able to create resources that are exactly what they're looking for — and that's when you'll start seeing success on TpT
How do You Find Your Niche on TpT?
There are a few ways you can go about finding your niche. It's not just about finding what makes you unique, because although that's special and should be celebrated . . . at first you need money. Eventually you can go ahead and use that uniqueness to make lots of money, but at first we need to find your audience. And that means finding your niche.
Use some of these tips to find your niche!
The Spaghetti Method
My personal favorite way find your niche is what I like to call the spaghetti method.
Throw things up on your store until you find what you like to create, and what people are buying. It's a longer process and way more time consuming. It's a great method if you really have no idea where to start.
I used the spaghetti method for my store, and now I can confidently tell you what my niche is, and what my buyers are looking for.
Look at Your Interests
What do you love creating, or what do you love using in your classroom? Some teachers are very passionate about certain ways to teach, such as the Science of Reading.
If you're a teacher with a specialty in math, your niche could be focusing on providing math resources for other teachers. If you're especially creative, your niche could be classroom decor.
Another great place to start is the things your friends ask you about. Do you have teacher friends always coming to your for a certain product you've already created for your classroom or your homeschooled child? That's a great place to start.
My first dozen products were busy books that I created for my own children when they wanted to learn more than they were learning in their preschool.
What Grade Levels Are You Most Comfortable Teaching?
Teachers move around a lot in some districts, so look at the grade you loved teaching the most, and think about why you loved it so much. If it was the content, then find a way to add that into your store.
Use Your Audience
A lot of times this isn't an option, especially when you're just starting out, but if you DO have an audience already, you can survey your audience (and potential buyers) to see what resources they are looking for. You can narrow down your focus and start creating resources that meets the needs of your target audience this way.
Interested in learning more about creating educational printables? Join my Facebook group, where I go live several times a week to take questions and talk about creating worksheets on PowerPoint and selling printables on TeachersPayTeachers and MORE. Click here to check it out.
How do you Niche Down on TpT?
Once you've identified your ideal audience, what you like to create, and how you want to make money on TpT, the next step is thinking about how you can niche down even further.
This is NOT always necessary. Sometimes just finding a general niche is all you need. You can find success by creating preschool printables exclusively, or high school chemistry.
Let's say you want to create math resources for fifth grade. Great! But there are still a lot of different types of math resources that fifth grade teachers might need. So you'll need to narrow do your focus at first. Maybe at first you create multiplication worksheets, or fraction games, or escape rooms. Choose a specific thing and become the go-to expert for that particular type of resource.
But don't go . . . too far.
Going too far would be like ONLY selling worksheets about point of view for 7th grade English classes.
It will do very well . . . when teachers are teaching about point of view . . . but there is a whole year you'll be missing out on.
Another way to find a deeper niche is to look at the resources you've created. What is the common denominator? What themes or topics do they all have in common? Do you tend to create a lot of boom cards or word searches?
My advice when it comes to niching down is go as far as you feel comfortable with. Once you've created all that you can about point of view, and you're ready to move on, it's okay to create lessons for verbs, or another subject that seventh grade English teachers will use.
When it comes to selling on TeachersPayTeachers, one of the most important things you can do is find your niche. By focusing on what you enjoy making and what you love, you can capitalize on that and build a successful business selling your educational printables.
Remember, you want to determine what resources are needed and focus on becoming the go-to expert for that type of resource. At first, at least. Then you'll be well on your way to TpT success!
