How to make money on Teachers Pay Teachers

Hey, friend! I am so excited that you want to learn how to make money on Teachers Pay Teachers. Maybe you’re thinking it isn’t possible in 2025. The market has to be way too saturated, right? Wrong! I am here to tell you that you ABSOLUTELY can build and grow a selling shop on Teachers Pay Teachers. I am going to share with you today 5 things you need to do to make money on TPT.

Before we dive in, let me share a bit about my journey. I opened my store on TPT in the summer of 2022. I was looking for a creative outlet, and I was having a blast with product creation. I started with themed math centers. I made $4 that first month. Since then, I have done over 100K in sales, and I’ve learned so much about selling on Teachers Pay Teachers.

5 things to do to make money on Teachers Pay Teachers

Pick a niche you love and have passion for
Remember who you are creating for
Make products people are actually searching for
Make quality products and optimize your listings
Dig into your data

Picking a niche

Picking a niche is like picking a category. And I promise it doesn’t have to be complicated. What do you want to make? To answer that question, you need to think about your expertise. If you teach Kindergarten, I don’t think you’ll be selling 5th grade science lessons. Have an eye for classroom design? Great! Get out there with your designs! When you start creating with what you’re good at, you will ultimately find passion in the resources you create. That right there is what will light a fire in you for your business and help you grow your store. More products created by a passionate teacher seller= more chances to show up in just the right search on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Remember who you are creating for!

You are creating products that are being bought by a teacher in need of something. They found your product and purchased it because it solved a problem that they had. Maybe they needed extra activities to support the students in their classroom struggling with multiplication. Perhaps a teacher needed sub plans for second graders after being up all night with a sick baby. Remember that you are providing resources for someone that probably doesn’t have a lot of time to make a decision on purchasing or moving on to the next listing. Your cover photos for your listing need to stop them in their tracks!

Make products people are actually searching for.

Let me give you a super quick lesson on finding keywords on Teachers Pay Teachers. What’s a keyword? A keyword is the magic little phrase you add to your product titles and product descriptions to give any algorithm an idea of what you are selling. “Morning Meeting Activities” and “4th Grade Math Review” are examples of some broad keywords that are being searched on TPT. You can type both of those phrases into the search bar and they come up as suggestions. Therefore, you know people are looking for products for both of those categories. The problem is “Morning Meeting Activities” comes with over 50,000 results on TPT. “4th Grade Math Review” has over 90,000 results. You want to find keywords that are being searched, but have a smaller volume of results. A smaller volume of results gives you a better chance to push your product to the first and second page of results. For example, “Morning Meeting Games” has 14,000 results and “Kindergarten Morning Meeting Questions” has less than 5,000. Much better! Play around with the search bar and see what you can find to best describe your product or to find inspiration.

Make quality products and optimize your listings

When you go to make your first (or 100th) product, please remember to make it worth someone’s money. We all know teachers aren’t paid very much, so for them to spend a few dollars on a product of yours, it needs to deliver! Offer color and black and white printing options. Consider differentiated templates or materials to support a wide range of learners. Then, in your product description, you’ll need to tell the possible customer why they need your product and why it’s going to solve their problem. Remember those keywords we talked about? To optimize your listings, you’ll use those keywords you researched. Put them in your product title and product description. This will tell the TPT algorithm what you have for buyers. If you have beautiful product covers, informative thumbnails, researched keywords, and quality products, you will start seeing sales come in!

Dig into your data!

Last but not least, dig into your data! This is not the most glamourous task, but it pays off so much. You’ll want to pay attention to your top sellers, where your traffic is mostly coming from, and what products you have ranking for different keywords. I love to keep up with product rankings and seeing if I can boost anything higher. To do this, you need to search the keywords you are trying to rank for. Type the keyword phrase into the search bar and see if your product is on any of the first few pages. Ranking high is your best bet at organic sales straight from the search bar.