Grow with Angie and April: A Podcast for Teacherpreneurs

What do you send out to your email list when they are not involved in a sequence? How often do you email them? Today we are discussing just that along with a special guest, Rachel Davis, from the Elite Edupreneurs Podcast. Rachel also does TpT full-time. Disclaimer: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. You don’t have to purchase them through our links, but if you do, it helps us pay for the costs of the podcast and blog!  What do you send in your organic emails to subscribers? There are many different things that you could email out to your subscribers. We recommend testing out different ideas and seeing what resonates with your audience. Use your data to drive your future decisions. What should we link to? What should our call to action be? Every newsletter should have a call to action but it can vary from email to email based on your goal for that email. It is recommended to have one call to action and to make it clear for your subscribers. Vary it from email to email. Test and re-test to see what works! Blog Posts Products New product emails Timely resource Videos Any content made for your business in other areas can be re-purposed into an email Ask them for ideas for future products Ask them for ideas that you can use for future blog posts Ask them for feedback on a resource that you’ve made and want tested. Ask them for their struggles or what they are currently working on. If we send out a product release email won’t that be annoying if people also follow us on TpT and see it there? It is definitely ok to do both. Your subscribers may also be your TpT followers but not necessarily. And even if they are, that doesn’t mean that they see everything that you put out. Sometimes people need to see it multiple time to be reminded of it and to finally taking the plunge and purchase. How often do we send out emails? We are actually pretty inconsistent here. We hope to get at least two out per month but it can be a struggle sometimes. We found it works better if we do a bunch at once and schedule them out. It’s harder to get them going if you have to keep remembering to go back and compose them each time. Last month April sent out six emails in but not all of her subscribers received all six emails. If she releases a new resource for 5th grade, she will only send to those marked as 5th grade by using tags in ConvertKit or anyone who is not tagged. Then, if they click that link, she has it tag them as 5th grade for future emails. This helps her to really send them relevant information pertaining to their grade level. This is actually one of our favorite features of ConvertKit.  Plus, we believe the more targeted you can make your emails, the better your open and click rates will be. Do we send out personal information in emails? We think it’s ok to be on the personal side especially if it pertains to what you are emailing them about. But, again, check your data. If your audience likes what you’re doing, do more of it! If not, move on to the next idea or do it infrequently. What do we think about the RSS feeds that send out blog posts to followers? April had some strong opinions about this. She feels as though this is not a good idea. Sometimes when those feeds send out, they will give the whole post and give the readers no reason to click over to your blog or website. We want to people on our websites for a few reasons. Faceboo

What did your first email sequence look like? What tips do you have?  April has been using email for quite some time now, while Angie is just getting started. With April’s guidance, Angie is setting up her first email sequence. You get an inside look at what she included and how it is set up. Disclaimer: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. You don’t have to purchase them through our links, but if you do, it helps us pay for the costs of the podcast and blog!  Switching from Mailchimp Angie has been collecting subscribers with Mailchimp for free but recently passed into being charged. She wanted to get things set up and going but wanted to decide first on which company she would go with. She ultimately decided to go with ConvertKit after hearing from so many people how easy it was. She found it super easy to move her list over and it took less than 5 minutes! Now, she is ready to get moving on making it worth the cost. April started on Mailchimp, as well.  Then once she reached 2,000 subscribers, she switched to ConvertKit and didn’t like it. She then went over to Mad Mimi and was happy there for awhile but it was not very user friendly. It was cheaper but she wasn’t seeing it convert to sales. She had about 6 sequences set up. She began getting frustrated with Mad Mimi because she couldn’t see the data that she wanted to see. (You know how we love data!) She decided she wanted to improve her sequences and change up her site. She went back to ConvertKit. She reworked her site with a new theme that integrated her opt ins and resources how she wanted.  April is very happy with how things are going so far with ConvertKit. Reasons We Love ConvertKit Ease of use. We find it user friendly and could set up our first opt ins quickly. Data. We love the additional data given that was missing before. We can see all the conversions for each opt in to easily see which ones are working for us. Deliver-ability. With a more simple email, it tends to get into more inboxes instead of junk folders. Rules. You can create almost any kind of rule we could think of. Sequences. So easy to set up, get going, and track. Automated. Once set up, it can run itself! Love this…the more we can automate, the happier we are. If you’d like to try it out for yourself, you can get one month FREE by clicking here. We’d be happy to help get it set up for you. April is currently making 4 times what she is spending on her list! Opt-In Angie decided that her first sequence was going to be for her huge holiday close reading bundle. She already had a freebie for it. She decided to use the same freebie as on TpT except she beefed up the freebie to include even more enticing goodies to get people to opt-in! It was helpful that Angie was able to re-p

What data points do you check to drive decisions as a Teachers Pay Teachers seller? We both use data frequently to make all kinds of decisions about our business. We geek out about all things data.  The more insight we have into what’s working and what’s not helps us so much. In this episode, we discuss the different data points we check and what they can tell us about our resources. We’ve even scored some awesome info from Benson at Team TpT to help you understand TpT data better. How we use data We use data to drive all sorts of decisions about our business. It can tell us when a resource is popular and that gives us the information we need to make decisions about when to promote a specific resource. It also helps us to decide which resources to make more of. Spoiler Alert: It’s not always the ones we love the most. We may gravitate towards a particular resource that we think is great but it may not always be the best choice to be spending our time on that. It can show us if resource line is declining in popularity or if it’s just not the best time of year for that particular topic. If we see a decrease in sales, data can help us to figure out why it may be happening. Use a larger set of data rather than a smaller set Benson from TpT told us, “Another piece of advice (more generally about data) is to make decisions using a large set of data. Don’t run a promoted pin for only a day or two and then try to decide if it was worth it or not. Set a budget that will last you as long as you possibly can (within reason) and then use that larger set of data to make a decision. Try to always get at least a week’s worth of data before making any decisions, because buyer behavior can be all over the place day-to-day. At TpT, we run all of our tests for at least a week, and some for much much longer.” Looking at the pin data below, we can see that the pin was more popular different times of the year. Had we just pulled a week worth of this data out, it wouldn’t really give us a clear picture of what is happening long-term with a pin. Using dashboard data to decide on promotions We use our dashboard to tell use more about our overall sales, how a particular resource is selling, and even how a resource li

What time management tips can you give to a teacher seller? We both struggle with time management, but we have learned a few things over the years that has helped. Here are our tips for time management, and some awesome tips from our group! Disclaimer: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. You don’t have to purchase them through our links, but if you do, it helps us pay for the costs of the podcast and blog!  Let it go Seriously, just LET IT GO! If it’s not important to your business, don’t do it. If you don’t see a return on your time investment, it’s time to let it go. It’s hard for us to let things go when others are doing them, but it’s so important to focus on the things that help your business the most. Letting things go will free up a lot of precious time. Automate the Less Important Things Over the last year, we’ve found ourselves automating a lot more. This helps us free up valuable time for the things we can’t automate, like product creation. We both use a tool called SmarterQueue to automate posts that get sent to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We don’t use Twitter much, but we rely on this tool for a lot of what we do on Facebook. With Facebook organic reach being down, we didn’t think it was worth as much time as it used to be to do the posts ourselves. I use it to automate discussion questions in my Facebook groups, which used to take a substantial amount of time. Starting a Facebook group is a huge commitment. Angie uses it to automate her Facebook page queue, so that she has quality content going out all the time, even when she doesn’t have time to post. We both use the Solo plan, which is $19.99/month. I used Meet Edgar before, but it’s way more expensive for the same exact service. I actually helped beta test SmarterQueue a couple of years ago, so I got the chance to have an impact on the features they developed!  

Why isn’t my promoted pin running?! Lately we’ve noticed a lot of people asking about why their promoted pins aren’t taking off, or suddenly stop running. Angie and I have asked this ourselves many, many times. In this episode, we talk about some of the reasons we’ve discovered that promoted pins don’t perform. We only run traffic campaigns in our businesses, so this advice is focused on those promoted pin types only. Possibility #1: Bid is too low When we first started running promoted pins, you had to bid at least $0.10/click. However, recently we’ve noticed there are two low categories for bids: “too low” and “low bid”. We typically set ours for $0.01-$0.10 higher than “too low”. We do not spend what they as for a “good bid”, unless it’s magically under $0.25 (this is rare). If you have an established pin that stops running, go to your ad group page and click “Edit Ad Group”. Scroll to the bottom to see if your bid is indicated as “too low”. Change it to a low bid amount, and if you want it to do even better, add a few extra cents. One main takeaway from our chat was that popular keywords = more competition = higher bid. Angie had an issue with a St. Patrick’s day pin’s bid because the keywords were super popular across the board.   Possibility #2: People aren’t searching your keywords Promoted pins are great because you can just let them

Let’s talk about the Teachers Pay Teachers conference & Social Media Marketing World! Are conferences worth it? Two weeks after attending Social Media Marketing World, Angie and I are discussing our experience. In this episode, we also talk about how to get the most value out of conferences, and why you should attend the Teachers Pay Teachers conference. Disclaimer: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. You don’t have to purchase them through our links, but if you do, it’s much appreciated!  Social Media Marketing World It was my second time, and Angie’s first, attending SMMW 2018. Our conclusion was that it’s a good conference to attend if you are already at the point in your business where you are running ads and utilizing a website and/or mailing list. The conference gave us motivation to refine what we were already doing in our businesses. Angie flew across country for this conference. With conference ticket, flight, and hotel, it was pricey. She concluded that it was a lot of money to spend for just one conference. I drove to the conference, and thought it was worth the money just to attend in order to network with other TpT sellers and get motivated to refine the systems she already has in place. Her favorite session was put on by Leslie Samuel, who has a great podcast on Blogging. The price averages around $900 for the conference tickets, but you can save money by buying it early. Another good option if you don’t want to pay for travel expenses is the virtual ticket. With the virtual ticket, you get every session recorded to watch whenever you want. Go here to get the details.  Teachers Pay Teachers Conference The main takeaway from this conversation was that you should do whatever it takes to attend this annual conference. It’s very motivating, and you will learn things specific to selling on Teachers Pay Teachers. Even if the sessions aren’t what you’re looking for, collaboration with other sellers during this conference is highly valuable. The 2018 conference is in Nashville, TN at the Opryland. Angie suggests finding a cheaper hotel to stay at if you’re attending on a budget. We both agreed that it’s a nice convenience to stay where the conference is taking place, but the venue is on the pricier side. Click here for more TpT conference information. Make sure to join our Teacher Seller Facebook group!