I see so many people who are just dying to know how long it takes to make decent money on teachers pay teachers, so I wanted to take this chance to just lay it all out. My journey has been an extremely long one. I didn’t get serious about what I was doing for about 3 years, and then again after I started making over $500 a month I took another step up in terms of my intensity. Now that I’ve had my first $1000 month, I’m changing my perspective once again.
Here’s how it went for me.
That means I created 38 products my first year in 2013, 1 in 2014 (what happened, Laney?), 17 in 2015, 61 in 2016, 51 in 2017, 49 in 2018, and 43 so far in 2019. Working full time as a teacher and creating products isn’t easy. It’s very difficult to create more than one per week, when things are going well and you feel inspired.
I wouldn’t neglect to factor in the fact that there have been extensive times where I didn’t care about Teachers Pay Teachers at all and I’ve done virtually nothing for my store. In fact, it appears that all of 2014 was that way for me. Prior to maybe 2015, though, I had no covers in my store and just posted things I was using in my own classroom because I figured, why not?
Ah yessss. The good stuff. As you can see, my store didn’t turn into anything that anyone would shake a stick at until 2017. I finally started to advertise and create previews. More importantly, I started to get the idea that this website could one day really pay bills.
As you can see, I’m impatiently waiting for my first milestone ($20,000 in total earnings).
Because I spend so much time (and money) on advertising these days, I’ve begun to take my page views more seriously. I need to know that I’m really driving traffic to my store.
This last one may be the one that means the most to me. Units sold tells me how many teachers have trusted me enough to give me some of their hard earned money. It’s how many classrooms my work is in and how many people’s day I’ve made a little easier. It’s the real reason I stay at this little side gig.
I am so grateful to my customers, and I want to honor them with my hard work and product creation.
