I Analyzed $40M in TPT Sales — The 3-Click Trick to Find Your Real Conversion Rate
If you sell on Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT), you’ve probably spent way too much time worrying about your conversion rate. Is 3% good? Is 10% great? And what if you have a new product with just a handful of sales—how do you even know if you’re “winning” or just treading water?
I’ve been right there, and after crunching the numbers on over 50,000 TPT products (representing more than $40 million in earnings), I learned something that blew my mind: most of us are measuring success the wrong way.
Let’s break the cycle of confusion. I’m going to show you the exact, data-driven method I use with coaching clients to figure out what a good conversion rate really is for your products, not just some average the internet throws at you.
I’ll walk you through a powerful 3-click diagnostic tool, dig into why context is everything, and reveal how to use your own data to fix sales leaks fast. Grab a coffee and let’s rethink your TPT game.
Understanding Conversion Rates on Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT)
When someone asks, “What’s a good conversion rate for TPT?” the answers are typically based on anecdotal observations from a few stores. Some folks say 3–5% is normal. Others claim 8% is outstanding. But what does conversion rate really mean, and why does it matter?
Conversion rate is simple: it’s the percentage of people who land on your product page and actually buy. If 100 people see your product and 10 buy it, that’s a 10% conversion rate. Sounds straightforward, but it’s the heartbeat of your TPT business. If your conversion rate is low, you need more traffic—or you need to fix what’s broken on your page.
I asked ChatGPT about TPT Conversion rates and it told me the following:
- 3–5% = average
- 8%+ = excellent
Spoiler alert—these numbers don’t tell the whole story and can send you chasing your tail.
Here’s the kicker: after studying 50,000 actual TPT products, I found the “average” conversion rate is really 10%. That’s not “good”—it’s just the middle of the road.
Why is this such a big deal? Because if you’re benchmarking your new product against a platform-wide number, you’re missing the context that matters most. And that can cost you real money.
Why Average Conversion Rate is Not Enough
Let’s talk about that 10% figure. When half the products do better and half do worse, it’s called the median. Picture a bell curve with a line right in the center at 10%—that’s the halfway point. Nothing magical, just “average.”
But here’s where things get tricky: using one single number for all products on TPT can really trip you up. Context is crucial.
A 10% conversion rate on a new product with 30 views is not the same as a 10% rate on a mega-bundle that’s seen 10,000 eyeballs. Your store, your products, and your results are unique.
If you want to see more detail about what I think we should really be using as a Good TPT conversion rate, I spell out some of these nuances there.
Introducing the 3-Click Diagnostic Tool
I knew there had to be a better, less stressful way to figure out if a product is truly “doing well.” T
hat’s why I built a free 3-click diagnostic tool designed for data-driven TPT Sellers who want clarity, not guesswork. This tool helps you nail down what’s normal—or exceptional—for your product’s stage.
Here’s how it works:
- Start the tool: Enter your name. (This helps the tool remember your progress.) You’ll see a helpful info page about how to get your stats, but if you already know the answers, just skip ahead.
- Filter by earnings: Click to select your product’s total earnings bracket. Let’s say it’s a brand new product with less than $100 in sales. Now, instead of sifting through all 50,000 products, the tool zooms in on about 34,000 similar products.
- Filter by page views: Next, pick the bucket for products with fewer than 100 page views. The dataset narrows even more—now you’re comparing your resource to roughly 21,000 other similar products on TPT.
And just like that, you’ve skipped the guesswork. The tool spits out a super-relevant benchmark: for a new TPT product with under 100 views and under $100 earned, the average conversion rate is 11.8%. That’s your new “normal.”
Applying the 3-Click Tool: What Does It Mean for Your New Product?
So, imagine you’ve just launched a product. You’ve made a couple sales and racked up a few dozen views. The tool tells you that an 11.8% conversion rate is average for this situation. But maybe you’re sitting at a 10% rate—pretty close, right?
Well, compared to what ChatGPT calls “excellent” (8%), you might have been celebrating. But now you see you’re actually a touch below average.
Takeaway:
Your ‘good’ might not be someone else’s good. Don’t use generic benchmarks—use the numbers that match your product’s reality.
If you’re not using data, you’re basically throwing darts with the lights off. This is why most TPT sellers end up frustrated and waste time tweaking products that don’t really need fixing—or worse, ignoring those that do.
Conversion Rate Varies Greatly Based on Product Context
Pretend I have two products, both with $500 in sales and both sitting at a 10% conversion rate. Sounds identical—until you look closer.
Product A:
- Under 100 page views
- Typical conversion for this group? 16.8%
- My 10% product is underperforming big time
Product B:
- Over 1,000 page views
- Typical conversion here? 6.8%
- My 10% product is outperforming the average
Here’s a side-by-side so it’s crystal clear:
| Product | Page Views | Group Average | Actual Conv. Rate | How’s It Doing? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Product A | < 100 | 16.8% | 10% | Underperforming |
| Product B | > 1,000 | 6.8% | 10% | Outperforming |
Why does this matter?
Because products with more page views tend to have lower average conversion rates. It’s kind of like running a small boutique where every customer is a fan, versus a big-box store where more people browse but fewer buy. If you treat all your products the same, you’ll never know which ones are secretly dragging you down or quietly carrying your store.
Don’t make the mistake of chasing “platform averages.” Context is everything, or you risk fixing what isn’t broken—or ignoring what is.
Who Has Access to the Exact TPT Conversion Data?
Let’s be honest: the only people who know the exact numbers for every product on TPT are the engineers at TPT. The rest of us? We have to piece things together from the data we can see.
The figures I’m sharing come from thousands of real TPT sellers who use the paid version of the Self Serve Data Tool website.
- This isn’t from the free Google Sheet Self Serve Data Tool floating around—though that version is great for a quick peek.
- The website version of the self-served data tool (about $147/year) is where this data comes from.
We’re focusing on products that have at least one sale, so the numbers are realistic—if you counted all the zero-sale resources, the average would drop like a rock.
Want to explore these tools for yourself? Check out these TPT SEO tools designed for sellers or give the free sheet a whirl.
The data pool is wide. It runs from products published this year to legacy resources going back 16+ years. So, the takeaways are balanced and not skewed by a handful of new launches or old blockbusters.
How to Use Conversion Rate Data Practically
Here’s where things get really fun. Most TPT sellers never look past the raw conversion rate. But if you want to grow, you need to break it into two pieces: preview rate and preview effectiveness.
Preview Rate:
What percent of visitors to your product page actually click to preview your PDF? If no one’s checking out your sample, you’re missing that “try before you buy” magic.
Preview Effectiveness:
Of those who do preview, what percent go on to buy? This tells you if your preview is convincing folks to take the plunge.
Think of your sales funnel as a bucket. If water is leaking out, you want to know: is the hole at the top (not enough people looking at your preview), or at the bottom (your preview isn’t selling them)?
Let me walk you through a real example. I’ve got a Growth Mindset Mega Bundle I want to boost before back-to-school season. Here’s what I did:
- Pulled up the product in the TPT dashboard and checked all-time numbers.
- $18,000 in lifetime sales, 20,000 page views, but a conversion rate of only 1.9%. Ouch.
- According to the TPT conversion rate benchmarks, I should be aiming for 8.9% conversion for a product with over $1,000 earned and 1,000+ views. So I’m way behind.
Now, I dig deeper.
My preview rate? Just 6.8%. Preview effectiveness? 27.8%. Translation: Not enough people are even looking at my preview, but those who do are decently likely to buy. The system tells me to fix the product page to get more eyeballs on the preview.
Fast-forward to the past year. My conversion rate climbs to 2.7%—a little better. Preview rate? Up to 26.4%. But now preview effectiveness drops to 10%. My funnel’s leaky spot has shifted. If I check the last 90 days, conversion rate jumps to 5.5%, preview rate skyrockets to 43.8%, but effectiveness sits at 13%.
This data-first approach stops me from guessing. I know exactly where to invest my time: not in the cover, not in the title, but in the preview itself. That’s how you patch the bucket and move more people from browsing to buying.
How to Analyze Your Product Using the Self-Serve Data Tool
If you want to get hands-on with your stats, here’s what I recommend.
First, set up the self-served data tool. You can use the free Google Sheets version for a quick start, but the website version (paid) lets you upload CSV files for different time periods, so you can see trends.
Once you’ve uploaded your data, here’s what to do:
- Pick the product you want to analyze from your dashboard.
- Select the time range (all-time, last year, last 90 days).
- Check your preview rate and preview effectiveness.
- Compare to the suggested benchmarks for your product’s earnings and views.
If you spot a bottleneck—maybe your preview isn’t getting enough clicks, or it’s not converting—you know where to focus. You can find more on Top SEO Tools for TPT if you want to go deeper.
How Product Price Affects Conversion Rate
Here’s a fact: price changes everything. In my store, here’s how conversion rates shake out by price tier:
| Price Range | Avg. Conversion Rate |
|---|---|
| Under $1 | 9.7% |
| $1–$3 | 4.7% |
| $3–$5 | 4.6% |
| $5–$10 | 7.1% (outlier?) |
| $10–$25 | 3.5% |
| Over $25 | 2.3% |
Lower-priced products tend to convert higher, maybe because teachers don’t have to think as hard about grabbing a $1 worksheet. But TPT takes a bigger cut for those small items (transaction fees mean you earn just $0.65 on a $1 product), so the profit isn’t always as shiny as it looks.
If you want to see your store’s conversion rates for your entire store, here’s my process:
- Go to your TPT dashboard and switch the metric to “conversion.”
- Set the date range to the last 365 days.
- Turn off the comparison period for your whole store to clean up the view.
- Change the view to “month” on the right side to see trends.
- Take note of your average conversion rates for your store.
Using Earnings Per Unit to Analyze Price Tier Success
This next tip is gold: stop worrying about just conversion rates, and start thinking in terms of earnings per unit. That’s your take-home after TPT’s cut, per sale.
Example: if you’re a premium TPT seller, you make
- $2.40 on a $3 product,
- $4 on a $5 product, and
- $8 on a $10 product.
- But on a $1 product, after those pesky transaction fees, you only clear $0.65.
Here’s how to use this data:
- Switch your dashboard to show “earnings per unit.”
- Deselect all products, then select the ones in your chosen price/earnings range.
- Change the metric to “conversions” to see how that price tier performs.
This lets you zoom in on groups of products, compare apples to apples, and decide if your $1 resources are really worth the effort—or if you should be building more big bundles.
Understanding Conversion vs Earnings: What Should You Really Maximize?
If you take away one thing from this post, let it be this: a high conversion rate doesn’t always mean you’re making the most money possible. My dollar deals might convert at 10%, but my big bundles (with a 2.3% conversion rate) bring in way more cash overall.
What you want to maximize is your overall earnings, not TPT conversion raet.
So we can pay attention to metrics like:
- earnings per view
- earnings per product
- earnings per view per product.
That means looking at how many products you have in each price group, how many page views they bring in, and how much they earn for every click.
For some sellers, planting lots of “grass seed” with low-priced resources can pay off if you move volume.
For other TPT Sellers, big-ticket bundles do the heavy lifting.
Bottom line: There’s no one-size-fits-all answer. You have to know your own data and what works in your store.
TPT SEO, Search Algorithm, and the TPT Seller Funnel
If you’re serious about making TPT work for you, understanding TPT SEO is a must. TPT doesn’t work like Google. It uses Algolia search, and that means your keywords, titles, and product descriptions have to be on point. It’s not about backlinks or technical tricks—it’s about getting the right phrase in the right spot, and then letting your product’s performance (clicks, previews, conversions) drive you up the search results.
Here’s how the TPT sales funnel breaks down:
- Visibility: Use focused keywords in your titles and descriptions to get found. Test what works by actually searching in TPT (auto-suggest is your best friend).
- Clicks: Make covers, titles, and snippets that stop teachers from scrolling.
- Engagement: Thumbnails and descriptions must show off the product’s value at a glance.
- Preview: A strong preview seals the deal.
- Purchase: If you’ve built trust and shown value, you get the sale.
If you want to see which part of the funnel is weakest, the tools from TPT SEO Resources can help you measure and fix what matters.
Quick Tips for TPT SEO Success
- Put the main search phrase at the front of your product title and description for better ranking.
- Use up to 80 characters for long-tail keyword reach (but keep it readable).
- Don’t repeat the same keywords—TPT only counts them once.
- Double-check what synonyms TPT recognizes; sometimes “worksheet” and “activity” aren’t treated the same.
- Use product previews to “show, not tell” what’s inside.
If you need more guidance, you’ll find actionable tools and advice on Top SEO Tools for TPT.
Wrapping Up: The Real Meaning of a Good Conversion Rate on TPT
The next time someone asks, “What’s a good TPT conversion rate?”—share this video. The right answer depends on your product’s traffic, earnings, and price point.
So, stop chasing someone else’s “good.” Use the 3-click tool, analyze your products with real data, and fix the piece that needs the most love. Your business isn’t average—and your growth shouldn’t be either.
Let’s keep the conversation going. What’s your conversion rate for products under $3? Where do you make the most money in your store? Drop your thoughts on this video, and don’t forget to check out the Good TPT conversion rate resource for more insights.
Ready to take your TPT SEO to the next level? Here’s where to find me. Let’s make those stats work for you, not against you.
