TPT Seller Question: Should I link to my TPT store or website? – Episode 24

Should I link to my TPT store or website? Here’s my TPT SEO Snowball Strategy to increase earnings on TPT and rank higher on TPT Search results. 

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VIDEO TABLE of CONTENTS

• 0:00 Introduction – Question: Should I point my TPT blog posts to my TPT store or website store?
• 0:18 Intro (TPT seller income report – all time)
• 0:22 Welcome – Episode 24
• 1:12 Mental Health Check-in: You do you
• 3:17 Don’t be a donkey. (I’m a donkey) – Choose a strategy
• 5:52 Separate sales from marketing
• 7:09 Don’t do this: focus on one sales platform
• 8:25 TPT SEO Snowball Strategy
• 10:14 Own your domain and website
• 11:51 Next Steps / Summary
• 13:25 Outro (TPT Income Report – Mar 23, 2023) 
• 13:46 SEOTpreneur PRO – Are you in?

Video Transcript

(00:00):
Hi fellow TPT Sellers. A really good question came up on the SEOT preneur forms. The question was, should I point links from my own websites to my TPT store or my store on my website? What do you think? What would you do? Want to see what I would do? Check this out.

(00:23):
Hi everyone. My name is Mike Fuchigami. I’m the host of the SEOT Premier Channel. This is a place where TPT sellers like yourself, we use strategies, effort, Optimize and Tinker, what we do so that we don’t burn out. Because if you’re on the TPT journey, it’s a long journey. It’s not a get rich quick scheme. And eventually, like most people, you’re working as hard as you can and you start to burn out. And then the question is, how do you work smarter and not just harder? And so SEOT is that framework to think about what maybe less reflect on our strategies. Let’s be more intentional with our effort. Let’s Optimize and pay attention to what’s working. Do more of that. And every now and then we Tinker with new ideas. But we recognize that Tinkering is not the only thing we do. We Tinker, we choose, we go. And so that’s what this episode’s really about.

(01:18):
You do you, and I’ll do me, and maybe we’ll hang out and chat as we go up this mountain, but I think the key idea here is I’m going to share some things, and obviously you’ve been around as a TPT seller, you’re seeing what other TPT sellers are doing. Should I start a TikTok account? Should I start my own store? Should I start Instagram? Should I try Pinterest? So many options, no problem, lots of stuff. But eventually you choose the strategy that fits your TPT business. You listen to the information you consider possibilities, but don’t get distracted by what I’m doing. If it doesn’t fit where you want to go and don’t get distracted by other TPT sellers. Just because they’re doing it doesn’t mean you should drop everything and go follow them. Do what works for you. Second thing is we all make decisions based on the information we have at the time.

(02:08):
So there’s no such thing as a bad decision. You make a decision, you learn from it. Let’s go. Okay, so I’m going to present some information in here, and then you might decide, yeah, that’s nice, Mike, I’m going to stick with what I’m doing because it’s working. Awesome. You do. You or I might present some information in this video and you might be like, yeah, I’ve got to make a decision whether or not I want to pivot and try something else because what I’m doing right now is not working. That’s okay too. You have new information and you’re going to make a decision based on that. Third point here is, I think myself included, we need to stick to the strategy. So when you’ve decided on a strategy, yeah, we’re going on this strategy. We look up every now and then to make sure we’re heading in the right direction still, but then we work away at our strategy. So work away at this strategy. But if I’m trying to swim to the other side of the river and I’m swimming and my head’s in the water and I look up and I realize I’m not going in the same direction as I want to be. I need to shift course, but I’m not constantly looking up to see where I’m going because then I’ll never get anywhere. So there’s no right answer. There’s no wrong answer. It’s just, it’s a learning process. We got this.

(03:22):
There’s a parable. The donkey has an option to eat water or to drink water, to eat food. The donkey can’t make a decision and die. Or for us, we can’t make a decision. We take a step towards the water, we take a step towards the food. We take these micro steps in so many different directions, we don’t get anything really done and we burn out and we give up. Sound familiar? So the key idea that I have to remind myself is I just have to choose a strategy. There’s no right option. There’s water in their food. You need both. Choose one, do that, do that well. And once you’ve done that, do something else, right? Choose one, then do the other. So don’t multitask and do everything. Focus sequentially. You can have it all. Just focus sequentially, one at a time. Watch episode 17. A lot of the slides from here are actually from slide 17 and episode 17 will go into this in more depth.

(04:14):
But I’m going to add on to episode 17, if you’ve already seen it. And episode 17 asked the question, should I switch to a different TPT competitor because of changes? And in fact, that question’s really relevant right now because people are saying, IXL has bought TPT. Do I need to switch? Well, I don’t know. I don’t think so, but you do. In that episode, I talk about Alex Ozzi talking about this process, and I’ll go through it, but basically one avatar, one product, one channel, that’s it. I’m selling to one person, one group of people, target market. I have one product and then I have one sales mechanism. That’s how I get them. So more practically, this is the sales funnel, but really what we need to recognize is that TPT, we think of it as one thing, but actually there’s TPT, which is marketing.

(05:04):
There’s a gigantic ecosystem where teachers go to buy stuff. And then there’s TPT, which is the sales mechanism where my products are listed. And then there’s the product delivery mechanism. So that’s what TPT, but it’s actually three separate parts. I currently use TPT for my sales funnel, for both my marketing and my sales and my product delivery. I still build on my own land, but that’s separate from my sales mechanism. I use TPT for my sales mechanism. And if you’re a TPT tadpole or your TPT hamster, I think you should stick to this sales mechanism. But sometimes inevitably, you’re going to start to ask, should I switch and repurpose my content on different competitors? Watch episode 17. It’ll go into that.

(05:57):
The difference is if I go back here, when you go to a different competitor there, dough, you are thinking about it in terms of the marketing, like, oh, I’ll get my product in front of more people, but it comes with another sales mechanism. I just want to keep it simple and have one sales mechanism that I want to use. And then you’re saying, sales are down. I need to do something. Which leads you to the question of should I start my own store? Should I list on a different e-commerce place? Those are all questions for your store. I think, and this is the point of today’s video, I think we need to separate our sales mechanism from our marketing strategy. They are two separate things. So when I talk about building on my own land, I’m talking about my marketing strategy right now, I build on my own domain. That’s my marketing, that’s my hub. That’s where I’m building authority and the kinds of products I create. And right now, I point that to my sales mechanism, which is TPT. If something happens in the future and I leave TPT or TPT leaves me, no problem. Because my hub is where I’ve been building my domain, my marketing place. That’s where I live, that’s my brand. And if I need to change where the sales mechanism is, I can.

(07:14):
Don’t do this. If you can avoid it, this is your marketing, your land, your website, and then you have your TPT and your website store and your Shopify, I think this is the trap of the donkey. The donkey will want to link to TPT and link to the website store and link to Shopify. And remember, the point is don’t be a donkey right now, just focus on one. So if you are in this situation, because we’re all different parts of our journey, and we all made our decisions based on the information we had at the time, and at the time you thought creating a website store was a good idea, at the time you thought listing on Shopify was a good idea. At the time you thought creating a store on Amazon Ignite was a good idea. There’s nothing wrong with that, right? Maybe you’re Tinkering, maybe you’re trying things out, and if it’s working, stick with it. If it’s not working, maybe reevaluate where we are. So if this is you and your website points in multiple places, personally, I would simplify. Don’t be a donkey and choose one option, and that might be Shopify. If you find all of your sales are coming from Shopify, you should double down on Shopify that’s working for you. Go for it.

(08:30):
This is what I’m doing. I am picking one sales mechanism. This is what works for me. This is my strategy. So even though I could have other options, like your website store and Shopify, I’m only pointing to one place. Side note, I don’t have another, have a website store or Shopify. But if you have those things, I think what you should do is focus on one place. So your land is the sales mechanism I’m using on TPT. If you have multiple places like TPT, your website store, and Shopify, I think if you want to get higher sales on TPT, you should point everything to TPT because more sales is a ranking factor for TPT. It has to be because if you had a top seller, can you see TPT saying, well, that product sold a thousand times more than that product. Let’s put that at the bottom of the search ranking.

(09:28):
It doesn’t make sense. So if it’s selling, well, TPT is going to boost it to the top, and you’re thinking, I’m not getting a lot of sales on TPT because the customers from the ecosystem aren’t buying my stuff, or they’re not even seeing the stuff. No problem. I’m going to find my own customers, send them the TPT, sell them my product through TPT. TPT starts thinking, wow, people love this product. Let’s rank it higher so it ranks higher. And in fact, more people see it on the TPT ecosystem and they do like it, so then they buy it more and the snowball continues. So that’s why even if you have other sales mechanisms, this is where I think you need to double down. And because we know TPT search algorithm is based on sales, I would double down on TPT if that’s working for you.

(10:19):
So here’s what I’m doing. This is my strategy. I’m owning the land I build on, which is my website, not Facebook. In person is not me. I don’t control other people, other people’s land. That’s organic search or chat, GPT. I own my domain and my campaign or my website, the domain I control. I use WordPress. It’s lovely. That’s where I’m building my brand and authority, and I point everything to my website because I’m trying to build up my website as the go-to place people recognize the brand, people recognize me, they know what I stand for. They know the kind of content I produce, and then from my website, yeah, you want to buy one of my products, check it out, go to the sales page. In my sales mechanism, which happens to the B TPT, the future proofing part comes because if something goes wrong with TPT and our relationship falls out, no problem.

(11:14):
Everyone’s coming to my land anyways. I built it up on my domain. My domain is recognizable. So then they’ll just find me on my domain and I’ll say, oh, okay, now you can buy my products from this location, wherever that might be, right? So that’s what the future proofing comes from. What we really should do, and I’m not here yet, is we really should be creating waving fans by nurturing that email list and then cultivating that and getting that repeat purchase, and they love it, and then they buy more, and then they love it and they buy more. That’s where the secret sauce is. I’m not there yet. If you are there, I’d love to hear your tips in the comments, but yeah, that’s where I’m heading. Email list recap. You do you, based on the information from this video, you need to decide are you going to stick to your current strategy or are you going to change course? Nothing wrong with sticking to your strategy because I might be a distraction. This might be noise, and if it’s noise, maybe unsubscribe.

(12:19):
I mean, I hate to lose you, but if this isn’t fitting where you are going with your TPT business, then we’re not a good fit. You need to find a TPT guru who fits your style, who fits the way that you work, has ideas that work for you. But if this is working for you, if this resonates with you, then yeah, maybe figure out how are you going to change the strategy? And then once you have that strategy, that’s what you’re going forwards are. And when other things pop up, because we are all distracted by so many possibilities, I just figure out when things come up for me, I figure out, does this fit with my marketing plan, which is build up my website. If it doesn’t, then I stick with building up my website. If someone comes to me and says, Hey, do you want to sell your product? Because once you get sales on TPT, you start to get cold emails from different organizations or different people starting up their stores. That doesn’t fit my strategy because my strategy is to have one single store mechanism and then just promote and develop my land, which is my website. What do you think? Tell me in the comics, and we’ll see you in the next one.

(13:46):
Oh, by the way, SEOT Preneur Pro, I’m so excited. I’m going to show this to you really quickly because it’s a work in progress. We tweak things as we go along, and I tidied up the landing page. And if you have WordPress and you’re in the SEOT Preneur Pro community, once this landing page is complete, I will just give it to you and you can copy paste it into your own websites. But basically, there’s a really funny video here. Effort alone is not enough.

(14:17):
Check it out. Can you relate? I can relate. That is totally me. That’s me as a TPT seller. I’m cranking out stuff on my TPT business. There’s nothing wrong with being this. Every now and then, I like how the hamster stops, looks around to see if they’re going the right direction. This hamster wants to be on the wheel. Nothing wrong with cranking out that strategy. I love this hamster. But anyways, I have eight spots left, and then I’m going to close the door. So I’m opening the doors to the SEOT Premier Pro community for a limited time. Once those eight spots are gone, the door shut. And if you want to get in, you have to go on a waiting list. And then once we have those people, those 10 people inside, yeah, basically I make videos for you. I see what you’re doing. I’m learning from you.

(15:00):
I don’t have all the answers. I love how people are starting to talk with each other in the SEOT Premier community because I’m just one perspective and my voice isn’t greater than anyone else’s voice. I mean, I have a megaphone. I’m on YouTube, but it’s just based on my experiences, what I see. And find the strategies that work for you. Find the people that are like-minded, heading in the right direction. Don’t get into an echo chamber and we’ll see you at the top if you’re interested. S SEOTpreneur dot com slash pro. See you on the inside. Have a good one. Bye-Bye.

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