TPT Seller Traffic is Down – Here’s what you can do | TPT Seller Tip E92

Summary:
Mike from SEOTpreneur analyzes crowdsourced data showing that while TPT traffic has declined since its 2019–2021 peak, orders and earnings are only moderately down and conversion rates are actually rising. He explains that serious buyers still come to TeachersPayTeachers, with direct TPT traffic showing the strongest purchase intent.

The video focuses on shifting strategy from chasing traffic to building trust: narrowing your product titles, using real classroom language and keyword insights, improving product descriptions, testing changes, and creating high-quality products and bundles that bring buyers back. The practical takeaway is to optimize for trust and repeat buyers rather than volume.

Video

Transcript

Hey TPT sellers. Is TPT dying?

Here’s some clickstream data showing visits to teacherspayteachers.com over the last 9 years. 2017 is on the left, 2026 is on the right. Dark green means there were a lot of visits that month, and dark red means fewer traffic.

The best month was September 2019. The best years were 2019 through 2021. The worst month so far was June 2025, and we’ve had a few red months over the past few years. Traffic is down.

Some sellers were sold the idea that TPT is easy. Just make resources, upload them, and keep going until you’re making four figures a month. Maybe that was true years ago, but this traffic heat map shows that TPT’s a lot tougher now.

The data isn’t sunshine and roses, but it’s not completely doom and gloom, either. Some people will see this data and say, “”See, TPT’s dying. I give up.”” Other people will see the same data and say, “”Okay. What do I need to do differently?”” So, let’s talk about what to do next.

Hi, my name is Mike Fuchigami, and I’m the host of the SEOTpreneur YouTube community. In this video, we’re going to look at three things. First, what does the data actually say? Second, what does conversion rate look like now? And finally, what should we do differently if the marketplace is shifting?

Make sure to watch to the end because the real question isn’t how to get more traffic. It’s how to get direct TPT traffic to trust your product over your competition and AI spam. There are three ways we can use data to figure out how TPT is doing.

We could look at overall estimated traffic, estimated number of orders, and estimated earnings on the entire platform. All of the data I’m showing today is from crowdsourced mathematical models. So, a bunch of people each contributed a little bit of information, and then we use math to figure out the big picture.

None of this is official TPT data. We’re on the outside looking in and trying to guess what’s happening inside a closed box. Let’s start with traffic data for the last 9 years.

Here’s the heat map again. This is clickstream data, not Google Analytics. Only TPT knows the real number of visits.

Clickstream traffic may be off by a large factor, but that’s okay. We’re not using clickstream data to count the exact number of visits. We’re using it to make relative comparisons to see if things are getting better or worse.

If you want a deeper analysis of clickstream data, check out my last video. The link is in the video description. So, how is traffic doing in 2025?

Estimated traffic was down 10.5%. If we look at only the most recent 12-month window, traffic is down every month year-over-year. So, if TPT land feels more doom and gloom lately, that’s part of the reason why.

But, traffic’s only one part of the story. What about orders? Are people still buying?

Here’s a heat map showing estimated number of orders placed on TPT for the past 6 years. Now, anyone can estimate the number of orders placed on TPT using a simple math trick. Find an order number from January 1st, 2026.

Then, find an order number from January 1st, 2025. Subtract the two numbers and the difference is the number of orders placed that year. Cool, right?

Now, this doesn’t include orders placed through School Access or School Purchase Orders, but it does give us a rough estimate of the TPT marketplace order volume. Estimated orders were only down 1.3% in 2025. Let’s put the heat map showing estimated traffic beside the heat map showing estimated number of orders.

So, based on marketplace orders, it doesn’t look like TPT is collapsing. Traffic is definitely down, but orders are only slightly down. Now, don’t get me wrong. If we look at the last 10 months, orders are down every month.

But, what we don’t know is the average order size. So, now talk about money. If you’ve been following the channel for a while, you know we’ve done an annual survey for the past 2 years where TPT sellers anonymously contributed their annual earnings and their annual store rank.

We then aggregate that survey data and use math to estimate total seller earnings on the platform. Again, this isn’t official TPT data. It’s a linear estimate based on community data.

We only have 2 years of data so far. Modeled earnings were down 4.1% in 2025. So, the data gives us a mixed picture.

Estimated traffic is definitely down. Estimated orders are only slightly down. And estimated earnings are medium down.

Bottom line, the market is tougher. There are fewer customers, i.e. less traffic, but they’re still buying, i.e. relatively stable number of orders. Now, let’s talk about conversion rate.

Estimated number of TPT marketplace orders divided by the estimated clickstream traffic equals the estimated conversion rate. In 2024, the estimated conversion rate was 15.9%. In 2025, the estimated conversion rate was 17.6%.

Since traffic is down much more than orders, this means conversion rate might be rising. In fact, if we look at conversion rate for the past 12 months, conversion rate has been getting better. So, yes, fewer people are coming to TPT, but the ones who are coming are serious buyers.

Now, be careful. Don’t compare your product conversion rate with the clickstream conversion rate in this video. They’re completely different.

Clickstream traffic data includes traffic to both your free products and your paid products, but orders and add to cart behavior only apply to paid products. So, we can’t take this as, well, my product should convert at a certain rate. Instead, we’re looking for relative differences.

Here’s some clickstream data. It shows us the number of visits to product pages across different traffic channels. It also shows us the number of visits to the add to cart page for those same channels.

So, if we compare product page visits to cart visits, we can calculate the add to cart rate. Sorted from strongest to weakest, direct TPT traffic has a 21.8% add to cart rate. This is traffic where people went directly to TPT and used TPT search.

But, it also includes traffic where teacher clicked on a product link in a PDF and went directly to a product page. Referral has a 15.2% add to cart rate. Referral traffic is website traffic like your blog posts going directly to a TPT product page.

It also includes traffic where you have a separate store and you have a buy on TPT button linking to your product. Paid search includes things like Google Ads or Bing Ads. It has a 12.7% add to cart rate.

Paid social includes Facebook Ads, Pinterest Ads, and this has an 11.2% add to cart rate. Organic search is traffic from Google and other search engines. It has a 10.5% add to cart rate.

Email has a 9.8% add to cart rate. And finally, organic search includes things like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest and has a 7.7% add to cart rate. So, if we look at the big picture trend, direct traffic to TPT has the strongest buyer intent signal.

The question now is, how do we use that to our advantage? Let’s chat about what TPT sellers should do differently if the marketplace is shifting. The game has changed.

One, stop chasing traffic. Two, start converting buyers. And three, build products that make buyers come back.

If TPT has less casual traffic and more intentional traffic, then the goal isn’t just getting people on your product page and hoping for the best. The strategy is no longer appearing on the first page for any keyword you kind of relate for, but not really. Instead, the new goal is getting the right buyer onto your product page and helping them feel confident enough to buy a product.

And then, over time, you increase your own direct traffic by creating high-quality products that makes buyers trust you, come back to TPT, and buy more from you. This is about trust, and building trust takes time. How can we get people to trust us?

Here are five things to consider.

Tip number one. First, make your product title, snippet, cover, thumbnails, and product description speak to a narrow, specific customer.

The old marketing adage is true. If you’re selling to everyone, you’re selling to no one. Here’s a simple example. Main idea reading passages third, fourth grade.

And that’s true. This product could be read at a third or fourth grade level. But here’s a targeted title for a more narrow, specific buyer. Main idea reading passages third grade.

The broad title might match more searches, but the targeted title may convert better because it removes doubt for the third grade teacher. The right buyer feels like this was made for me. Yes, some products really do fit multiple grades, but there’s a trade-off.

Broader titles create more reach, but specific titles create more confidence that this product meets their needs. The goal of the product page is to be a slippery slide into the preview and then the checkout. Anything that makes teachers pause and wonder is friction that we should try to remove.

Remember, this is about building trust. If the game is truly changing, if there really are fewer buyers, if the remaining teachers really are high-quality buyers, then our goal is to build trust to cut through the AI noise and the competition. Tip number two.

So now the question is, which keywords do I go after? Great question. Don’t overthink keywords.

TPT SEO still matters. You still need to show up in TPT search. If you don’t have the keywords in the title or description, you won’t show up.

But the keyword game isn’t the whole game. Use the words that you and your colleagues use in the classroom. We can now see the keywords people search for before landing on your product.

Use these keywords to update your product description, thumbnails, and preview and use sales psychology to boost conversion rates for those keywords.

There’s a tutorial video in TPT Seller Kit 28, Keyword Search Analytics Helper, that walks you through how to do this process. There’s even an AI prompt to help you tweak your title and product description based on keywords proven to work for your specific product.

Tip number three, your product description should build trust that one, you get the teacher buyers’ pain, and two, your product solves that pain. Does a generic AI polished product description do that? Maybe, maybe not.

A lot of times when I’m doing an onboarding call for the Pro membership, I’ll ask about a product and the TPT seller will explain the product, why they made it, and how their students love it, and they’re really convincing. And then we look at the product description and none of that’s there. The best product page isn’t AI magic. It’s about building trust.

Are you a real teacher who’s used this in the classroom? Prove it by writing a product description that sounds like you. We want the teacher to think you’re just like me. You get it.

And if this worked for you, it’ll probably work for me, too. AI generated templates are a great starting point. Product description templates that you buy from a course or SEO tool, they can be great starting points, too.

But you still need to go through it and make it sound like you. If everyone is using the same template or AI tool, does that build trust in your ideal customer avatar? Probably not.

There’s an art and science to good copywriting, i.e. writing a good product description. It requires trial and error and paying attention to results, which brings me to tip number four.

Sometimes the only way we find out if something works better is by trying little experiments. Change the product page and see what happens. Now, before you change anything, write down the product title and the product description somewhere so you can go back to it if sales drop.

If you’re in the Pro Community, you can use the Chrome extension to keep track of your changes automatically. Write down the day you made the change and then in a month, look at your data to see if things got better. You can use your TPT seller dashboard to see if sales went up or down after you change your product, but that won’t account for seasonal variability.

Maybe sales went down after you made the change because it’s the end of the school year and people aren’t buying right now. Use TPT seller tip 31, did it work? It’s a game that gives you points depending on if your change worked.

If you don’t get more points, then you might want to undo your change. Tip number five is to build trust with the actual product download. Be so good they can’t say no.

If someone takes a small risk on a $3 product and it works, now they’re starting to trust your lessons. We want them to like you and your products. We want to make it easy to buy from you again.

Include an upsell path to the bundle in the product PDF. Don’t bury it in the terms of use at the end, which nobody reads. Create an introduction page they can skim.

It introduces you, which helps build trust. This person is like me, they get it. And that first page can explain how to use the product. And if they like this, it points them to one clear upsell bundle.

The goal isn’t one sale. The goal is for the buyer to come back at TPT and buy more of your stuff. Build product families, bundles, and curriculum paths.

Direct traffic isn’t something you optimize with one keyword. It’s built over time, like trust. If you’ve made it this far and you’re still watching, you’re my kind of people.

Thank you for spending your time with me. I appreciate it. Creating YouTube videos takes forever.

So, if you want more frequent TPT data tips and TPT SEO tricks that other people aren’t talking about yet, check out my email community. Visit SEOTpreneur.com/email. TPT isn’t dying, but the marketplace is changing.

Traffic’s down, but conversion rate is up. Direct TPT traffic has the strongest buyer intent. So, the question isn’t how do I get more traffic?

The new question is, how do I build trust? How do I convince my existing traffic that my product solves their problem? How do I create products so good that teachers come back and buy more?

Thanks for watching. Make sure to subscribe for more TPT seller tips and tricks, and I’ll see you next time. Bye for now.