Grow With Angie And April: A Podcast For Teacherpreneurs

This is the 3rd week of our four-week blogging challenge. We are continuing to build off of our Intentional Blogging workshop from the TpT Conference. This challenge was designed to help you learn to write an intentional post and optimize your blog. It's OK if you missed the conference workshop, this challenge will work for any TpTer. Join our mastermind group for blogging accountability as we work through the challenge: www.growwithusmastermind.com. Week 3 of the challenge is here and we're going to dive into writing an intentional blog post. If you're just joining us for the challenge I encourage you to go back and work through the first two weeks: Week 1: Plan Your Year - We walked you through how to plan out and choose topics to write about for the entire year (which isn't as many as it sounds like). Week 2: Blog Optimization & Prep - We discussed areas of your blog that you should optimize before you turn your focus on directing traffic to your site. Crafting an intentional post This week we a

This is the 2nd week of our four-week blogging challenge. This is building off of our Intentional Blogging workshop from the TpT Conference.  Over the next several weeks, we will focus on helping you with blog optimization and writing intentional blog posts. It's OK if you missed the conference workshop, this challenge will work for any TpTer. If you are just joining us, make sure to check out Week 1 here and join our mastermind group for blogging accountability as we work through the challenge: www.growwithusmastermind.com. Week two of the blogging challenge is all about prepping and optimizing your blog for success. Having quality blogs is important, but you want to make sure your site is set up and ready for when people show up. You want your audience to easily find out about you, see your posts, and find your resources. Let's get started... Blog Optimization with SEO Yes, you want to include your SEO keywords within your blog posts, but blog optimization requires to go even further. You need to think ab

We are super excited to be continuing our TpT Conference workshop on "intentional blogging" in this new blogging challenge. Over the next four weeks, we will focus on helping you with blog planning to be more intentional with your posts. It doesn't matter if you attended the conference or not, we want you to participate! Make sure you head over to our mastermind group for accountability as we work through the challenge together: www.growwithusmastermind.com. Are you feeling motivated and inspired after attending the TpT conference? We hope so! We were honored to present a workshop this year on intentional blogging. The conference is always a great time for gaining new insight and focus to grow your TpT store. But, if you didn't attend the conference, don't worry—we've got you covered! Over the next four weeks, we are embarking on a blogging challenge. If you attended the workshop, you know all about it. If not, that's OK. We are going to provide short podcasts once a week over the next month to walk you th

We get a lot of blogging questions from TpT sellers. And, since blogging is a great way to grow your audience and sell more products we are going to address one of the most popular questions we get. We are continuing the conversation in our mastermind group so head over to share your blogging tips and ask any related questions: www.growwithusmastermind.com. One of the questions that we hear the most about blogging from TpT sellers is, "What do I blog about?" And, we totally get it. Choosing a blogging topic can be overwhelming because there are so many things that you can blog about. So, today is all about blogging with intention. What is intentional blogging? Intentional blogging is when you really focus on your main niche when writing your blog post. You blog about the things that you are an expert on and stick to it. You think about a call to action for each post and intentionally think about how you craft the post to encourage people to act on that call to action. The purpose of writing a blog post can

The TpT Conference is coming up and we are discussing everything you need to know. But, if you still have questions about it, join us in the MasterMind discussion too. You can find it at www.growwithusmastermind.com. It's time to get ready for the TpT conference! We'll be there attending and presenting this year and we're super excited. This is our favorite time of year as TpTers. We get to see friends and meet new people. What we love about the conference April and I have the same two things that we love the most about the TpT conference—the people and the renewed energy. The people At home, most people don't really "get" what we do. But, when we arrive at the conference, we are surrounded by people that "get it". They understand exactly what we do and what we deal with, both the good and the bad. Your significant other or family and friends don't really understand how frustrating it is to get a question through the Q&A. They don't know the feeling you get when you hear that notification. The renewed e

There is a lot to wrap your head around when building a TpT business. Today we are taking a break from business strategy and honoring TpT spouses. But, if you are looking for answers and tips for your business, head over to our MasterMind group: www.growwithusmastermind.com. If you're building a TpT store, you realize how much work really goes into it. It's not a get-rich-quick type of business (not that those really exist anyway). It takes a lot of time and effort whether you are still teaching in the classroom or not. And, then you add all of your regular life to-do's into the mix and it can feel like something's got to give. Enter, the TpT spouse. TpT spouses are amazing! They do a lot and don't usually get a lot of credit. They support us in our business goals, listen to us stress about things they might not understand, help free up our time so we can work on our business, and some even start to work in the business with us. So, April and I decided that it was time to honor these spouses. We brought on

Selling online courses is a great way to add an additional income stream to your TpT business. If you feel this is outside of your wheelhouse, you won't want to miss this information. We are continuing the conversation in our Mastermind group. Head over there to share what questions you have about creating an online course: www.growwithusmastermind.com. Selling online professional development courses is a big part of my business. Courses and getting teachers to use your resources go hand-in-hand. You can reach a large audience by combining the two. And, if you're getting a lot of questions about how to implement your resources, it's an effective way to answer questions and teach the information. I'm going to share what I've learned throughout the past few years of online course creation, but first, here's a little of my story. A little of my own story creating an online course Two years ago I decided to put together a video series about project-based learning. I released the first video and started getting

We've talked in the past about engaging your email opt-in list. Today we are going to dive into how to build your list. We are continuing the conversation in our Mastermind group. Head over there to share your two cents and hear what others are saying: www.growwithusmastermind.com. This definitely isn't the first time that we've mentioned email lists on the Grow with Us Podcast. We've talked in the past about email sequencing, which you can find in the following episodes: Setting Up Angie's Email Sequence - Episode 5 What We Send to Our Email Lists - Episode 6 Email List Building with Guest Jennifer Findley - Episode 15 On this episode, we are going to dive head first into email opt-ins. We had Sarah from Biz Template Babe on the podcast and discussed everything from what you should include in your opt-in to how to create templates to make it even easier. You need to be able to get people on your email list in order to have the rest of it matter. For email, both Angie & April use ConvertKit. If

Facebook is a powerful way to reach your audience. However, you have to know how to find your audience. Join us in our Mastermind Group as we share some of the audiences that we use and the goals we have for testing our new audiences. If we're all being honest, as TpTers running Facebook ads can be a little frustrating because we are limited in what we can do. We can't run conversion ads and we can't see all the data that we'd like to see. However, there are still plenty of ways that we can be successful with Facebook ads. The key is creating the right audiences. We aren't claiming to be Facebook experts here, but we're going to share with you what we have found has worked the best for us along with what we look for when creating new audiences for our Facebook marketing efforts. A few terms to know Before we jump into our tips we want to address a few terms we're going to use.  This might be stuff that you already know but  I want to clear up a few key terms we are going to talk about just in case anyone is

The legal side of running a business can be confusing. As TpT sellers there are a lot of questions about what we should be doing and shouldn't be doing that come up in our Mastermind Group. We are addressing those today and if you want to continue the conversation at www.growwithusmastermind.com. We know the legal side of running your business is a heavy and serious topic. But, we also know it's so important to help you grow your business that we address these types of topics. So, we brought a guest on our podcast to help answer all our TpT seller legal questions. Brittany Ratelle is an attorney who helps creative entrepreneurs build more confident businesses. She provides 1:1 custom legal services and digital products/education to help creative entrepreneurs get a handle on the business side of their growing empires. She believes in the power of cute office supplies AND good contracts and hosts a weekly podcast, Law & Wit: Creative Counsel for Entrepreneurs, with business tips and inspiring founder sto

We recently asked our Mastermind group what they wanted to know about using chatbots. The questions that came in were all over the board from basic to really complex. So, we did our best to address them during episode 25. If you aren't already in our group, we invite you to join us at www.growwithusmastermind.com.  Let's start at the very beginning. A chatbot is basically when you have the computer program, or bot, set up to interact with your customers and followers. The bot is programmed to give certain responses based on what the person it's interacting with says. You will see this on a lot of websites when the chat box pops up. But, you'll also see it when you go on a Facebook page for a major company and the Messenger box pops up right away. A chatbot will interact with you to answer your questions the best that it can. And, you can eventually make it to a real person, but many times the bot has the answers that you're looking for. For example, you can program it to say things like "How may I help you?

We recently asked our Mastermind Group what questions they had about finances as TpT sellers. We received lots of questions about both personal and business finances. If you aren't already in our group we encourage you to join in the conversation at www.growwithusmastermind.com. Today we brought a special guest on our podcast to talk about something that isn't discussed much among TpT sellers—finances. Josh Bannerman is a Certified Financial Planner at Bannerman Wealth and he is the co-host of the Stacking Benjamins podcast. He has 20 years of experience. And, he works with over 120 families in 30 different states. We were super excited to have him as a guest. Josh did an amazing job of answering our questions. We are going to do our best to sum up his answers, but if you want to learn more about handling your finances we urge you to listen to the full podcast. As current or former teachers our retirement planning has always been handled for us by the school district. When it comes to the money you make f

Today we are going to jump into how to use Instagram to connect with your audience and best practices to build your brand through the platform. If you want to continue the conversation join us at our Facebook Mastermind group www.growwithusmastermind.com and let us know what's worked for you and what questions you have. If you haven’t already, join our group to find the support and accountability you need to grow your TpT business.  April and I were really excited to have Jacqueline Ortiz from The Little Ladybug Shop come on the podcast to share with us her Instagram tips and trick.s Jacqueline's had a lot of success growing her brand and followers through the platform. A little of Jacqueline's Instagram story Jacqueline started doing TpT back in 2015. At that time her focus was on Pinterest and FaceBook. However, she started to notice a shift for bloggers and sellers starting to use Instagram. She's found that a lot of teachers are now using the platform a lot like Pinterest. It's a faster way to sc

Today we are going to dive into Pinterest features that are either newer or ones that many people don't seem to know about.  We'd love to hear in our Facebook Mastermind group www.growwithusmastermind.com what's been working for you and what hasn't on Pinterest. There has been lots of chatter recently about some of these features. If you haven’t already, join our group to find the support and accountability you need to grow your TpT business.  But, before we jump into out talk on Pinterest we have some exciting news to share—we're going to presenting at the TpT conference this summer in Austin, Texas! We will be offering a workshop at two different times on the final day of the conference where we will be doing a 30-day blogging challenge. We are going to focus on helping you get organized and ready to go with your blog. So, look for us in July! Now on to Pinterest... Pinterest features for your TpT business Today, we're getting into a lot of Pinterest features that are either fairly new or ones that just do

We are a few weeks into 2019 and it's that time of year when everyone's focused on goal setting and planning (or trying to make sure they're still sticking to their goals)! Last month we talked in our mastermind Facebook group www.growwithusmastermind.com about everyone's goals for the year. Planning and getting organized is the key to achieving those goals. If you haven't already, join our group to find the support and accountability you need to get it done.  Angie and I are coming in strong to 2019! We both ended up taking pretty much the entire month of December off from our TpT businesses. Some of it was intentional and some was due to all the illness that floats around this time of year. But, regardless of the reason, it gave us the break we needed to clear our heads, do some goal setting, and create plans for the new year. Sharing our goals This year I have several goals. I'm working to switch from working full-time to working part-time. That doesn't mean I want to scale back my business, just the time

2019 is quickly coming which has us thinking about product lines for the new year. So, April and I decided to chat about the strategies that we use for promoting our new products and product lines. We both worked on trying new things this year and have had great results. Here are our favorite, and most successful, strategies: You want to build hype before you release products April and I both admit that we used to stay quiet about the products we were working on. We were worried if we mentioned it someone else would swoop in and steal the idea. But, I'll be honest—getting your audience excited about what you're going to be releasing can really help. In the past, it would take 6 months to a year for our new products to really start gaining traffic. But, it's because we were just posting them to our TpT sites and leaving it at that. It's good to get traffic eventually, but that's not what you want when you've spent time on a product line. Some of the things that I released this year were year-long resources th

We've made it to the final episode of our blogging series! We've already covered the Blogger vs. WordPress debate and SEO strategy. Blogging is a highly effective way to grow your TpT business. That's why we've been working to answer some of the most common questions about starting and running a blog. Our series is ending after today, but we'd love to keep the blogging conversation7 going with you. Join us over at our Facebook page www.growwithusmastermind.com . It’s a great place to get support and advice when you are struggling to build your Teacher Pay Teachers businesses. Some links in this post are affiliate links. We appreciate your support of the podcast!  Ok, we know there are some of you that are glad this series is coming to an end because you just don't want to buy into the idea that running a blog could help you grow your business. Angie and I completely understand. But, we have a little proof to help convince you that it's worth your effort. Angie's recent success If you've been following along

We're on to round 2 of our blogging series! Blogging is something most of us know we should be doing, but struggle to stay on top of. There are so many questions such as “what platform should I use?” and “how often do I need to blog?”. We are going to address these questions throughout our series, but join us in our Facebook group www.growwithusmastermind.com  to start the conversation now. It’s also a great place to get support and advice when you are struggling to build your Teacher Pay Teachers businesses. I think there is one thing that more bloggers new and old seem to have questions about over anything else—SEO! We know it's important, but it seems so overwhelming to figure out what we need to do. Just in case you aren't familiar with the acronym yet, it stands for Search Engine Optimization. Basically, it's what gets your website, webpage, or blog post to show up in the search engine results. A little of what we discussed on the podcast could apply to your TpT store, but what we're really focused on

Blogger or Wordpress? That is the question! We promised that a Blogging series was on the way, and here it is! Blogging is something most of us know we should be doing, but struggle to stay on top of. There are so many questions such as "what platform should I use?" and "how often do I need to blog?". We are going to address these questions throughout our series, but join us in our Facebook group www.growwithusmastermind.com  to start the conversation now. It’s also a great place to get support and advice when you are struggling to build your Teacher Pay Teachers businesses. Ok, get ready everyone. Today we are addressing the popular debate: Blogger vs WordPress. We were a little nervous to record this episode of our podcast because we've witnessed this debate get a little heated between Blogger fans and WordPress fans. But, the bottom line is there is no one-size fits all solution. We were excited to have Danielle Knight from Study All Knight join us for this conversation. Danielle has used both platforms

Being a teacherpreneur comes with challenges. Do you ever struggle with feeling like a failure because you failed to meet the goals you set for yourself? Or, maybe your sales have dropped from this time last year? If so, you aren't alone. Join us in our Facebook group www.growwithusmastermind.com  after checking out this podcast. It's a great place to get support and advice when you are struggling to build your Teacher Pay Teachers businesses. We'll be honest. We want you all to think that we are awesome sellers and that things always go our way. But, that's just not true. We've had failures and flops. We have times when our sales drop. It happens to the best of us. And, we have found that it really helps us to talk to each other during these times. It's a good reminder that we aren't alone and it isn't just happening to us, but it's something that everyone experiences from time to time. We thought if this is something that we struggle with at times there's a good chance you do as well. So, we are addressin