Grow with Angie and April: A Podcast for Teacherpreneurs

How has your strategy for Pinterest ads changed since the switch over to everyone having to use the one-tap version of pins to promote? Join us in our Facebook group www.growwithusmastermind.com where we will further discuss this and many topics related to our Teacher Pay Teachers businesses.

Disclaimer: This topic is new for all of us. We have spent the last few weeks learning as much as we can about this topic and we are sharing with you. Please remember to test and analyze your own data to see what is working for you and your audience.

Update: About halfway through the episode, we talked about closeups showing in the dashboard as more than clicks. My ad rep said that the extra “closeups” where we don’t get charged (subtract closeups from clicks) are in this situation: “As far as the swiping through closeups it is only on mobile. if you close up on an ad and swipe to the right it will show a closeup of the next ad on your feed and so on. Some people utilize the platform in this way so you aren’t charged when people swipe to a close up of your ads.” So to confirm, we get charged on the initial tap, but the weird closeups showing up in our data are because of this feature (which we didn’t even know about!)

One-tap ads are the new way that we can promote on Pinterest to send traffic to our blogs and stores. Traffic ads are not new and neither is the one-tap option. What is new, is that they took the option away and now all traffic ads are one-tap.

Before, users would click on your promoted pin and it would open a close-up version of the ad. Users would click again to be taken to the linked website. You would only pay once they made that second click to go to your website.

Now, on mobile, users will click the promoted pin and it will open a close up version of the pin with your website loading at the bottom. There will be a “see more” button users can then click to go to your website or they can just scroll down and the website will open. On desktop, users click on your promoted pin and it immediately takes them to your website with no close up.

This is really worrisome to us as we know users are not used to it and may be shocked it opens right into a website. They may click right back out. We pay for each person that clicks to our website and some people may not even end up seeing the site. Also, if sent right to TpT, we don’t even get our pixels to fire so we may end up getting nothing for our money if they end up clicking right out because they weren’t expecting to leave Pinterest.

We are still testing when exactly we get charged. A Pinterest rep told us the initial click is the charge so we may be paying even if they never open or get to out site. Some of our initial data is showing this *may not* be true so we are keeping a close eye on stats. Keep an eye out for a follow-up show in which we further discuss this topic when we have more data.

We were so excited to be able to record the podcast at the 2018 Teachers Pay Teachers conference! In this episode, we shared our takeaways, and some other attendees came on to share theirs. We also interview Shelly Rees, one of the conference presenters, and the creator of the TpT Focused Success course and group!

Find the Focused Success course & group and save $10 off using our affiliate link here.

The Early Bird registration rate is sold out, but it’s still worth it to register for the 2019 Teachers Pay Teachers conference in Austin!

Join the Facebook group at www.growwithusmastermind.com!

Disclaimer: This post includes information on how we run our own Facebook ads. Always do what’s best for your business, and track your ads carefully to make sure you’re not wasting your hard-earned money!

What works for one person won’t work for another. When we started the episode, Angie & I discussed how shiny Facebook Ads courses can be a waste of money because what worked for that person may not work for you. The best way to learn how to do Facebook ads is to watch videos or take a small course on what everything means in the dashboard – and then taking the time to work towards learning what works best for your business.

Angie shared that when she first started, she would spend daily the equivalent of the price of one sale of the item. Since then, we’ve grown our budgets to anywhere from $10-$30/day, depending on what we have to promote and the size of the audience. The sweet spot lately has been $10/day for one ad. We both closely track our ads to make sure that we’re making money off of them.

We both use Facebook ads that link directly to our Teachers Pay Teachers stores. Our goal is to directly sell products, so we use TpT’s UTM links to track sales from the ads. It’s important to note that the UTM links and Facebook data is a bit delayed, so you want to give it a few days to look at data. Angie has used traffic, engagement, and video ads for selling products, but she closely tracks cost per click (CPC) and sales. I use primarily traffic for this.

Running product ads to a warm audience that has visited your blog, or in on your email list, is a great way to get sales. I also run these same ads to a cold audience. I often split into two ad sets: one cold and one warm.

Angie shared how it’s ok to do an engagement campaign (boost) if you’re tracking data and it’s outperforming the other ad types. It’s all about your data, and what’s working best for you!

Lately, we’re loving collection ads instead of just the usual video, image, or carousal posts! We also mentioned the text overlay tool – which helps make sure that your ad will run properly.

One of our main goals of ads is to share free resources and ideas with teachers on our blogs. We then sell to these teachers using Facebook ads that allow us to push out ads to people that have visited certain pages on our blogs – thanks to the Facebook pixel.

The great thing about this is that you can get super cheap clicks over to your blog with a traffic or engagement campaign, if it’s an awesome post or free resource. Video view ads for great videos you made with free targeted teaching ideas are also a way to “warm up” your audience. During the summer is a great way to get information out to teachers that allows them to gather new ideas for their classroom when they head back to school.

Not sure what to promote to get seen? Blog posts, detailed videos, and free resources that are related to your biggest, baddest bundle are a good choice.

Angie noted that she does really well on sales days because people wishlist items from her store, or visit her store knowing they can find quality resources at a deep discount during the TpT sales.

If you’ve listened to other episodes, you know that Angie and I now both use Convert Kit. We run Facebook ads to get people to sign up for one of our free resources that is valuable to them, and related to one of our big bundles.

You can run a traffic ad to a blog post with an opt-in form on it,

What are you doing to get yourself and your brand back to school ready? Please share with us in our Mastermind group at www.growwithusmastermind.com.

Disclaimer: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. You don’t have to purchase them through our links, but if you do, it helps us pay for the costs of the podcast and blog! 

Summer is a great time to focus on your store. Teachers are, for the most part, enjoying their summer break and they have more time to get to know you. They have more time to peruse social media and search for new ideas on Pinterest. Summer is when we gear up for the new school year. This episode is packed full of tips and ideas to help you get yourself ready for the back to school push.

We committed to doing six blog posts in six weeks over the summer. Our blogs are a big focus for us and we really want to give teachers information and ideas for the upcoming school year. We both were struggling with getting those blog posts out so we created the challenge to help us and you stay focused and motivated to complete the posts. It also gives us more stuff to share on social media. Please join us at www.growwithusmastermind.com. We have already started but feel free to jump right in and get moving on those blog posts!

Angie struggled during the first week to finish that blog post. But once it was posted, it brought a lot of traffic to her blog and she got a bunch of new email subscribers. Yay! It really validated for her how important those blog posts are, especially during the summer when teachers are looking for new, fresh ideas.

April struggled as well but she got it done even with working on a brand new webinar AND having a wisdom tooth pulled! A webinar is great PD for teachers in the summer so if you have a niche in which you can teach others about, a webinar may be good for you!

Pinterest ads over the summer do drop in engagement and the click through rate is much lower in June but that is nothing to worry about. We just remind ourselves that we aren’t paying if they aren’t clicking so we aren’t spending. But also that if they are relevant for back to school to keep them going and they will bounce back come July. So if yours are down, don’t worry!

Even if you are seeing the click but then not seeing the same return on sales, that’s because, we think, people are wishlisting more during the summer and then buying during the back to school sale. April did an experiment and had a super low conversion rate on purchases according to her UTM data BUT she saw her wishlist numbers go up a lot during this time.

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Thinking of quitting your teaching job and going full time TpT?

In this episode, we were lucky enough to have Michaela from Especially Education join us as we chatted about quitting our teaching jobs and working on our businesses full time. Michaela shared with us that the main reasons she went full time was because she was struggling to keep up with her business while teaching in the special education classroom.

Angie’s main reason for going full time TpT was her health. She was getting a lot of migraines during the school year, and it was really hard for her to teach. If you have any health issues that make full time teaching difficult for you, or you care for someone that does, it’s really a blessing to have the option to go full time TpT.

My main reason for leaving the classroom was having twins. I was due the first day of school and was seriously concerned about balancing TpT, school, and them. Teachers who go back to work the first year after having (or adopting) a baby are serious rockstars. My first year was a struggle, even with full time teaching out of the picture. I worked on my business when the twins slept, and when they turned 1, they started daycare so that I could focus on my business. If you’re trying to do TpT full time and have your kids at home, it is a definite struggle. Putting them in daycare was a good choice for them, and for me. They love it.

We all agreed that the biggest struggle with going from the classroom to full time TpT is getting on a schedule and staying motivated. All three of us really struggled the first few months to find a schedule that worked for us.

If you’re not easily self motivated, full time TpT might be a struggle for you.

We miss the students. And other teachers.

I shared that my biggest struggle is really missing that interaction with teachers and students. I have a small closed office because I’m not very productive at home, but it doesn’t allow me to interact with other people like I would in the school setting. Finding people to connect with during the day has really helped me. I talk to Angie daily, and Michaela mentioned that she has another TpTer she connects with in person (and her husband works from home as well).

Michaela has an excellent routine setup. She uses a block schedule and answers emails first thing in the morning (like I do!). In the morning she does blog posts and social media because she works best on resources in the afternoon. Her and her husband meal prep, which is a great way to keep from eating out every day (now that you have the opportunity to do so as a full time TpTer).

Angie just focuses on two main things to work on each day: a resource and one additional thing for the business (photos, blog post, social media, etc). She gets overwhelmed and doesn’t do anything if she has too much on her list. Like Michaela, she also does resource creation in the afternoon. We use a collaborative calendar so that we can hold each other accountable.