How To Quickly Create TpT Previews

A lot of Teachers Pay Teachers sellers dread making previews.  After all, making the product takes a long time, and when it’s finished you want to put it up on TpT as fast as possible.  But a good preview is absolutely critical when posting paid products on TpT.  The reason?  Most buyers (yours truly included) will not even THINK about purchasing a product if it doesn’t have a preview.

Creating a preview doesn’t have to be a long or complicated process.  When you get a routine down, you can create a preview in just a few minutes.  Here’s how we do it using PowerPoint:

Step 1 – Create your product.

Step 2 – Save it in 3 formats: as a PowerPoint, as a secured PDF, and finally as jpegs.  When saving in jpeg format, be sure to save “every slide.”

Step 3 – Open a new PowerPoint document.

Step 4 – Choose “insert” and find the jpegs that you just saved that you would like on the first page of your preview.  You can select multiple images at once to create a collage.  Simply hold down the “Control” key and click on each image.

Step 5 – After you have clicked “Insert,” click and drag the corner of the slides (they should all be “selected”) and bring them down to a size that you like.  You can always change or resize them later.

Step 6 – We like to outline our images so that they do not fade into the white background.  You can do this by choosing “Picture Border” and choosing the color and line width that you prefer.

Step 7 – Click outside of the pictures to “deselect” them.  Now you can arrange the pictures how you would like them to look.  We like to layer ours slightly overlapping each other, but do what works for you.

Step 8 – Create a textbox and write the word “Preview” – you can change the font and size of the text.  We like to angle our textbox and put a few of them on each page of the preview.

Step 9 – Continue creating pages for your preview.  We always put the “Terms of Use” page as the last page of our preview.

Step 10 – Save this document as a PowerPoint and a PDF.  You need to make sure you can go back and make changes down the road.

Step 11 – Upload your product and preview to TpT.

Extra Tips:

** Sometimes a full-page of the product will help buyers note all of the specific components on that page.  Other times a collage can emphasize the sheer number or variety of components.  Use what works for your particular product, or use a combination of full-page and collage pages.

Remember that you don’t want your preview to “give away” all of your material, but as long as your product is well secured, you shouldn’t have to worry about the vast majority of buyers trying to steal your work.  We use Adobe Pro to secure our documents and we password protect our previews so that they are not printable.  We have found that using very clear previews really cuts down on the number of negative product reviews.  If a buyer knows exactly what he/she is getting, they should be able to make an informed purchase.

Make sure that each component of your product is included in the preview.  For example, if you sell a product with teacher direction pages, student activity sheets, and a game, be sure that these are all represented in your preview.  You want buyers to get an idea of the quality of your work, as well as see what they will actually be getting when they make their purchase.  Happy buyers = better reviews = TpT snowball effect.  Quality previews are definitely worth a few minutes of your time.

Feel free to leave a comment if you have any questions about the process we use!