Tag: marketing

Side-Hustle Sunday

Published on by Sandy Davis

Welcome to Side-Hustle Sunday! Each week in this weekly round-up I will discuss:

  1. Current updates and metrics across all platforms
  2. A review of the platform I focused on for the previous week (I will skip this the first week and instead provide a brief overview of all of the platforms I post on).
  3. What I accomplished
  4. Lessons learned
  5. Next week’s platform + goals

Platforms:

For several years now, I’ve been exploring and building on a variety of platforms in an attempt to build and audience and establish a consisten income stream.

Each of these platforms have different strengths, audiences, and content types. Here’s a quick tour of where I’m posting and why:

Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT)

What it is: An online marketplace where educators sell lesson plans, activities, assessments, and classroom resources.
Why I use it: I can turn my existing teaching materials into income by sharing them with other educators.
Best for: Teachers, tutors, and curriculum creators in K–12 or higher ed.

Etsy

What it is: A creative marketplace for handmade goods, vintage finds, and—more recently—digital downloads like planners, journals, and printables.
Why I use it: It’s great for selling beautiful, useful products with a strong visual or aesthetic appeal.
Best for: Printables, digital planners, classroom decor, wall art, and niche kits.

Instagram

What it is: A visual-first social media platform used for branding, marketing, and community building.
Why I use it: It’s a great place to showcase behind-the-scenes content, quick tips, and build connections with other creators.
Best for: Growing your audience, cross-promoting products, and showing personality.

WordPress (My Blog)

What it is: A blogging and website platform that lets you publish long-form content, tutorials, and updates.
Why I use it: It’s my content home base—great for SEO, in-depth posts, and linking to my products.
Best for: Evergreen content, long-form tutorials, and resource roundups.

Pinterest

What it is: A visual discovery engine where users save and share ideas—especially for education, crafts, home, and DIY.
Why I use it: My blog and products can gain long-term traffic through visually appealing pins.
Best for: Teachers, creatives, and anyone with visually-driven content or tutorials.

Royal Road + KDP (Self-Publishing)

Royal Road: A free web serial platform where you can publish your fiction one chapter at a time.
KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing): Amazon’s self-publishing service for eBooks and print books.
Why I use them: Royal Road is great for building a reader base, while KDP allows me to sell completed books or journals.
Best for: Writers of fiction, fanfic, low-content books, and serial storytellers.

YouTube

What it is: A video-sharing platform used for tutorials, vlogs, reviews, and educational content.
Why I use it: YouTube lets me reach visual learners and build trust through face-to-face (or voice-to-voice) content.
Best for: Teaching, documenting your journey, and creating content with long-term value.

Course Platforms (Udemy, Gumroad, etc.)

Udemy: A structured, student-facing course platform where you upload video lessons and reach learners through Udemy’s marketplace.
Gumroad: A flexible storefront where you can sell mini-courses, ebooks, templates, and more—directly to your audience.
Why I use them: These platforms help me turn knowledge into income by packaging what I know into teachable, sellable formats.
Best for: Creators with teachable skills or digital products.

My Current Metrics:

Below is a table with all of the platforms I intend to publish on (I won’t be focusing on all of these during the six week challenge, but will update this table every week). As you can see, for some platforms, like Etsy and YouTube, I haven’t started posting products and videos yet, nor have I created any courses, but I’m including them in these metrics because I want you to have a real-time record of my progoress.

Week One: TpT (Teachers Pay Teachers)

This week, I’ll be focusing on Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT), which is a platform designed for educators to buy, sell, and share classroom resources. If you’re a teacher, tutor, or curriculum creator, TpT is a fantastic way to turn your hard work into passive income by listing the lessons, activities, and worksheets you already use in your classroom. It’s beginner-friendly, especially if you start with free tools like Google Slides or Canva to design your products.

My goal for the week is to create one product from scratch and take steps to improve my overall metrics, while at the same time walking you through the process of how I create products using free tools and how I improve my metrics and build my audience.

The Six Week Creator Challenge

Published on by Sandy Davis

I’m starting two new features on my blog. One is Side Hustle Sunday in which I discuss my attempts at content creation and post updates and metrics for each of the platforms I use. I will start tomorrow by providing metrics for each of the following platforms:

  1. TpT (Teachers Pay Teachers)
  2. Etsy
  3. Instagram
  4. Royal Road (web serials) and KDP (Amazon Self-Publishing)
  5. YouTube
  6. Courses (primarily Gumraod and Udemy)

These are all of the platforms I plan to explore as a content creator, my niche being teaching materials and ELA curriculum, plus resources for writers along with my own fiction. I haven’t “niched down” very far yet (ELA and writing content and resources is still pretty broad), but I may do that once I find my footing on these sites and get a sense for how much time and effort it takes to create content for these sites, as well as how much success I have with different types of content. But for the next six weeks I will NOT stray from the content focus areas of ELA Curriculum and Writing, except for this blog, which will feature posts that will be a meta exploration of HOW I create my content and how well my digital products sell online.

Each week will include:

  • A featured platform
  • Free tools to get started
  • A personal goal/task
  • Daily posts: tips, tutorials, check-ins
  • Sunday roundup: updates + metrics

The “Sunday Side-Hustle” Roundup Posts will include:

  1. A review of the platform I focused on for the previous week
  2. What I accomplished
  3. Metrics: views, followers, sales, posts
  4. Lessons learned
  5. Next week’s platform + prep goals

I’m excited to get started on this journey and share with you what I’ve learned! Be sure to subsribe below so you don’t miss a post! It’s free to subscribe and I don’t share your emails with anyone 🙂

The Creator Mindset: Part I

Published on by Sandy Davis

Almost a year ago, I started writing about the Creator Mindset, both as a life philosophy and a course that I’m developing. I’ve spent the past six months exploring content creation resources, taking courses, reading books, and working to improve and expand my own brand and online presence, to great success. I am now starting to put it all together into what I hope is a dynamic and valuable course for content creators, particularly teachers and writers who seek to create and audience and sell valuable content to supplement their lives as teachers and writers (sadly, both of these professions are quite low-paying).

The basic idea is that anyone can become a sucessful content creator by focusing on creating VALUE, and also focusing on creating digital content that they love (because content creation is a hard slog, and you won’t succeed unless you love what you’re doing).

There are TEN basic steps to becoming a successful content creator:

  1. Create a polished website or social account that is your main account (mind is this Word Press blog)
  2. Create daily content for a targeted audience
  3. Connect with your audience and community
  4. Provide free products or consultations
  5. Find a simple process (you need a system to ease creation and publication)
  6. Develop your first “offer” (a product or service that you will sell)
  7. Use an existing platform (TpT, Fiverr, Gumroad, Udemy) or set up your own store
  8. Drive people to your new store by creating a sales funnel (more on how to do this in the course)
  9. Continue creating targeted content
  10. Expand to other platforms by breaking content into “bite-sized” pieces (YouTube shorts, Instagram Reels, Tik Tok videos, Pinterest Pins, etc.)

Subscribe below to get every post!