If you’ve been hanging out in TPT Facebook groups, networking at the seller’s conference, or listening to teacherpreneur podcasts, then you’ve probably heard about Your Data Playbook. Your Data Playbook, or YDP, promises a lot, but it comes with a hefty price tag. In this blog post, I am going to give you an honest Your Data Playbook review. 

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links that earn me a small commission, at no additional cost to you. I only recommend products that I personally use and love, or think my readers will find useful.

(Already know you’re interested? Learn more and sign up for Your Data Playbook here!)

What is Your Data Playbook (YDP)?

We all know that analyzing and understanding our TPT data is crucial to seeing growth and making smart business decisions. 

But between making new products, blogging, creating Tik Toks, and, for many, still teaching full-time, it can be hard to sit down and look at your numbers. 

This is where YDP steps in. Your Data Playbook is a subscription service that pulls and analyzes your data for you and breaks it into actionable steps for you.

Think of YDP as a virtual assistant that analyzes your data and then tells you what to do with it.

Instead of tracking VA hours, sending messages through Slack, or dealing with payroll, you pay for YDP’s service. 

Technically, you don’t need YDP. The data YDP uses is the same data you can pull from your own sales reports and dashboard. 

When you sign up for YDP, you’re not paying for the data. You already have that. You’re paying for a consistent plan of action based on that data.

Who is Your Data Playbook for?

Obviously, YDP is for TPT sellers. However, it’s a pretty robust subscription, so it’s not–in my opinion–for every seller. 

I think YDP is best for established sellers who have been making decent money and working at their store for at least a couple of years. Why?

First, the price tag is hefty for many sellers. I wouldn’t recommend YDP until you make at least $1,000 a month. Until then, you’re better off creating more products and learning how to read your data on your own. 

(If you make less than that and are still serious about getting YDP, consider signing up for the monthly plan. This will give you more flexibility to cancel if the fee becomes more than your business can afford.)

Second, a small store has less data to work with and will benefit from YDP less. YDP does a great job of simplifying data, but if your data is already simple, you’re not going to feel the benefits as much.

A new store with less than fifty products doesn’t have too much data to manage. With a small store, it’s not hard to look through your sales statistics and get an idea of which products need some TLC.

YDP Is the Best Value for Established Sellers

Once you have closer to 150 products, years of data, and multiple bundles and categories, however, the data can become overwhelming. This is when YDP’s ability to cut through the numbers and tell you how to prioritize becomes invaluable. 

So if you’re a new seller or haven’t quite found your footing yet, I encourage you to keep making products and learn everything you can about SEO and creating great covers and thumbnails. I also recommend checking out some cheaper courses, like Kristen Doyle’s SEO Bootcamp. 

But if you’ve been at TPT for a while and have a large store, YDP can help you cut through the overwhelm and maximize your time. 

(Get Your Data Playbook here.)

How Does Your Data Playbook Work?

Once you sign up for YDP, you’ll have to give the company access to your TPT account. This is so that they can automatically pull your sales data every month for you. 

Your first data delivery will take a few weeks to put together. In the meantime, you can jump into YDP’s onboarding platform. Here, you’ll find lots of videos explaining each tool and providing data-led advice about creating TPT listings that sell. 

This is also a good time to download a free piece of software called “Tableau Reader.” YDP uses this software to create the visuals that go with your data. Get it downloaded and set up now, so you can use it as soon as you get your monthly data. 

When your first month of data arrives, it will be in a Google Folder specific to your store. This will be shared with you and I recommend starring it to make it easy to find. 

Inside this folder, you will find all of the tools YDP offers. Now you can start exploring and playing around with YDP’s powerful data collection tools. 

Your Data Playbook Review: Strategy Plans

One of the data tools YDP offers is seasonal strategy plans. These are my absolute favorite part of the program. In my opinion, these strategy plans make the entire service worth the money–everything else is just a bonus!

You receive four strategy plans throughout the year. They each roughly coordinate with a selling season: back to school, winter, spring, and summer. 

These strategy plans analyze your sales from the last year and tell you exactly how to optimize your bestsellers for that season to make the biggest impact on your sales. 

For example, here’s an excerpt of my back-to-school strategy plan for 2022. You can see that for each of my products, YDP gives me some recommended action steps. 

For some products that are doing well, YDP suggests I drive more traffic to the resource. This could be sharing it through emails, a blog post, a social media post, or running ads. 

For other resources, however, YDP recommends I add a preview, update the preview, or update the thumbnail. Some products need a little bit of everything to really convert the way they should!

Every season, your strategy plan will give you these “to-do” items that will have the largest impact. This keeps you focused every time you sit down to work. There’s no guessing about what resource you should be updating, what changes you should make, or what action steps are going to give you the greatest impact. 

As you make changes to your products, you’ll want to make a note of the resource’s data and the changes you make. That way you can evaluate if these changes were helpful or harmful to your bottom line.

Your Data Playbook Review: Performance Hub

The performance hub utilizes Tableau Reader. Inside, you can quickly see year-over-year data for sales, customers, resource performance, and more.

Here’s a snapshot of mine after March 2023. The first tab shows how your store has performed this year compared to the last few.

The second tab (pictured above) breaks this data down into months. You can also see how the rest of YDP’s users faired, so you know how you’re doing against TPT as a whole.

You can also see at-a-glance how individual resources are doing compared to the past year. This lets you know immediately if a product is starting to underperform, so you can take action steps immediately before your sales are greatly affected. 

The performance hub also gives you information about your customers year-over-year. You can see quickly how many customers you’ve had, how many are repeat customers, and if these numbers are growing or shrinking.

Lastly, the performance hub can also show you which resources drive 80% of your profits. There’s a general rule of thumb in business that 80% of results come from 20% of your efforts. 

In TPT terms, this usually means that about 80% of your earnings come from 20% of your resources. The performance hub shows you exactly which of your resources generate 80% of your sales, so you can focus on prioritizing the products that really drive your bottom line. 

(Think Your Data Playbook might be for you? Learn more and sign up here!)

Your Data Playbook Review: Product Conversion Matrix

The next tool is the product conversion matrix. This is similar to the TPT dashboard but on steroids. 

Inside, you can pull information for individual resources, product lines, or your whole store. This is great for evaluating changes you’ve made to resources or deciding which products to work on beyond your seasonal strategy plan. 

Here’s a screenshot of my product conversion matrix after March 2023 for just my Creative Writing resources. At the top is a visual representation of how my top 20 Creative Writing products are performing. 

As you can see, only a couple of resources are performing optimally–the ones represented by the green dots. There are a handful of resources that need better previews (represented by blue) and more that need better covers and thumbnails (gray). 

The red dots represent resources that need both better thumbnails and previews. I clearly have a lot of work to do!

But the visuals of the product conversion matrix make it easy to see which resources need some attention. 

Below the graph are the statistical breakdown for each resource. I can hover over a dot in the graph and the corresponding resource will be highlighted below. 

There are all kinds of ways to manipulate the data on the graph. See how you did last month, how your newest product line is performing, and more!

Your Data Playbook Review: Growth Plan

While the strategy plans are, in my opinion, the most useful of the YDP tools, the growth plan is probably the most fun. 

The YDP growth plan is like a calculator that generates your road to TPT success. 

It pulls data from the last year (or two or three depending on your subscription level and time using YDP). Then, you set an earnings goal for the next year. 

The growth plan will automatically create a plan of action for how you can reach those numbers. It does this by manipulating three “growth levers”–pageviews, average price, and conversion rates. 

It even breaks down every month for you, so you know exactly how many views, sales, earnings, etc. you need to stay on track toward your goals. 

I love checking my growth plan at the start of every month to see where I’m at. Even the months I don’t quite make my goals motivate me to do better the next month, so I can catch up. 

Other Your Data Playbook Tools

As you can see, the tools YDP offers are robust and data-driven. At no point will you look at your data and say, “I’m done. There’s nothing left for me to work on.” YDP always has a suggestion for how to continue growing. 

But there’s even more offered with the service–support. 

YDP’s Facebook group is very active. Members ask questions, share screenshots of their data, and offer case studies of changes they’ve made to products. 

There are also monthly calls with times to hop in and ask about your particular resource or problem. 

If you utilize the group and these calls, you can get specific feedback tailored to you from an amazing group of high-performing sellers and data junkies. 

Your Data Playbook Review Conclusion

In conclusion, for the right kind of seller, YDP is more than worth the money. It’s cheaper than a VA and will absolutely help you prioritize your time. 

If you find yourself overwhelmed with all that TPT requires or avoiding looking at your data altogether, then I urge you to give YDP a try. 

TPT is becoming an increasingly competitive market, and I think we’re going to see that YDP users have an edge. 

If Your Data Playbook is just what you’re looking for, sign up right here!