Data collected from Tes Author Facebook group

Hi @TES Resource Team,

In the Tes Author Facbook group we've been having lots of chats and decided to collate and present some of our shared issues so you guys could see what we'd really like worked on as authors. These are issues we feel are barriers for many of us making the most of the platform at the moment. There are 178 members in the group and although not everyone cotributed, there was lots of agreement on the issues raised below.

They're largely technical things.

As you know, many of us would like to communicate more in these forums but are waiting for them to be set to private, so I said I'd post it on behalf of the group.

1) The dashboard amounts still don't add up - this could be an issue for anyone who relies on their monthly totals to work out how much tax they have to pay. Potentially a bad apple could also use this to show they were due to pay less tax - so we really feel this is a dodgy issue that needs sorting asap.

2) In the 'sales' part of the dashboard, it regularly says 'resource not found' for the sales. No amount of refreshing changes this. This means no one is ever sure of what all the items are they have sold each day, meaning they don't know what is popular and therefore don't know what to promote. This is a daily occurance, sometimes happening several times a day for many authors.

3) There have been instances recently where there have been issues with a resource where authors have been emailed and told to amend it or it will be deleted in 7 days. Many of these instances reported in the group have been technical in nature and beyond the authors' control - yet the 7 day notice can prove really challenging if someone is at work everyday, or in one of the cases, on holiday for a fortnight.

4) Following on from number three, when resources are set to draft, they disappear from all the bundles they are in and don't reappear when restored. Author would much rather have the facility to set to draft themselves and feel this would also lessen the workload of Tes staff.

5) It seems to be arbitary which resources are deleted when a company - let's say Top Trumps (this wasn't the example used in the group), reports an infringement - like a couple will be deleted and hundreds of other products will remain. This was also commented on from an author's persepective - say if another author has dozens of copied resources in their store, that are yours, each one has to be reported individually.

6) For roughly six months now, the data on mobile view has just read as 'zero' for yesterdays sales.



SUGGESTIONS:

1) Authors have said they would definitely like a site wide sale.

2) Some authors also want ways to pay to promote their resources on Tes.

3) Authors have said we need a data set we can compare for 'this time last year' as having one that stops 11 months ago is unhelpful as no comparisons can be drawn.

4) Following this, they said they want to see their yearly total of earnings, not the one combined with Tes (although appreciate this is shown due to the boundaries of the royalty levels).

5) There was also a suggestion of deleting some of the very oldest resources that haven't been bought for years / are out of date - e.g Christmas 2015 Quiz etc.

6) Authors really don't like the distracting large boxes of other authors resources when someone clicks on their previews.

7) Authors still really want the basket. Please can we have a date of when this will happen?

8) There was going to be a school resources hub for schools to make sales being implemented, we'd like to know what is happening with that, as license sales have seen decreases.

9) Authors would like to see less large adverts competing with their products appear on the search / main page.

10) Authors feel like they can't be heard as much anymore, as they need a private space to communicate as a group with Tes and this isn't private. This would also lesson the amount of emails staff receive as we all experience the same issues.

I hope I haven't missed anything anyone's said, but if I have and they don't want to add it themselves I'll come back and add it in later.

Thanks for reading and we really hope you'll work on these for us

Kind regards,

Tes Authors from the Tes Author Facebook group.

 

Great ideas!

 

Thanks Emily for taking the time to do this

In addition, why does the royalty balance (and the sales that have contributed) seem to go wrong so regularly? Balance goes up, but royalty stays the same and no sales have registered on the sales section of the dashboard. Minor peev, but so frustrating when you can't see what's sold. For example, if authors knew a particular resource was selling well on a given day, they could promote that resource on social media (and drive more traffic to Tes)

 

It's stopped registering sales completely now. Since yesterday morning.