Now that you understand what your students will achieve by the end of your course, it’s time to plan your course content.

Downloadables

Course Creation [Word Template]

We have a goal, and we’ll plan the easiest way for your students to achieve it. However, before we start, let’s organize our documents. This course might not be the only course or minicourse you’ll be working on, so let’s create a dedicated folder for all courses.

ORGANIZE YOUR FILES

It’s important to organize your files now to avoid having to move them around later and potentially losing something. Start by creating the necessary folders:

• Create a folder for Courses:
  • Name it “My Courses.”

In this folder, you will have a separate, dedicated folder for each course. Now, create a folder for your current course and give it a short name. In this folder, you will store:

• Documents for your course
• Presentations, if needed
• Video recordings
• Final edited lessons

Within this folder, you will have subfolders for each lesson, and all videos and materials for each lesson will be organized accordingly. This will help you stay organized and save time when looking for your materials.

Now, in your course folder, create a document with the name of your course. Here is a demonstration of my document. It’s designed to visually outline each section of the course, showing the title of each lesson and subtitles to help visually divide the content for better comprehension. The document structure includes highlights that will become graphics in the course. We will cover more details on how to work with this document in the following lessons. For now, download this document template to use for your course.

SCRAPING IDEAS

This technique is also used in book writing: Scraping your ideas. Start by dumping everything in your mind into a document created for the course content. Set aside at least 2 hours to work uninterrupted to get faster results. This will allow you to enter a flow state and work more efficiently.

At this stage, you need to:

• Write down all topics a student needs to know to achieve the result. Don’t overthink; just write down every idea with the goal in mind.
• Write without correcting, finding the right words, or phrasing. This is your brainstorming session, so it doesn’t matter what mistakes you make. Just write.
• Write in the form of instructions: “Do this and that.” This will help you scrap your ideas. When writing instructions, it’s like creating a to-do list for yourself.

The format is simple: one idea per line. The next idea goes to the next line.

What Not to Do:

• Do not correct
• Do not dwell on choice of words
• Do not divert from the goal
• Do not overthink

After this exercise, you should have at least 20 lines. Not all lines will become separate lessons, but you’ll see which lines will be independent lessons and which will be included as subtitles or subchapters.

Scraping ideas is similar to developing a Client Path. Imagine you are explaining to your client the steps they need to take to achieve the promised result.

DEFICIT OF IDEAS

If you find it difficult to scrap ideas from your mind, you might need examples. If you have completed my Product Creation course, you have practiced Competitor Analysis. Check if your competitors have courses on this topic and see what lessons they include. If they don’t have a similar course, perform your Competitor Analysis again.

How to See What Your Competitors Have in Their Course

Course creators often create landing pages to sell their courses, listing the topics or lessons included. Use these for inspiration. Analyze them to see if there are any ideas you want to cover in your own way.

To find landing pages:

• Check your competitors’ websites or social media where they promote their courses.

Tip for Using Facebook:

• Go to your competitor’s Facebook page.
• In the About section, click on Page Transparency.
• Click “See All” to expand the view.
• Select “Go to Ad Library.”

Here, you will see all the ads your competitor runs. Click on an ad to see both the content of the ad and the landing page. Get inspired and work on your own unique content.

By this point, you should have all your ideas written down using the template provided at the beginning of this lesson. In the next lesson, we will practically plan the course, structure the content, and start writing details or even scripting the lessons.