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Creating Online Courses - Get Started with CueCam Presenter
YouTube - Watch this post's supporting video.
Thinking about making a course but don’t know where to start?
Keep reading for help deciding what to teach and tips on building a video-ready syllabus using CueCam Presenter.
Why build a course?
Make some money!
Online courses are a great way to monetise your expertise in a way that truly helps people.
You’ll probably only sell one or two, but you never know, you might sell a million!
Find your niche
It’s tempting to do something with broad appeal.
That’s the biggest possible audience, right?
No!
The more general the subject, the more competition you’ll face from big influencers and big companies.
Choose something ultra-specific and go hard. Technical. Detailed.
Talk about something you know everything about, no matter how boring you think it is to most people.
The beauty of the internet is that there is a whole world of other weirdos just like you, and through Google, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, they can find you.
Imagine you just came back from a restaurant inspired by the french pastries.
Are you searching for “how to cook”, or are you searching for “How to make perfect french pastries”?
So don’t make a course called “Cook Like a Pro: Essential Skills for Every Kitchen” .
Make “The Art of French Pastry: Mastering Croissants,Éclairs and Tarts”.
How do you find your niche?
There are no shortcuts.
Anybody offering shortcuts probably just got lucky and what works for them won’t work for you.
It’s the same for entrepreneurs, artists, inventors and big companies.
Keep throwing stuff at the wall until something sticks.
There is no other way.
People who tell you “I can give you a formula for success because I predicted X” are suffering from survivor bias. They were lucky enough to get a hit early on and they attribute it to their judgement instead of accepting that most of the factors were entirely beyond their control.
So the key is to fail fast and fail often.
Start small, take one idea and publish it.
If that doesn’t go anywhere, try something else.
Something small.
Until you have a viral blog post, YouTube or TikTok video, don’t start building your course.
You could waste five years on something only to find out nobody wants it, or the world has changed around you so much that it doesn’t matter any more.
You will probably need to try about 20 ideas before you get a hit.
So collect some ideas and get ready for the rollercoaster ride of expectations smashing into unforgiving reality.
And don’t lose hope, because it’s not just you.
Brainstorming your syllabus
I always start with a spider diagram. Apple Freeform on the iPad is great for this. So is the Notes app. Especially with an Apple Pencil (which you have, because you want to use Video Pencil for your course, right?).
Think about what you know.
Think about how people will find you.
Do you already have an audience who want you to teach them more?
Or do you need to play to the algorithms?
Come up with some ideas.
Think about the structure and chapters.
Have you ever done an online course?
If not, do one now!
Experiments
Once you have a few ideas, it’s time to come up with your first proof of concept.
What video could you make to validate your idea?
Since you’ll be making videos for your course, you should probably make a video for you proof of concept!
How long does it take to produce a video?
Here’s how long it takes me:
| Jumping straight in without a script | 1 month || Starting with a script, multiple shoots, editing | 3 weeks, depending on the production values || Computer-based demo, scripted, edited | 1 week || Live recordings with a CueCam script, minimal editing | 4 hours |
Having spent far too many waking hours editing videos, I much prefer CueCam’s live production.
Editing is a skill that takes time to get good at.
With CueCam, you record everything in one take, bringing in footage, jumping to screen shares, websites, drawing sketches and adding titles, graphics and music all in real time as you go. If you mess up, you can start again, or just pause and snip out the mistakes in post.
You’ll skip all the shot management, synchronisation, layering and perfectionism that plagues video editors, and you’ll get to focus on what you want to teach instead.
Assembling lessons with CueCam
Start a CueCam doc for each of your ideas and see what you can come up with.
You can quickly add cue cards with your notes, collecting images and video clips as you go.
I find the “Generate...” option useful if I need a jumping off point for a segment. This goes to Chat GPT and can be useful for basic points, but I usually find myself rewriting anything that comes out of a LLM.
If you have bigger ideas, you might find it useful to create a structure on your filesystem to organise your documents.
At some point CueCam will get a “Project Navigator” sidebar but for now you can use Finder.
Run through your script
Use CueCam’s Record button to record takes of your script so you can get a feel for the flow, speakability and what sort of thing would be useful to draw on screen.
This will make it easier to judge how to break up your cards and what you should write on them.
Stay tuned
Okay I think that’s enough to get started.
And if you’re thinking of being all secretive about your ideas, please don’t.
Nobody has the time or energy to steal your ideas, they have too many of their own!