Nicole Quintana-Wolf

Using AI to create parts of your course can be a speedy and efficient way to get organized and ready to launch a final product. With Teachable’s integrated AI course generator, you can easily have a concise course outline in seconds.

While there are many different tools that can be specifically beneficial to creators, it’s also true that the genius of AI is limited to the depth of instructions that it’s given. It’s a skill in and of itself to know what questions to ask and which directions to give the AI so that it produces the best results possible. If you want to improve the quality of its output, then look no further than the prompts that you’re inputting. Luckily it’s pretty straightforward to learn how to up your prompt game. Read on to find out how!

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Best practices for using AI

If you’ve never used AI before, you might not know what to expect. Here are our tips for creating the best prompt possible for AI.

Get clear on your intention

Having a specific goal in mind for what you’re creating is essential for you and the AI tool you’re using. What do you aim to teach with your course? What value will your students gain from this course? What specific skills or understanding will they walk away knowing after completing the course? Consider these questions when setting your intention.

Share your intention with the AI

This is a simple but important step. The more information that you include in your prompt, the more on-target the output will be. AI is looking for your intention, so clearly stating it is a helpful way of getting more specific results. This can be as simple as starting the prompt with “Today we are creating a course outline that focuses on XYZ.”

Be as specific as possible

Specificity is key to helping the AI understand what you’re looking for. For example, if your course has to do with teaching others how to improve their mindset you can get very specific. Instead of prompting with “Write a course outline about improving your mindset” try using something like “Write a course outline that explains what mindset is, how it impacts your daily life, and how to replace negative subconscious beliefs with positive ones.” This will provide an output that gives you a lot more to work with.

Details, details, details

It’s likely you have some idea of how long you want your course to be. So include what subtopics are essential to include, and/or any niche-specific language that needs to be included. Tell the AI all of this in your prompt!

Double-check your prompt for errors

It may seem obvious, but checking for spelling and grammar errors can go a long way in ensuring that the AI is receiving information that is as clear and concise as possible.

Revise and revisit

Keep in mind that you can revise the first or second (or more!) prompts that you input to get a more specific and aligned output. Play around with tweaking the prompts and you’re likely to get even better results. You can do this by changing verbs, rephrasing certain words or sentences, and adding more details about the overall goal or intention of the course.

Example prompt for using AI

You can input as many details as you want, but make sure to include these essentials:

• Who is the course for? (You can include a problem that your audience is experiencing that the course will help solve)
• What is the overall aim of the course?
• What are the learning objectives that each module will cover? (It’s okay if you don’t know every single one!)
• Optional: length of course and any niche-specific language that you’d like to include

For example, instead of inputting “Create a course outline for doing a yogic headstead” this prompt will give you a much more concise output: “Create a course outline for a 4-week course for beginner yogis on how to build muscle tone and balance so that they can do a headstand. This includes learning poses that increase balance and strengthens the core muscles. It also focuses on the mental aspects of overcoming fear to practice the inversion.”

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Try it yourself

As with anything new, learning to hone your prompts is a skill! Keep at it and before you know it, you’ll be generating outputs that were better than you could have imagined on the very first try. Then, take what AI gives you and make it your own so you stay true to your brand.

Cultivating an engaged community is beneficial for so many reasons. Besides creating a space for your audience to connect with each other and expanding your content and products’ reach, it’s also a way to gather valuable feedback. Your audience’s insights can be the roadmap that can help guide you to your next big launch to boost sales and maximize the impact you’re making for your students.

The key here is to know what feedback to look for, and how you can incorporate it into the creation process. Let’s dive into what types of feedback to look for, and how to use it for everyone’s benefit.

Types of feedback to look for

Questions

The first and most obvious form of feedback that creators frequently receive is questions. This could relate to any “how-to” component of your niche. Or it could be a student clarifying a detail that was presented in your course, or a request to further explain something that you’ve shared.

Pay close attention to what kinds of questions are being asked, and any patterns or similarities that you’re noticing between questions. Understanding where your audience’s mind is and the obstacles they’re facing can give great insight into where you can provide more value through your content and products.  

When people see themselves in your content

This type of feedback could show up as comments saying “That’s so me!!” or “I do this all the time!” Anything along those lines indicates that your audience is identifying with your content. This kind of feedback usually is in relation to content that highlights challenges or common experiences of learning a new skill or entering a new niche.

If you don’t get feedback like this, it might be worth it to evaluate your content mix. Content that highlights some of the common obstacles folks might face when diving deeper into your niche could be a good way to do this.

These types of comments are important to note because they can indicate what paint points you can address in future products. Notice what areas tend to get the most feedback. In other words, what levels or steps of the process in the niche you teach tend to trip people up the most? Let your audience tell you and then create products based on that.

Praise

Getting positive feedback on a piece of content can be a great ego boost, and it can be an opportunity to give your audience more of what they want. As with any type of feedback, take note of what commonalities or patterns you notice with content that gets praise.

Take special note of what exactly is getting attention in the video, post, or email. If it’s certain information you offered or the way you presented something, think about how you could go deeper with this aspect of your niche. Could this subtopic be made into a masterclass, or perhaps spread out into a downloadable PDF? Take note of what’s resonating with people and get curious about how you can offer more of it!

Criticism

This is sometimes really hard to receive and it’s inevitable as a creator too. Not everyone is going to love or agree with everything you post or every product you offer, and that’s okay. This feedback might sometimes be silly or surface-level. When that happens, feel free to block the person, delete the comment, and keep it moving.

However, some of this feedback can actually be insightful once the sting wears off. If someone is commenting to ask you why you’re qualified to be sharing this information, this can be an invitation to stand confidently in your expertise. If they just disagree with your methods or perspective, take it as an opportunity to speak into doubt that other people could be having as well. As with all feedback, notice the patterns over time to see if that could be worthwhile to include in your next product.

What types of spin-off products should you create?

Once you have data gathered from your audience’s feedback, it’s time to figure out how to use that in a positive way. Here are some options on how you can transform comments and emails into products that deliver.

Courses (including mini-courses)

Never underestimate the power of creating another course or even a mini-course! These don’t have to be brand new content but rather can go deeper into an area that you’ve noticed students may have been struggling with or just need more time to practice or implement. This is where the beauty of mini-courses comes in because it could be as simple as making an additional video on a subtopic with an opportunity for practice and then including it as an add-on, or at a discounted price for students who are already enrolled in your other courses.

Coaching

If you notice a lot of feedback that’s very nuanced or focuses on specific situations that are unique to each person, it could be a good opportunity to look into offering coaching. In this 1:1 or group format, you can really go deep with people to address what’s coming up for them specifically. This is also a great option if you notice the same people in your community posting questions and asking for your insight—they could be a great option to pitch your coaching services to those that are looking to deepen their craft with personalized guidance along the way.

Digital downloads

There are so many directions you can turn in for digital downloads—whether it’s a PDF workbook, guided audio, printables, a podcast, an ebook, or prompts for further exploration, the possibilities for adding more value (and boosting sales) are practically endless. The great aspect of digital downloads is that you can create products on the fly and put them at a very accessible price point so that people who aren’t ready to invest time or money into a whole course can still get value from your products. You can even take a look at the most commonly asked questions you get, and use that as direction to create a guidebook or extra practice for your students to hone a skill. Get curious about how you can provide value through various mediums and then offer it as a digital download.

Live events (including masterclasses and workshops)

Whether it’s in-person or virtual, hosting live events can create a lot of excitement and a deep sense of community within your niche. These are especially beneficial because you can interact with and respond to your audience in real-time, getting a deeper look at what they might be struggling with or what guidance they could benefit from. This can especially be the case if your niche involves a step-by-step process or aspects that are experiential. Hosting a live event, like a webinar, allows people to learn each step of the way. You can even record these and then offer the replay as a downloadable for future students.

Creating your next product

Whatever spin-off product you decide to create, keep in mind that it’s about going deeper into your niche, and branching out to the sides. You don’t have to create brand-new material or start entirely from scratch for it to be a worthwhile endeavor for your audience. Pay attention to what they’re saying as a form of data collection—it’s okay to embrace the occasional ego boost, too!

Whether you’re excited about the fast-developing AI field, hesitant about the new tools, or a little bit both, it’s clear that AI is here to reshape how creators work. While these tools are rapidly developing and improving, there are already plenty of AI tools that can streamline processes for you as a creator.  That gives you more time to do what you do best—create! Read on for the round-up of the best AI tools that are currently available for creators.

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10 AI tools for creators to try

Beautiful.AI

This platform enables you to create eye-catching slides that look like they were made by a graphic designer. It can even incorporate your brand elements and colors. All you have to do is input the content, and Beautiful.AI will create the rest! This is perfect if you’re offering downloadables with Teachable, or want to have stunning slides as a part of your video content.  

ChatGPT

Perhaps one of the better-known AI platforms, ChatGPT can be a really handy tool for creators. It can help with everything from finding inspiration for your niche, organizing your curriculum, or sourcing ideas for structuring your content. You can also ask it for information about optimizing student performance and completion rates!

That chat function is set up for users to input a question or request and receive information back that’s crowdsourced from the internet. You can even use it when you feel stuck with how to phrase something or when you’re looking for a specific piece of information.

Copy.AI

Copywriting can be one of the most challenging components of being a creator but with Copy.AI it doesn’t have to be. If you’re feeling like you’ve hit a wall with writing or you’ve run out of good ideas, try using a tool like this one. Simply input what information you want to have a copy for, whether it’s an ad or on-brand text for your website, and this AI tool will spice it up and create a full-blown copy instantly. There is a free plan, so you can try it for yourself with basically no risk at all.

Soundraw

When creating short or long-form video content, music is a must to really set the tone. Finding that perfect track can be a time-consuming task, not to mention finding one that is royalty-free. Soundraw offers a solution by creating new music for you on the spot. You can input the type of music you want and which instruments it should feature, or the mood you want to set, and viola—royalty-free music at a moment’s notice!

Podcastle

Editing audio can be incredibly time-consuming, so why not get some help from AI? With Podcastle, all you have to do is upload your content and the AI will produce a professional-sounding edited version in a snap.

DALL – E 2

No more scrolling endlessly for stock photos or graphics, instead you can use the AI image generator DALL – E2. Describe what kind of image you want and the AI will create it for you. You can even get more specific with each result until you have exactly what you want.

Legal Robot

Being a creator means playing many roles, including stepping into the role of small business owner frequently. That means sometimes dealing with contracts and legal jargon that can be difficult and time-consuming to dissect. Legal Robot is AI tool that translates legal jargon into easy-to-understand text so you can navigate through it much faster.

Looka

Creating a cohesive brand and logo is an integral step to making your brand recognizable, authentic, and trustworthy. Creating that from scratch, even with using a design platform like Canva, can be a tall task for those of us that aren’t graphic designers. The tool Looka will create your perfect brand and logo based on what you’re looking for!

Synthesia

The tool Synthesia is a great way to create beautiful social media content that includes stock video, voiceovers, and captions. There’s even a feature where you can choose an avatar to act out the content you want to have, and they look incredibly life-like.

Teachable’s Course Curriculum Generator

Maybe you have an idea for a course, but fleshing out the content and organizing the curriculum feels like a tall task. Use Teachable’s course curriculum generator to input your course topic and get an outline instantly. The generator uses the same AI behind ChatGPT to help you get started creating your course!

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Using AI on your creator journey

With any AI tool, it’s imperative that you’re clear about exactly what you want. The more specific you can be, the more closely the results will match what you’re envisioning. As you learn to incorporate new tools as a creator, remember that instructing the AI is a skill in and of itself—don’t get discouraged if you’re not seeing exactly what you want yet. Keep practicing and before you know it, these tools can help you seriously uplevel your content and courses.

Remember, AI is not made to replace you, it’s simpy a tool to help you save time and work smarter. What you’re making and producing wouldn’t have the same heartfelt touch without you. At the end of the day, your audience wants the special sauce that only you can provide—something AI could never replicate! The best way to leverage these tools is as a starting point, then you can edit the output to personalize it to your voice and brand.

If you want to increase the sales number on your Teachable dashboard, it doesn’t always mean you have to go crazy with advertising or that you have to spend all of your working hours churning out content. While marketing and content creation are important, there are also different ways to increase visibility to reach your target audience and connect with them so they can get a good glimpse of what you have to offer.

A huge part of making more money with your online course relates to increasing your levels of visibility and audience engagement. When this is the case, enrolling in your online course becomes a no-brainer. As a creator, it can be easy to feel like you’re being repetitive. And the pressure to come up with brand new fresh content constantly is real. But it’s very important for your audience to hear about your course multiple times.

According to the rule of seven, a potential student will need to hear about what you’re offering at least seven times before deciding to enroll. These tips will help you enhance your content creation process in order to easily make more money online as a beginner.

4 ways to increase visibility and grow your audience

Host live events and repackage the content

Put together a workshop or masterclass that students can access at an affordable price. And then reuse the content for your course. Ideally, this would be as a foundational or introduction to the areas you teach about.

For example, if you’re hosting a virtual introduction to a Bitcoin investing masterclass in which people paid for a ticket, you can record it live. During this live masterclass, you’ll probably teach, have time for the audience to connect, and some kind of implementable activity they are doing as well. Edit the recording so it only features the parts where you’re delivering content. You can pair this information with exercises and visuals to create an entire module of a course or as a stand-alone evergreen mini-course. In that case, you get paid twice for the same content.

Another option is to host a free workshop to connect with your ideal audience, and then include the recording as a freebie bonus in your course. Either way, you’re maximizing your time and creative power by getting multiple uses out of your content.

Make content accessible to all levels of students

Money can sometimes be a determining factor for students when they’re enrolling in a course. So you want to address that by offering a range of course options. Having courses at different price points can ensure that your content is easily reachable for people who might be on a tighter budget. This can be done by offering mini-courses. This could include the topic lesson, implementation or homework, and reflection questions.

The great thing about these is that you can also bundle the mini-courses. So someone would be able to invest in all of them at once, which is made more enticing by offering a discount with the bundle. While others can still partake with what they’re able to invest at the time. Offering mini-courses is also a great bridge for someone who might be hesitant to invest in your longer and more expensive courses.

Harness the power of a mini-series

Choose a topic that is of interest to your audience—this could be something you know they want more of or an issue you commonly see popping up. Then, create a mini-series around it.

Ideally, this is three to five pieces of content centered around this main topic and ways to enhance or solve it. These pieces of content then funnel into your virtual course. For example, if your Teachable course was about cake decoration, you could do a mini-series based on “The top 3 icing enhancement tips to uplevel your cakes.” This gives your audience a teaser of what your content is like, builds trust and excitement as you drop the new content each day of the mini-series, and raises their awareness about your course and what it has to offer.

Whether you decide to do this through TikTok or Instagram carousels, be sure that you post consistently with each day of the mini-series and that you have a call to action for your audience to enroll in your course.

Collaborate with people in a similar field

For this one, you don’t have to collaborate with someone who is offering a similar course to you. But ask yourself what other fields your audience is likely to be interested in. For example, there is likely to be a decent crossover between people who practice yoga and those who are interested in breathwork.

Once you reflect on where this overlap could occur, connect with people in that field through social media and go live with them. You can interview them or just see if they’re open to having a conversation through zoom, which you can record and post snippets of. This is also a fantastic way to connect with new and current audience members on a deeper level. Of course, make sure you highlight your course and all it has to offer.

A final note

No matter where you are in the course creation process, thinking outside the box when it comes to reusing content and reaching out to new audience members is essential to increasing the cash flow. Once you consistently put these practices into play, to increase visibility and audience growth, you’ll be doubling and tripling the numbers on your Teachable dashboard before you know it.

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Money is something we all have a relationship with. Whether you love it, despise it, or try to ignore it, the truth is that having money is essential. Yet money is also a highly taboo topic. It can be viewed as rude to share specific numbers, too. There are certain stigmas around being wealthy just as there are about needing money. In fact, a recent survey shows that most people are more comfortable talking about addiction, race, sex, marital problems, and politics than money. And for entrepreneurs, there can be limiting beliefs about money that may actually hold you back.

Money matters

If you want your money situation to play out in a different or more expansive way, then it goes beyond investing and conferring with a financial advisor or money coach—although those components are important too.

To really open yourself up to financial abundance, you need to look at the beliefs and mindset you have about money. Without doing this, you can learn all you want about Roth IRAs and money market accounts, but there will still be a piece of the puzzle missing that will hold you back from earning the right way.

The first step is to acknowledge those limiting beliefs. Especially considering the common hush-hush mentality when it comes to money, this is a great opportunity for you to examine your beliefs around money. Read on to see if you relate with these common beliefs and how you can shift your mindset into one that’s prepped and primed for making more.

Common limiting money beliefs

1. Money is “hard” to obtain

This is probably one of the most common beliefs about money that’s neatly encapsulated by the saying we’ve all heard: “Money doesn’t grow on trees.” If you believe the idea that making money is challenging, then it will be. As with many limiting beliefs, this can quickly become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Part of this is how we critique money influx. It’s common to only think of your paycheck when considering the money you make—instead of acknowledging and being grateful for all the money that flows your way. An effective way of shifting this is by tracking every single cent that enters your bank account. Paychecks, bonuses, birthday money, a credit from a store—keep track of it all, no matter how small of an amount or where it came from. You can also pair this with the mantra, “Money flows to me with ease,” to help shift your mindset. You might be surprised over time at all the ways money finds its way to you.

2. You need to be frugal to have more

For many big purchases, you might assess what you already have and plan for how you can save. However, you can also reframe the question, “How will I save this much?” to “How can I make this much?” Perhaps that’s by offering coaching services along with your course or using order bumps to garner some extra revenue. You can even poll your audience to see what they want and then create based on that.

Another reason to reframe this common misconception is because it might have you pinching pennies, which will put you in a scarcity mindset rather than an abundance mindset. Lack creates more lack, so if you’re focused on what you don’t have, (or the need to tightly hold onto what you do have), then you’re going to be more likely to overlook ways to make money. You can also use the mantra, “There’s more where that came from,” every time you make a purchase as a reminder that money comes and goes—what you spend will come back to you, if you’re open to it.

3. You’re selfish if you want to make a lot of money

There can be a lot of stigma around the desire to get rich—especially if your motivating factor for creating is money. And the truth is, that’s perfectly OK if you want to make money. It doesn’t mean that you’re greedy, selfish, or creating your course for the wrong reason. Shift away from labels and get curious about why you want to make a lot of money, instead.

One helpful way of diving into this is to journal. If a million dollars hit your bank account today, what would you do with it? Go into detail here—write about what you would buy and from where, what you would save, and what would be spent on others.

In fact, a lot of what you do could have a positive ripple effect—buying clothes from a small business boutique, investing in your own business so you can offer more to your audience, or getting a better studio for your team. Wanting to make more doesn’t mean you’re selfish. It means there’s the possibility of expanding your reach in a positive way.

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4. Money determines success—or failure

This is simply not true. There are so many factors that contribute to success. While cashflow is one of them, it’s not as simple as money equating to success or a lack of money equating to failure. Failure is a very tainted concept that links to self worth.

Observe carefully to see if this is a belief that you hold. And reframe it when it shows up. The number in your bank account has no bearing on who you are as a person. A powerful way to neutralize and shift this belief is through EFT tapping, paired with journaling, or talking with a loved one when it comes up.

5. “Realistically, I’ll only make X amount of dollars with my course.”

The use of “realistically” can be limiting, especially when it comes to making money. If you go in with the bar set at a “realistic” height, then that’s as high up as it’ll ever go. Instead, get expansive. Set revenue goals that challenge you from time to time. Next, let go of the “how.” You don’t need to have every answer for how it’s going to happen in the beginning. Stay open to how things could unfold in unexpected and abundant ways.

Remain open

An effective way for your mind to let go of some of the logistics (which is OK from time to time) and open into a place of possibility is to look for expanders. These are people who are doing something similar to what you are (or what you want to be doing) but are a few—or many—steps ahead. Oftentimes these are people we can feel jealous of or threatened by—like the stranger you came across on Instagram who is your niche but has five times as many followers and is booked out and making top dollar for the whole month. However, this person is there to expand your awareness and open you to the possibility that what they have is also attainable for you too.

No matter what beliefs you have around money, remember they can be shifted into a more positive and open place so that you can call in the cash you desire and deserve.