3 Steps to
Unlock Your
Digital Course Idea
Using AI
BY
AMY PORTERFIELD
© AMY PORTERFIELD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
© AMY PORTERFIELD INC AND DIGITAL COURSE ACADEMY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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How to Use AI to Unlock Your
Profitable Digital Course Idea
Creating and launching a digital course can absolutely transform your business
and allow for more freedom and flexibility in your business. But where do you
start? How do you get started? This resource is exactly what you need to begin
your course creation journey.
First, let’s start with the course creation sweet spot formula, which will help you
turn your skills and knowledge into a solid digital course idea.
Once you discover your digital course idea, you can easily use AI tools, such as
ChatGPT, as your course creation assistant to help you develop your idea and
begin to bring it to life.
STEP 1:
Uncover Your Sweet Spot
When it comes to developing a digital course idea, the most important
step is answering the fundamental question: What is Your Course Creation
Sweet Spot?
Your course creation sweet spot is the intersection between your skills and
know-how, a struggle or challenge your audience is facing (and will gladly
pay for the solution), and a topic that truly lights you up.
© AMY PORTERFIELD INC AND DIGITAL COURSE ACADEMY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Here Are the Four Questions to Uncover
Your Course Creation Sweet Spot:
1. What are my skills and know-how?
💡 Think about how you add value based on your skills, background and
experience. Where have you gotten results for yourself or others, both
in your personal and professional life? What comes easy to you?
Your audience is looking to you for a simple step-by-step framework to
get them from point A to point B, as fast as possible. Here’s the
good news: you don’t have to be the foremost expert in your field,
or have all the answers; you just need to be a few steps ahead of
your audience.
2. What are my audience’s struggles and challenges?
💡 Your ideal customer is going to buy from you when you offer a
solution to a current struggle or desire that is important enough to
them that they’re willing to put some skin (i.e. money!) in the game
to see results. People won’t pay for just any content; it has to be
something that makes life easier and provides them with a shortcut
or a true transformation. You must have a clear idea of what your ideal
customer considers a “nice to have” solution, as opposed to a “must
have” solution. The two best ways I’ve discovered to understand my
audience’s struggles and challenges are by directly asking them and
being a good listener (whether in-person or online).
3. What is my profit potential?:
💡 A shortcut to finding out if your course topic would be one that
your ideal customer would purchase is to see what type of content,
products or services they already consider valuable enough to pay for.
Do they buy books, coaching, software or apps on the topic? Search
Amazon for books on your niche; which are the most popular, have
the best reviews? Pay attention to what people are raving about on
social media. *AI can help you with this. Keep reading…
4. What lights me up?
💡 It does not need to be your passion, but it should be something
you’re excited to teach. You also don’t need to have your outline and
teaching strategy all figured out just yet – that will come – but you
do need to be excited to share your insights and knowledge around
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this topic. And when things get tough – and they will at times – your
enthusiasm around this topic needs to be able to pull you through
the tough bits!
When your topic hits all four of these quadrants, you can feel confident that
you are moving in the right direction and are ready to further explore the
content you will teach inside your course, and that’s where AI can become your
ultimate assistant!
However, before “AI” enters the conversation, I want to offer a quick word of
advice from 14 years of behind the scenes knowledge of developing course
ideas. When it comes to creating a digital course, it’s your unique approach
and expertise to solving a specific problem that is going to differentiate
your course and keep your customers coming back to you. And that is
the goal here!
Your audience wants to learn from YOU. AI is here to help you, but your
students want to learn about YOUR unique experiences, hear YOUR stories,
absorb knowledge in the way YOU teach it, follow YOUR expertly crafted
roadmap, and most importantly, achieve the extraordinary results that YOU
have achieved.
Is AI a game-changing tool? Absolutely! It’s an excellent starting place for
many steps during your creation journey and a powerful tool when it comes
to helping you ideate, brainstorm, research, conquer writer’s block, and create
your content faster. It will never, however, replace you, my friend.
Moving on to the final two steps. Here’s the best news for you - AI is going to
make these steps in developing a digital course idea quick, efficient, and
oh-so easy. It’s time to say “hello” to a new opportunity knocking at your door
and say goodbye to overthinking, mental roadblocks, and any excuses around
not knowing what you’d even teach… you’re welcome!
© AMY PORTERFIELD INC AND DIGITAL COURSE ACADEMY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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STEP 2:
Train Your Ai Tool To Suggest Content
Tailored To Your Expertise And Audience
AI is smart, but unfortunately, it doesn’t know everything about you. Before you
begin using any AI prompts, you’ll want to begin by taking a few seconds to
help your AI tool, like ChatGPT, learn a little more about you and your expertise,
particularly your “sweet spot”. This helps set the foundation for the tool to
deliver responses that are tailored to your expertise and audience.
If you’re new to AI and aren’t sure where to start, I’ve
got you covered. You can check out the most commonly
used tool, ChatGPT, which you can use for free.
Here’s a prompt template and an “in action” example of how you would begin
your chat within ChatGPT.
PROMPT TEMPLATE:
“I’m a
your area of expertise
I’ve been
who helps
short description of your target audience
the thing that makes you/your expertise stand out/different
specifically
.
and
.”
any additional details that support your unique approach
Feel free to elaborate on your skills, expertise, target audience, etc. The more
specific and detailed you can be with helping AI understand you and your
expertise, the better content results it’s going to provide you.
PROMPT EXAMPLE:
“I’m a former teacher who helps new teachers prepare for their first year
of teaching. I’ve been teaching for 20 years and specifically have worked in
elementary education and specialize in helping teachers to teach reading
and writing.”
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STEP 3
Use AI Prompts To Help
Generate Your Course Idea
Once you’ve entered the information in Step 2, you can use the following
prompt templates to begin developing your idea.
Feel free to customize each of these prompts and make them unique to you.
The more descriptive you can be, the greater the responses your AI tool will
provide. Get ready to uncover that next brilliant digital course idea - you’re
literally seconds away from it!
PROMPT OUTCOME #1:
Identify additional problems your expertise can help solve or questions
it can answer.
E
E
What are 5 questions people have about [your area of
expertise/sweet spot]?
What are the 10 most searched-for questions about [what do
you help people do]?
PROMPT OUTCOME #2:
Market research and inspiration around your course idea and niche.
Learn from what others are doing and see what you like, don’t like, and how
you might be able to do something different.
As of 2023, ChatGPT pulls from online information prior to 2021. Be
sure to consider that as you research your niche and gather inspiration.
E
E
Who are 10 online influencers in [your area of expertise]? Please include
their website and a few bullet points on areas of expertise.
What types of digital learning resources do other experts in [your area of
expertise/niche] offer? Provide me with 10 specific topics they address
in their resources.
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PROMPT OUTCOME #3:
Craft a course title that your ideal customer will resonate with the most.
A great use of AI is to let it help you come up with multiple title and subtitle
ideas for your future digital course.
E
I specifically [help/teach] [your sweet spot]. What are 5 digital course
titles I could use to help set my course apart from other competitors
in my industry given my expertise? Limit these titles to 6 words or less
than 65 characters.
If you don’t love the first few options, keep going!
E
Give me 3 other course title options for the [insert your favorite
AI-generated title option here].
Or you can start from scratch and keep the inspiration for later.
E
Given my experience and expertise, give me 5 [insert your preferred
tone/style] course title options for a course I could create on [your
sweet spot]. Limit these title options to [# words/characters].
W
Example: Given my experience, give me 5 short and catchy online
course title options for a course I could create that would help new
parents sleep train their toddlers. Limit these title options to 6 words
or less than 65 characters.
You don’t have to settle until you find a “keeper”. If you gravitate towards one
of the AI-generated responses, you can ask AI to provide additional ideas.
E
Please give me 3 other title options for [insert title] that are [catchy, fun,
engaging, simple, appealing to an audience who ___________].
Include [what phrases/taglines/words stand out to you]?
And just like that, faster than you can say, “What would I even create a digital
course about?”, you now have a brilliant digital course idea. Welcome to the
possibilities that await you!
Now what?
Wondering if your new digital course idea could replace your 9-5 salary or
client work? Take my FREE quiz, 3 Types of People Are Replacing Their
Income With A Digital Course. This 2-minute quiz will reveal if you’re already
sitting on serious digital course potential (+ how to start from there!).
© AMY PORTERFIELD INC AND DIGITAL COURSE ACADEMY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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