The Simple Course Creation Blueprint

Before you start at all

• I am at week 3 of the 6-Month Blueprint or further. (A recommendation, not a rule. Week 3 is your first affiliate promotion, and that is the funnel your own course drops into. Later is fine too.)
• My website exists.
• My domain is connected.
• My legal pages are live.
• I have Systeme.io open. (ClickFunnels, GoHighLevel or anything similar is fine. The process is identical, only the buttons move.)
• I have an AI tool open. Claude, GPT or Gemini. The free version is fine.
• Optional, only if I want AI video: HeyGen or ElevenLabs.

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Module 1: The Plan

Lessons

• 1.1 - What you're building, and what it costs
• 1.2 - Why micro wins
• 1.3 - Classic beginner mistakes
• 1.4 - Where this leads
• 1.5 - Module 1 checklist

Tasks

• Cancel any software you have not opened in three or four months. Put that money into ads instead.
• Write down, somewhere you will see it: my first course will not be my best one.
• Accept the price. A micro course sells for a few dollars. That is the point, not a problem.
• Do it my way first. If I catch myself thinking "yes, but I'd do it differently", do it my way once, see what happens, then change it.
• Watch the whole of Module 2 before I do anything in it.
• Sleep on it. Come back tomorrow with fresh eyes.

The mistakes to watch for in yourself

• Making the course way too big and forgetting the micro problem
• Using bad software because I paid a lifetime fee for it
• Perfectionism (which is usually just fear of being seen)
• Thinking I am not good enough
• Overcomplicating the process
• Cramming in too much detail
• Not understanding what failing forward means
• Paying monthly for software I never open
• Chickening out at the finish line and never publishing

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Module 2: Pick The Micro Problem

Lessons

• 2.1 - Your niche
• 2.2 - What a micro problem is
• 2.3 - What if I get it wrong
• 2.4 - The product name
• 2.5 - Module 2 checklist

Tasks

• Use the niche I already have. Do not start a second project in a new one.
• Run the micro problem prompt. Then ask for a hundred more ideas.
• Ask it to rewrite the best titles to be more outcome led, using the first batch as the baseline.
• Pick the ONE I can solve fastest.
• Name it. Four words at most. No abbreviations, no slang, and it promises one practical outcome.
• Keep the name somewhere handy. It becomes my course URL in Module 4.
• Sleep on it. Come back tomorrow before I build anything.

Do not

• Open a keyword research tool. Not one. They are a bygone era for this.
• Go near weight loss or make money online. Saturated, regulated, and almost impossible to advertise.

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Module 3: Create The Course With AI

Lessons

• 3.1 - Plan the course with AI
• 3.2 - Staying micro
• 3.3 - Write the lessons with AI
• 3.4 - An interactive guide
• 3.5 - Using AI Videos
• 3.6 - Or record it yourself
• 3.7 - The dry run
• 3.8 - Label and upload
• 3.9 - Module 3 checklist

Tasks

• Write the micro problem at the top of a blank doc. That is my fence.
• Run the planning prompt. Read the "what I deliberately left out" list properly. That list is what keeps the course small.
• Sleep on it. Read the plan again tomorrow before writing anything.
• Write the lessons one at a time. Never the whole course in one go.
• Read every single line and make it sound like me.
• Add the things only I can add. My mistakes, my examples, my numbers, the thing that took me sixteen hours to work out.
• If I am doing video, record first, transcribe, then use the transcripts as the written version.

Before I hit record

• Clean the screen. Close every tab I am not using, turn notifications off, kill the background noise.
• Do a dry run of the whole thing, and leave the mistakes in. That is the point of it.
• Move the mouse slowly.
• Leave a gap before and after each point so I can cut cleanly.
• Only cut. No transitions, no overlays, no b-roll. Nobody wants a YouTube edit from a micro course.

Files

• Name every file: course abbreviation, then the number. SCCB - 1.1, SCCB - 1.2.
• Keep everything on one platform. Files scattered across Drive, OneDrive and Vimeo get lost.
• Keep video files as small as I can. Systeme accepts a gig or two, but the whole file loads in the browser and a big one is slow.

Limits I am not allowed to argue with

• Text course: 6,000 words maximum
• Video course: ten lessons maximum, and five to seven is better
• If it will not fit, the micro problem is too big. Go back and narrow it further.

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Module 4: Deliver It On Systeme.io

Lessons

• 4.1 - Delivery + Payment
• 4.2 - Set up the course area
• 4.3 - Add the modules and lessons
• 4.4 - Quizzes and finishing touches
• 4.5 - Module 4 checklist

Before I can start this module at all

• My website and legal pages are live.
• My domain is connected to my Systeme account.
• Stripe or PayPal is connected under Settings. Have PayPal as well as a card gateway, because plenty of people will not put a card in.

The build

• Run the course setup prompt for the title, description, logo and cover image.
• Create the course, allocate the domain, and set the URL to the course name from Module 2.
• Add the instructor name, the description, the logo, the cover image and my photo.
• Build lesson one properly, including the resource block at the bottom.
• Turn that resource block into a saved section, so every lesson inherits it and I change it once, not twenty times.
• Duplicate lesson one for every other lesson, rename each, then drop the video in.
• Upload the videos into Systeme and pick them from "your videos".
• Add a quiz to the module with the prompt, set the pass grade, and activate it.
• Set the currency, and grant access after first payment.
• Turn off the Systeme promo toggle on the login page. I do not want my buyer clicking away.
• Skip assignments and certificates. They add friction and nobody finishing a micro course wants either.

Test it before moving on

• Watch every video back and listen to what I actually said.
• Read every lesson and check the spelling.
• Open every resource link in incognito. The classic failure is a Drive link that only works when I am logged in.
• Add myself as a student using an email that has nothing to do with my account, then log in as them.
• Take my own quiz and get some answers wrong on purpose.
• Open the whole thing on my phone.
• Check the course URL is the one I meant to use.

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Module 5: The Funnel

Lessons

• 5.1 - The sales funnel in 3 prompts
• 5.2 - The tech & automation
• 5.3 - Take the money
• 5.4 - The follow up emails
• 5.5 - Finishing touches & testing
• 5.6 - Module 5 checklist

The three pages

• Import the funnel templates from the links below the lesson. Import all of them, then pick the one I like.
• Run the three prompts, one for each page.
• Paste each section in with right click, paste as plain text. A straight paste drags the formatting across and breaks the layout.
• Add a real photo of myself to the author box.
• Generate the ebook cover, resize it to about 600px wide, and compress it before uploading.
• Add my support email, and drop the global footer block on the order form.
• Check all three on mobile, and check the top button jumps down to the order form.

The money

• Connect the gateway, create the pricing plan, set the price.
• Make the bank statement name something a buyer will actually recognise. If they cannot place it, they ring their bank instead of me.
• Attach the course as a resource with full access, so buyers get in automatically.
• Point the sales page button at the next step URL.

The automation

• Create the email campaign first, with one dummy email, and activate it. The automation rule cannot see it otherwise.
• Add the rule on the order form: new sale, subscribe to campaign, add the customer tag.

The emails

• One email per lesson, up to five. Each one links to its lesson.
• First email two hours after they join, then one a day. Systeme has already sent the login details, so I never repeat them.
• Set the text to 18px.
• Test send every single one to myself.

Finishing

• Name every page and every button, and put the price in the buy button name.
• Make the order form URL random, so nobody can guess their way to it.
• Fill in the page title, description and social image, and hide all three pages from search engines.
• Turn off "powered by Systeme" on all three pages.
• Add a favicon.
• Point the "not a member yet" page at my sales page.
• Give a friend the money and watch them buy it, standing next to them.
• Share the page and ask people what confused them. Not whether they like it.

The rules for this module

• Do not redesign the template. No font changes, no shadow tweaking. Get it live, then let the data tell me what to change.
• Do not buy it with my own card and refund myself. A refund as the very first transaction on a new Stripe account is a bad look. Pay somebody else to buy it instead.

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Module 6: Launch And The Long Game

Lessons

• 6.1 - Going live
• 6.2 - Overlapping Income - Bump Offers
• 6.3 - Overlapping Income - Upsells
• 6.4 - Traffic: let AI reverse-engineer it
• 6.5 - Long Term Follow Through
• 6.6 - Overlapping Income - The Truth

Tasks

• Go live.
• Put the finished course into my AI and reverse-engineer the traffic assets from it.
• Inject my new offer into my TAO funnel so it replaces the affiliate offer that was sitting there.
• Create another course for the next stage of my TAO funnel, so I can replace all four affiliate offers with my own products.
• Start adding upsells and bump offers to increase what I earn per sale.
• Use the traffic guide, linked in the resources of every lesson, to start driving traffic from Facebook to my new offer.
• Rewatch the lessons. Again, and again, and again. Repetition is the mother of all learning.

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