Turn what you know into a paid mini-course
You already know something other people would pay a few pounds to learn faster. A mini-course packages that into a handful of short lessons someone can finish in an afternoon. Plan it with a tool that drafts the outline for you, record it on the gear you own, pick a platform on the numbers, and launch to a few real buyers. A small, focused course beats a bloated one, and finding buyers is the hard part, not the recording.
- A skill you can already do and explain: a trade, a hobby, software you know, a thing people keep asking you how to do
- A local AI model for the outline tool: Run AI on your PC installs Ollama, and the free uv runner is in Install anything from GitHub (Level 0)
- A way to record: a phone, a webcam or your screen. Record your screen like a pro covers a clean screen recording for free
- A few evenings to build your first course, then a few hours a week to sell it
Why a small course, and what actually sells
Before you plan anything, get the shape right. A small course finished by the buyer beats a big one they abandon, and a specific skill sells where a broad one does not.
A mini-course is a handful of short lessons that get one person to one resultNot forty hours. Not everything you know. One outcome, taught in the fewest lessons that reach it. People do not buy a course to own it; they buy it to be able to do a thing by the weekend. The smaller and clearer that thing is, the easier it is to make, to finish and to sell.
Small beats bloated, for reasons that matter to you and the buyer:
- Buyers finish it, so they get the result, leave a good word and buy the next thing. A 20-hour course that nobody completes produces refunds and silence.
- You can build it in a few evenings, test it, and fix it. A huge course takes months and is out of date before it ships.
- It is easy to describe. "Set up your first email newsletter in an afternoon" sells. "Everything about email marketing" does not.
- It is easy to price fairly. A focused course at a small price is an easy yes. A sprawling one invites the question "why not watch free videos for this?"
What sells is a specific skill, for a specific person, with a result they can pictureThe test: can you finish this sentence truthfully? "By the end you can ______." If the blank is a real, checkable thing ("record and publish your first podcast episode", "wire a plug safely and test it", "build a budget spreadsheet that updates itself"), you have a course. If it is vague ("understand marketing"), you do not, yet.
Skills that package well into a mini-course:
- A trade or craft you do: tiling a splashback, sharpening knives, sewing a zip, basic car maintenance.
- Software other people find fiddly: a spreadsheet technique, an editing workflow, a design tool, a booking system.
- A thing people keep asking you how to do: that is free market research. The questions in your inbox are lesson titles.
- A result with a before and after: a tidy garage, a passed exam module, a working website, a clean set of accounts.
CarefulWhat it takes. Recording is the easy part. The work is choosing a sharp outcome, proving people want it (step 2), and then selling it week after week to people who have never heard of you. Expect the first version to be rougher than you would like, and expect to improve it from what buyers ask. Marketing is the hard part, not the camera.This mission gives you a real workflow: prove the idea, draft the outline with a tool, record for completion, choose a platform on the numbers, price it, launch, and get the law right. Every tool in it is free.