As of 13 August 2026, AI can outline an online course you could sell.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open a document and write the subject, intended learners, their starting problem, the outcome you can credibly teach, your relevant experience and the format you can deliver.
   2. Paste those details into a chatbot with the course-outline prompt, then ask it to produce the complete outline and mark unsupported information as [NEEDS MY INPUT].
   3. Copy the proposed promise, prerequisites and end skills into your document and compare each one with what you can actually teach and demonstrate.
   4. Open the lesson plan and add your own examples, demonstrations, source material and exercises wherever the draft contains generic advice or asks for evidence you do not have.
   5. Check every factual or specialist claim against reliable primary sources and remove any claim you cannot verify or responsibly explain to a learner.
   6. Show the proposed promise and a sample lesson to several people who match the intended audience, record their objections and questions, and revise the outline without treating interest as proof of sales.
   7. Use the revised outline to make a small sample or pilot, collect learner feedback and correct gaps before creating and selling the full course.

   Prompt

   I want to create an online course that I could sell.
   
   Subject: [SUBJECT]
   Intended learners: [WHO THEY ARE]
   Their current problem or starting point: [PROBLEM]
   Outcome I can credibly help them achieve: [OUTCOME]
   My relevant experience and evidence: [EXPERIENCE]
   Existing material, examples or resources: [MATERIAL]
   Likely format and constraints: [VIDEO, TEXT, LIVE, SELF-PACED, LENGTH, TOOLS]
   
   Create a practical course outline. Include:
   1. A clear course promise that does not claim outcomes I cannot support.
   2. The learner's starting point, prerequisites and measurable end skills.
   3. A module and lesson structure in a sensible learning order.
   4. For every lesson, the objective, key points, practical activity and evidence that the learner has understood it.
   5. A realistic final project or assessment.
   6. What I must demonstrate from my own experience instead of asking AI to invent examples.
   7. The facts, claims or specialist advice I must verify before publishing.
   8. The minimum material I need to create for a credible first version.
   9. Assumptions about who would buy it and why, clearly labelled as assumptions rather than market facts.
   10. A short validation plan using conversations, a sample lesson or a pre-sale test before I build the full course.
   
   Do not invent qualifications, case studies, customer demand, testimonials, statistics or promised results. Mark missing information with [NEEDS MY INPUT]. Keep the plan suitable for a first sellable version rather than an oversized curriculum.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.