Week 3 Update: How to Create an Online Course and Earn $1,100+ Per Month - Camtasia, B-roll clips & ChatGPT Book Summaries

Week's Focus and Main Achievements

Course Outline and Task Breakdown: Kicked off by creating the Snagit demo video, highlighting its screen capture and recording capabilities. Planned upcoming demos for Lipsurf, Gmelius, Zapier, Make, and GPT for Sheets. Recorded the "Gmail: Priority Star Method" lesson.

Template Creation and Custom GPT Setup: Developed the Gmail: Priority Star Method lesson for effective email management. Created the Lipsurf demo, a browser extension for speech-to-text capabilities. Faced some integration issues with Lipsurf in Google Docs.

Initial Filming and Scripting: Set up and recorded lessons for Chatsonic and Gmelius using Camtasia. Overcame Writesonic’s billing changes by utilizing demo videos from their website.

Research and Process Improvement: Generated B-roll clips for software demonstrations, solved the challenge of smooth scrolling in screen captures using a Chrome plugin and 60 fps recording settings.

Scripting Completion: Completed ChatGPT and Gemini lessons. Demonstrated creating audiobook summaries and performing competitive analysis, rounding off the week's tasks and setting up for final edits and further lesson development next week.

Next Week’s Plan

• Complete all the software demo lessons (Zapier, Make, and GPT for Sheets left) then start recording all the lesson videos. I'm hoping that these will go much quicker than the software demos as there isn't much in the way of preparation before each lesson. The goal is to be recording 3-5 lessons per day.

Tool Stack

• Camtasia: Enhance your productivity with Camtasia's easy-to-use screen recording and video editing tools, perfect for creating professional training videos and tutorials.
• Snagit: Boost your efficiency with Snagit's powerful screen capture and recording features, making it simple to create and share high-quality visuals and walkthroughs.
• Chatsonic: Streamline your workflow with Chatsonic's AI-powered writing assistant, designed to help you draft content quickly and accurately.
• Gmelius: Increase your email productivity with Gmelius, an all-in-one platform that transforms Gmail into a collaborative workspace, integrating task management and automation.
• Simple Autoscroll: Optimize your browsing experience with Simple Autoscroll, a Chrome extension that provides smooth, automated scrolling for easier content review and presentations.
• Speechify: Enhance your learning and productivity with Speechify, a text-to-speech tool that converts written content into audio, allowing you to listen on the go.

Resources

• How to Create ChatGPT Book Summaries and Make your own Audiobooks [View PDF]

Daily Highlights

Monday, July 15th 2024

Completed

• Created the Snagit demo video. Snagit is a screen capture and recording tool that allows you to take screenshots, record videos, and edit captured content. It's a big time-saver and a definite one to include for this productivity course.

Next Steps

• Getting through these demonstration videos, there's still a good few left, namely Lipsurf, Gmelius, Zapier, Make, GPT for Sheets.
• Recording lesson for my "Gmail: Priority Star Method" for email management.

Tuesday, July 16th 2024

Completed

• Created the Gmail: Priority Star Method for email management which talks about a simple yet effective method I developed to always ensure your priority emails are at the top of your inbox. It's based on this gmail tricks article I posted.
• Created the Lipsurf demo. Lipsurf is a browser extension that provides speech to text capabilities. But also allows you to control your browser with your voice. It's one of my top recommendations if you have RSI (repetitive stress injury) or carpal tunnel syndrome. Don't think I have either, or if so it's very mild, but this extension really helps with those long hours of working at a keyboard.

Challenges

• Lipsurf has some issues inside of Google Docs where custom shortcuts don't work, and now the "Hello Lipsurf" activation "wake word" doesn't seem to be working either. Might need to find out from the developer about what could be done as the online Forum suggestions don't seem to be helping either. Update: developer confirmed this is an issue they’re trying to resolve.

Next Steps

• Complete the lessons for Gmelius, Zapier, Make, GPT for Sheets.

Wednesday, July 17th 2024

Completed

• Lesson preparation - ie setting up the recording, adding filler content for software demo, tweaking script, doing a demo run-through etc.
• Completed 2 recordings (plus basic edits and renders) of the webcam and screencast lessons for Chatsonic and Gmelius. (this is all done inside Camtasia)

Challenges Faced

• Writesonic has changed their billing structure and the Article Writer is not included in the first paid plan level, so I wasn't able to show this in full. I had to show a demo video from their website to showcase this key feature of Writesonic. I looked on YouTube as well, and although there are some great videos from other contents creators, copyright issues might come into play using their videos, so I opted against this.

Thursday, July 18th 2024

Completed

• B-roll clips for the software. These are all the clips I'll use when discussing a particular tool during a lesson. The website scrolling clips are made with a simple screen capture while scrolling the page. There was a bit of a trick to get them to scroll smoothly which I talk about below.

Challenges Faced

• How to get nice smooth scrolling for a screencast. Having a nice smooth scroll of a website for a screen capture was a bit of challenge. It always seemed a bit "jerky" (not the beef kind), so I experimented with some different frame rates and found a winning combination.

Step 1 - Install Chrome plugin called Simple Autoscroll

This extension allows you to automatically scroll any webpage. I use it for scrolling my scripts as well, so it acts a bit like an old-school teleprompter. Then I use these settings for that oh so buttery smooth scrolling action:

• Scroller Extension Settings > Scroll: 1 px every 10 ms

Step 2 - Screen record at 60 fps

Camtasia and Snagit allows you to increase the recording frame rate to 60fps. The workflow was I started the automatic scroll, paused it (Alt+J) then back to top of the page, Ctrl+M to drop a marker in the timeline (to show the beginning of a new website clip) then start recording, then resume the auto scroll - and repeat for all websites needed.

Step 3 - Editing

Create a new project after the screen recording and following these steps:

1. Convert project to 60fps
2. Add effect: Clip Speed, then Increase clip speed 2x
3. Render at 60 fps with the following settings for the output

Video Render Settings

• Frame Rate: 60 fps
• Keyframe Interval: 10 seconds
• H.264 Profile: High
• H.264 Level: Auto
• Encoding Mode: Quality
• Quality Setting: 75%
• Color Mode: HDTV

Friday, July 19th 2024

Completed

• Completed the ChatGPT and Gemini lessons. These lesson showcase how you can use ChatGPT and Gemini to improve your productivity and optimise your life. The lesson topics are below.

ChatGPT Demo Lesson Content

• Demo #1: Create our own Audiobook summary of the “Atomic Habits” book using ChatGPT and Speechify.
• Demo #1: Perform Competitive Analysis: Analyze the strengths and weaknesses of SpaceGoods, and what opportunities exist for a competitor to beat them.

Gemini

• Demo #1: Extract Infographic details for Research: Turbo charge your research with Gemini Vision. We’ll extract information and details from an infographic.

In the lesson I show learners how to create their own Audiobook summaries of their favourite productivity books.

How to Create ChatGPT Book Summaries and Make your own Audiobooks

The goal of this prompt is to create an audiobook style summary of the most popular productivity and business books to listen to on an audio device or smartphone. 

Step 1 -The ChatGPT Prompt

Provide a chapter-by-chapter summary of the following book title.
[INSERT THE BOOK TITLE]
The format and tone should be that of an audiobook. The summaries will be converted to audio files via a text to speech tool, so consider this and try to make it flow and make the summaries sound like an engaging audiobook. 
Chapter Summaries
- Make sure to include key points, strategies, concepts, quotes, insightful tips and other relevant information. 
- Each summary should be around 200-500 words.
- The summaries should contain the most important aspects of the chapter.
- Include a bullet list of the key takeaways from the chapter
- Using the 80/20 rule extract the 20% of the key learnings for the bullet list above

Step 2 - Use Speechify to Create the audio file

Using Speechify or any other TTS software you're able to take the summary and convert it into an audio file that can be played on your smartphone or audio device.

That’s it for this week.

If there is anything you'd like to see more of, or you have your own ideas comments or tips, I'd love to hear your thoughts! Use the comment section below to drop me a message.