Outline Product Format and Length

[00:00 - 00:09] I want to speak a bit about the format, specifically the New Line Guide format, which is essentially a course. If you're writing a book, this idea might not apply to you directly, but you're probably writing a guide.

[00:10 - 00:23] The idea with the New Line Guide is that we are creating the definitive work on the internet for a specific topic. Many courses and almost all blog posts are short and superficial, and so what we're doing is discussing real-world solutions and tackling the issues you encounter around the edges.

[00:24 - 00:33] For length, the guide is going to be roughly four hours of video, much longer than a blog post, but shorter than a book. And we're going to have code, a manuscript, and video.

[00:34 - 00:39] Here's some screenshots from our platform. Notice that we've got the video as well as a detailed manuscript that's hand- created.

[00:40 - 00:45] It's not just a bad transcription of the video. It's got formatting, headings, code, etc.

[00:46 - 00:54] Typically, you're going to write this manuscript first, and then use it as the script for when you record your video. In length, it's going to be about four hours, but four hours isn't a hard limit .

[00:55 - 01:05] Sometimes you can cover your idea in less, and oftentimes it'll be more. For a sense of scale, how long this is, you typically speak at a rate of 120 to 140 words per minute.

[01:06 - 01:13] So you can estimate that 60 minutes is going to be around 8,000 words, maybe a little more. Of course, the point is to teach not to hit a word count target.

[01:14 - 01:17] Word count is not at all a priority. There is no requirement there.

[01:18 - 01:30] It's the complete wrong metric for achieving the goal of teaching someone. I'm just bringing up word count because it can help you sort of estimate how much content you have, and it can help knowing how long a single lesson should be.

[01:31 - 01:37] So, for example, a lesson should probably be around, say, 10 minutes. So then you're talking about something like 1,500 words to cover that lesson.

[01:38 - 01:44] But again, this isn't school. The point is for our students to learn the idea, so don't over-emphasize word count.

[01:45 - 01:58] Another important topic that I want to talk about is what we're going to do for a free sample of the course. One of the things that we've learned is that free courses get shared way more widely than free samples, and that is a subtle distinction.

[01:59 - 02:14] For just one example, take a look here at the sidebar of our React.js. So when we look at this sidebar, we see how it says, you know, check out these great free resources, and then you have a list of several people showing, you know, their free boot camp, free courses.

[02:15 - 02:31] All of these people, they sell React courses for money, but they're listed on this most popular community for React on the web as free courses. Why? Because they're packaged as, they've packed their samples up as a free unit.

[02:32 - 02:44] This sidebar is just one example. Beginners everywhere are looking for free courses, and teachers, and bloggers, and people on Twitter, they're always ready to share these free courses.

[02:45 - 02:59] You'll notice that if you just call something a free sample, you don't typically get kind of the same good will or distribution, because, you know, a free sample feels like you're handing out free samples at Costco or something. So how does this apply to us?

[03:00 - 03:12] I recommend that we do the same with this course. What we should do is we should take the first 25%, so that's maybe the first two or three modules, and let's package them up as a standalone free beginners course.

[03:13 - 03:26] We'll take the back 75% of the course and we'll make that sort of the advanced or intermediate portion which people will pay for. So not only is a free course more likely to be shared, but there's also a trust building aspect.

[03:27 - 03:40] There's a lot of courses out there, there's a lot of content, and it's hard for people to know what's really good. One thing that I've noticed is that I might see a course sort of floating around Twitter, but I won't bother looking closely because I don't really know who the author is.

[03:41 - 03:56] I don't know if it's any good, but then I might be listening to a podcast and I 'll hear that author speak, and on that podcast, they're just articulate and insightful, and I'll immediately think, "Whoa, this person is awesome. I need to go buy their course, like right now." I think it's the same thing here.

[03:57 - 04:21] When you give away a free course, one, it's risk mitigation for the student because they are able to watch you and see that your content is good, but it's also a way to build trust because they hear from you, they start to know you, they know how you teach, and they know if it's a good fit for them. It's a really good way to build that initial trust without necessarily giving away the farm.

[04:22 - 04:33] Another really important point of why we'll do this beginner's course is we'll actually release the beginner's portion as soon as it's done. We at Newline, of course, we have a large audience.

[04:34 - 04:43] Right now it's about 100,000 active developers on our email list. When we launch, we can share what we have with them, but they're not actually all the developers in the world.

[04:44 - 04:56] There's millions of developers in the world, so we want to draw in new people as well. And when we launch, even after we've launched, we want to make sure we always have new folks coming in the funnel.

[04:57 - 05:20] So by offering a free course and launching it a month or two ahead of the paid course, we're actually building up a set of students who know about you, they trust you , and they've taken your beginner lesson and they're hungry for more. So when you write your outline, try to shape the first, say 20, 25%, as the beginner portion, that's something that can be stand alone, we can offer it for free.

[05:21 - 05:26] And then the last three forces where we'll handle the more intricate advanced material, and that's actually the part that we'll sell.