Five Tips to Help You Develop New Class Topics

The best way to maximize your impact and success on Skillshare is to continually add new classes to the platform. Each new class you publish is an opportunity to engage your existing students, capture new ones, and compound your revenue. But when you're struggling to nail down your next class topic, it can be difficult to sustain a consistent publishing schedule.

This quick list of action-based tactics will help jumpstart your creative inspiration and help you keep class ideas flowing!

Do your research.

Believe it or not, the way that most of our top earning teachers decide what to teach next is by doing some research. Leveraging website like Dribbble, Vimeo,YouTube, Pinterest, and even Skillshare, can help you find  inspiration and see what topics are relevant and trending. Keep an eye out for themes and patterns, and think about ways you can combine your unique skill-set with what’s trending. For example, top teacher Jake Bartlett noticed that hand lettering classes were performing well on Skillshare, so he decided to theme his next animation class around hand lettering - check it out here.

Think about what excites you most.

Take a step back and try to identify what gets you most excited about your practice or creative process. A few of our top teachers have seen a correlation between how excited they are about the class topic and how a class performs. Your excitement is contagious, so take a moment and observe what you love most. Is it interfacing with clients? Is it choosing your materials, or applying the final touches on a watercolor poster? Whatever it might be, take note and create a class around that topic–your enthusiasm will come through your class and resonate with your students.

Examine your creative process, in its entirety.

Think about your creative process from start to finish. Then take one step back and one step ahead. What do you do before you even start sketching? Do you collect quotes? Do you have a methodical research and inspiration process? What are the steps you take when you’re finished with your work? Do you have a strategy for sharing your projects with your social networks? Do you have a system for examining your project’s success? Create a class around each phase! Remember, you have unique insights to share that can help your students expand their own creative process and skill-set.

Pay attention to your audience.

A great way to come up with a class topic is by talking to your students! Review comments on your existing class(es)' community board. Note any problems students run into as well as which topics, techniques, or themes excite them most. Run a poll asking your existing student following what they’d like to learn. Christine Fleming began to notice that many of her students had questions about the preliminary and planning work that goes into design, though most of her existing classes focused on the more technical production. So she created her class series Art School Bootcamp to satisfy that need and give students the fundamentals that they would learn in art and design school.

Get inspired and write things down.

Whether it’s grabbing coffee with a friend in the same industry, reviewing your own portfolio, or even reading interviews with a few of your favorite icons, immerse yourself! Sometimes connecting with other professionals in your field can get you over feeling blocked. So get involved, draw connections and document any class ideas you have along the way.

Now that you have your topic set in stone, it's time to teach! Head on to our Teach Page below or join our monthly Teach Challenge today.

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