Has this happened to you? You are wowed by some of the ChatGPT screenshots posted by people online. But when you try out the new AI demo, you can't seem to get a similar level of smart responses. The trick here is prompts.

While ChatGPT is intelligent, its responses are dictated by the question or prompt you've entered. And like learning Google search operators to get the best search results, you'll need to learn how to frame prompts for ChatGPT to give you the best responses, also known as Prompt Engineering (PE). It can be a little complicated for beginners, but that's why several experienced users online share how to write ChatGPT prompts for the best answers.

1. Prompts.Chat (Web): Copy-Paste Prompt Templates and Learn Tips in Free Ebook

Prompts.Chat, also known as Awesome ChatGPT Prompts, is a collection of prompt templates you can copy-paste into ChatGPT to make the AI give concise and accurate responses to your queries. Several of the prompts are generated by the site's developer Fatih Kadir Akin, but since it's open source, you'll also find several user contributions for excellent prompts.

The focus is on making the prompts easy to use and copy-paste. You'll find the prompt's descriptive title at the top, like "Act as a Mathematician" or "Act as a Social Media Manager," with the full prompt under it. You can edit this prompt on the website to customize it for what you're looking for. Then, when you're happy with the result, copy-paste it into ChatGPT and run it.

Akin has also written a free (or pay-what-you-want) ebook for beginners called The Art of ChatGPT Prompting. It takes you step-by-step through the ChatGPT process of understanding what the AI does, why prompts are essential, and the principles of good PE. Akin also shares his "Act as…" hack for making ChatGPT behave the way you want without overloading it with too much information.

2. QuickRef ChatGPT Cheat Sheets (Web): User-Contributed ChatGPT Prompts and Tips

QuickRef is a website with cheat sheets for different apps or programming languages, like Google Search, Sheets, Excel, JavaScript, Python, etc. These are added mainly by regular users from the community. The latest cheat sheet in its impressive lineup is ChatGPT, with a series of prompts and tips for the AI. You won't learn the process of PE here, but it's a good reference when you're stuck.

QuickRef's ChatGPT cheat sheet is divided into several categories: General, Coding, Email, Spreadsheets, Social Media, Reading, Design, Analyzing Data, Paid ads, Amazon FBA, Writing / Blogging, Teachers / Course Creators, YouTube, and Research. Each prompt has a basic headline telling you what it will do, followed by the prompt you can copy-paste into ChatGPT.

Multiple words or phrases of each prompt are replaceable to customize it for your query. The must-fill parts are marked in brackets for you to replace the original text, while optional replacements are colored red or blue.

3. Adrian Twarog (YouTube): Video Lessons for Ultimate ChatGPT Resources

YouTuber Adrian Twarog has quite a following for his how-to and tutorial videos on myriad topics like web development, apps, and AI. He deep-dived into the system and has already made videos on creating a ChatGPT clone or making your Discord bot with the OpenAI models. Naturally, this requires understanding the core principles of how ChatGPT works, and he's imparting all that knowledge in a series of YouTube videos.

In the Ultimate ChatGPT Resource Guide, Twarog explains what ChatGPT is in a quick five-minute video before moving on to a 35-minute crash course on how to use ChatGPT. In the second video, Twarog covers a lot on how to use prompts, focusing on use-case scenarios like summarization, templates, short stories, JavaScript, resumes, and blogging or editing. You'll need to go through both of these to understand the basics before moving on in the series.

The third video, titled Advanced ChatGPT Guide, is the one you want to pay particular attention to if you want to understand advanced prompts. Twarog goes into details of prompt engineering with a series of examples. Even if the examples aren't what you want to do with ChatGPT, go through these as an exercise to truly understand the finer points of composing a prompt.

4. Micah Johns (YouTube): ChatGPT Prompting With Practical Examples and Uses

Twarog's series is definitely the best if you want to deep-dive into how ChatGPT works and its advanced uses. But if you're only going to use it for more practical day-to-day stuff for your job or hobbies, the YouTube series by Micah Johns is a more beginner-friendly way to learn PE for ChatGPT.

The 40-minute ChatGPT Full Course is an excellent starting point, where Micah covers how to use the AI tool for writing resumes, composing important work emails, developing a learning plan for a new skill, problem-solving in Excel, automating a performance report, daily schedules, and meetings, prioritizing tasks, optimizing a LinkedIn profile, writing a cover letter, and communicating with vendors.

If any of these isn't worth your time, you can skip ahead in the timestamps on the video or browse the whole course as a series of individual videos on each topic. Once you're done with the 40-minute course, check out the longer 100-minute course that includes 20 advanced ChatGPT projects, such as Python scripting, JSON generation, medical study comprehension, and more.

Micah's larger How to Use ChatGPT playlist has several other real-world applications for ChatGPT. For example, you'll learn how to write a 5-page essay in 10 minutes with AI or make your superhero comic with ChatGPT and Midjourney, one of the best free AI text-to-art generators.

5. Learn Prompting (Web): Free Online Course to Learn to Talk to AI and Chatbots

Learn Prompting is a free online course to understand how to write prompts for any AI app, not just ChatGPT. Sander Schulhoff, a computer science student at the University of Maryland, designed it. It caters to a range of users, from complete novices to those with domain expertise or programming knowledge.

The course is entirely text-based, with chapters that take you through different aspects of AI prompting. Schulhoff defines PE as "How to talk to AI to get it to do what you want." The Basics and Intermediate chapters will take you through the founding principles of PE with theory, tricks and tips, and examples.

The course then goes into advanced practices like applied prompting (contributed by users), fine-tuning, images, and more, where you'll learn techniques like Chain of Thought, Self Consistency, etc. It might sound like a lot of jargon, but it'll be clear and easy to understand if you go through the course step-by-step.

Start Learning ChatGPT With a Personal Project

All these resources require you to have a ChatGPT account on OpenAI or use the AI-powered search on Bing. Several netizens who have perused these guides had a common tip: if you're learning prompt engineering for ChatGPT, apply it to a personal project. Then, as you learn, put it into practical application, so it sticks in your memory.