Make money creating videos

Video is an incredibly powerful communication tool. Anyone who has a website or blog, and/or who uses social media to expand their business, should understand the benefits of video, and learn how to make money making videos. There are also ways to create free online videos, and I’ll get to that a little later.

Some fast facts about video

Video drives traffic

• Video increases organic traffic from search engines by 157%
• Growth of new users is more effective when using video content as part of your process

Video retains visitors

• The average website visitor spends 88% more time on a website that contains video

Video converts

• 71% of marketers say that video content outperforms all other content when looking at conversion rates.
• 46% of people say they would seek more information after viewing branded video content

Source: https://www.theeword.co.uk/blog/the-rise-of-video-in-digital-marketing

People are now watching more video than ever before. YouTube is the second largest social media channel following Facebook. And Facebook users are now posting more videos and doing live streams than ever before.

TikTok is everywhere you look (and so much fun too).

Don’t freak out, anyone can make a video

It is easier than you think to develop video content.

The thought of starring in a video is enough to send many people into a mild panic. But what if you didn’t need to be in the video? Whilst it’s great to show your face in videos as it helps people to connect with you and get your brand out there, there are ways of developing great videos that don’t require you to be in them.

You can create free online videos to help promote your business. You can also create videos that you can sell as another angle to make money from home. I will explain this more later.

Some tools to help you make videos

I will start with a tool that has some free options available within their pricing structure.

Lumen5

Website: https://lumen5.com

Lumen5 is an awesome little tool that is a great introductory way to start creating some short videos. If you have a blog post or page, all you need to do is paste in the URL of the post you want to turn into a video, and Lumen5 works its magic. It will help you create a video by summarising the content, and matching with appropriate images and videos.

You don’t need to rely on what is produced for you though. You can edit the content, add new content, and you change the images or upload your own images and videos. You can also choose music to go with your video.

Lumen5 pricing structure

There’s lots you can do with you can with the free option within Lumen5. There are some other pricing options if you’re wanting to take you videos to the next level:

The paid options will suit you if you don’t want the Lumen5 branding to appear on the video, and if you want to upload your own watermark and outro, or if you want to upload your own music and fonts.

I would suggest starting out with a free account, see if it works for you, and then upgrade if you feel you will get the value from it.

Lumen5 is a recent addition to my ‘go to’ suite of business resources, and it is going to become a core part of my online business strategy moving forward.

Doodly

Website: https://www.doodly.com

Doodly is really cool. Unfortunately, we only discovered it after we’d paid someone we sourced from Fiverr to create a video. But now I know about it and wish I’d known sooner.

With Doodly, you can create videos in whiteboard, blackboard, and glassboard. They are the drawing style videos, hence the name Doodly. Doodle videos help you increase your engagement and turn your visitors into buyers.

Doodly video steps:

1. Create. Name your project. Then you choose between whiteboard, blackboard, or glassboard.

2. Design. Create your video using any of the 10 available characters. There are 200 poses available, and 200 props to choose from.

3. Export. When your video is complete, you can export and customise your resolution, frame rate and quality.

There are no free options available with Doodly.

With the Enterprise version of Doodly, you are able to create videos for other people through sites such as Fiverr, and sell them. We paid $300 for 5-6 minutes worth of video. If you find that you love creating doodle videos, and want to make some extra money on the side, this is an excellent opportunity for you to earn some extra income.  With the drive for people adding video to their marketing toolkits, this is potentially a lucrative opportunity.

Screencast-O-matic

Website: https://screencast-o-matic.com

Screencast-O-matic is awesome, and is very cost effective. It’s only $18 per year. You can also test it for out for free to see if you like it before you go ahead with a purchase.

As you can see from my image here, you can choose three options for your video. You can have a video with your screen only, for example, you would be taking people through steps that you take on your computer and recording the screen. You talk to it at the same time. You can also choose the webcam option, which shows you speaking. A really neat feature is choosing ‘both’, where the majority is your screen, and you appear in the corner whilst speaking.

Additional professional options available

There are lots of others that I won’t go into detail here, but if you’re interested in using video as a key strategy for your business, these options for creating professional videos might be worth investigating further:

Biteable offers a version for up to 5 video projects/month. The free version allows you publish your finished video to Facebook, Twitter and embed it on your website or blog. But, you’ll need a premium plan at $29/month to remove the Biteable’s watermark, download your video, upload your own footage, and other great features.

Jing: http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html

Jing (part of Techsmith) does offer the ability for a free trial, and then pricing is currently $49.95 which is a once off licence fee. You will then need to pay an annual fee of $12.49 to get updates and support.

Camtasia: http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html

Camtasia (part of Techsmith) offers a free trial. Pricing is currently at $249 for a once off licence fee, and there are no other annual fees or costs.

Screenflow: http://www.telestream.net/screenflow/

Screenflow offers a free trial, and prices start at $129.

Other ways of doing free video

You can of course take your own videos with your smart phone, your tablet, and your laptop/desktop if it has a camera and microphone. Appearing in your own videos is highly recommended, if you’re comfortable to do that. You can start by practicing to take your own videos, and working out what works best for you. It might take you a little while to get comfortable in front of the camera. Just keep taking some short video snippets of yourself talking, and over time it will feel less daunting. Only publish what you’re comfortable with.

Uploading videos to YouTube

There are many benefits of adding video to your suite of content and marketing tools, so don’t be shy. Give it a go and try these options to take your business to the next level.

It’s super easy to upload your videos to YouTube. Go to https://www.youtube.com. Click on the upload button (the arrow) on the top right corner:

Then select your file to upload. You will want to write a description of your video, keeping in mind your keywords. Then share your uploaded video to all of your social media channels, and include it on your website.

Need some inspiration to build your own website but not sure where to start?

Please feel free to share your comments and thoughts.  What video software have you had success with?