Marketing with Videos

Anyone who has been living under a rock for the past few years might not have heard of YouTube. But the rest of us know that it's one of the hottest sites on the Internet. Anyone can submit videos, and visitors that enjoy a video are often eager to spread the word about it.

Affiliate marketers are often intimidated by the idea of creating YouTube videos. Some of them are very polished, and you can tell that no expense has been spared in making them. But videos do not have to be professionally made in order to be effective. Even funny home videos have been successfully used to get traffic!

Even if you're on a tight budget, you can create videos for YouTube. Windows users have a handy program called Windows Movie Maker on their computers, and they can use it to make videos without even needing a video camera. You can use images and text to get your point across, and add some music or a voice recording for sound. If you have a digital camcorder or webcam, you can use video and audio from that as well.

Another popular tool for marketers is a piece of software called Camtasia. Camtasia allows you to capture video from your computer screen and audio from a microphone to create videos. This works very nicely for marketers in technology and Internet marketing niches. With it, you can make great instructional videos with ease.

You can mention your website and affiliate links in YouTube videos. It's also a good idea to include the links you're promoting in the video's description. And after you've uploaded a video to the site, you can add annotations to it that include links. This ensures that even if users embed the video onto their own site, viewers can easily click through if they are interested.

YouTube videos are viral marketing at its best. A good video could potentially get thousands of views and bring lots of traffic to your website or affiliate link. And as easy as it is to create videos, anyone can take advantage of this powerful marketing channel.