Do you think you need to spend hundreds of dollars if you want to make videos to sell products and services? Well think again because there’s a hidden gem that’s actually free to use where you can make your videos look like you are using expensive video editing software. It’s called YouTube…ever heard of it?

If you haven’t noticed, YouTube is adding more features and tools for users and it’s looking more and more like a professional video editing software like Camtasia (and other expensive video editing softwares.)

My prediction a year ago was that YouTube is going to be a full video editing tool and right now. It isn’t quite there yet, but it’s well on it’s way.

In this post, I will share how you can use the free tools that Google / YouTube provides us to make stunning videos with edits, calls to action, and professional filters. You don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars to make a simple video to get your point across to sell products. If you are just starting out or have a low budget, then you will want to read this post as it will get you by without costing you a dime.

So let’s dive in!

For those of you who don’t know what Camtasia is, it’s a video editing software that’s available for both the Mac and PC and you can do screen recordings (where you are not on camera and just your screen shows and people can hear your voice) and / or you can do videos where you are actually on camera talking. After you shoot your video, you can do all kinds of cool edits to your videos like zoom, blur, add text, change the color, apply green screen if your lighting is right, and a lot more. It’s a really neat software. Personally, I recommend the tool for Macs because they give you free upgrades…while with the PC you have to pay for each upgrade which kinda stinks. Camtasia is an intuitive program where you don’t need prior video editing skills to use it. And, with any video editing tool or software, once you learn one, you’ve pretty much learned them all. Other video editors include iMovie for Macs and Windows Movie Maker for PCs.

Right now, YouTube could be labeled the poor marketer’s Camtasia because it has many nifty features that are quite comparable to a sophisticated video editing program. As I mentioned above, YouTube cannot at the moment fully replace Camtasia because Camtasia has so many additional editing features but if you are not looking to spend $100+ on a video editing tool, then you might want to take a look at what YouTube has to offer.

Producing Videos in YouTube

To get started, you will want to login to your YouTube account and click the Upload button.

As you can see, you’ve got a few options. Of course, if you are not a marketer, making slideshow videos with pictures and music is a hella good time, but I don’t think those are the types of videos that are going to sell products. The types of videos that will sell products are:

1) Screen Capture videos

2) Videos with you (or someone else) in front of the camera.

The first type, screen capture videos, you can’t quite do with YouTube, yet. I am saying yet because my prediction is that we will be able to do that in the future. Do I know this for certain? Absolutely not. There are some free screen capture and recording services out there like Jing and Camtasia Studio but you are not going to get the high quality and high level editing power as you do with Camtasia. There are also some other types of Mac apps that do screen recording like screen flow, but if you are going to pay for a program, my recommendation is to spring for Camtasia.

The second type of videos for a selling environment is you or someone else in front of the camera and this you CAN do with YouTube now. Click on Webcam Capture (Record) and you will see this feature at work.

Click start recording and you will be able to record yourself! How cool is that? I actually like this selfie record feature BETTER than Camtasia because you can actually see yourself as you are shooting the video, whereas Camtasia you can’t. It’s a strange thing. Anyway, when you are recording, don’t worry if you mess up because you will be able to edit later and do some other cool features too! Let’s get into that…

Video Editing And After Effects in YouTube

Above is a video I pulled into edit. It’s a video about a book I wrote on ACL Rehabilitation Tips. I am not a doctor or a physical therapist, but I’ve been through ACL Rehab and thought I would write a book on the best exercises to do to make your leg muscles stronger (because that is essentially what you need to do to recover and prevent re-injury).

There are a number of edits I can make to this video. First I want to point out that when editing, you will want to zoom in as far as you need to so that you can split clips at the right time to edit your voice. If you don’t zoom in, video editing is going to be quite difficult. As you can see, the video is easily editable with this new view and you can see each frame perfect.

You will see those little scissors on the blue scroller…this will allow you to cut out what you don’t want from your video. Again, zooming in will allow you to cut with precision.

Here are some additional editing you can do with the YouTube editor:

Add Background Music & Sounds

YouTube has background music that you can use in your videos – and here’s the crazy part, it’s free! If you don’t like the music that YouTube provides, you can get royalty free music from elsewhere. I recommend incompetech and I also recommend you donating at least $5 per song when you do use one.

As you can see, there is a wide selection of background music and various sounds right here on YouTube.

CC

At first, you look at the picture with the circle and cc in the middle and you think close captioning, but it’s not! It’s Creative Common Videos! This is super cool. Theses are mini videos that are creative common, meaning they are free to use without worrying about violating any copyright or having to pay royalties for using them…even commercially. You can add these to your videos freely.

Here’s what one looks like:

Transitions

Transitions make your videos look more professional. They also help make your video look better when you make cuts. Hard cuts (without transitions) don’t look great and having a nice little transition does a world of wonder. You will see when you are making videos, it’s not so easy sometimes. You will mess up and it won’t be perfect. Dr. Ben always says that Perfect = Poor. If you spend too much time trying to perfect your videos, you will be wasting time. Don’t try to be perfect!

Text

You can add text to your videos. If you want to give information throughout your videos or at the end, you can easily do that with the YouTube editor. This isn’t really a new feature as annotations in YouTube have been around for a while.

Filters

Filters is another great feature, but it is not on this screen. Your video has to already be uploaded to use the Filter feature.

Filters will be in your video manager and it will also show up on your video page on YouTube, and as long as you are logged in, you will see the ability to edit your video’s information as well as apply annotations and apply filters.

Does this look familiar? It looks like filters on camera phones. What’s great about YouTube is that you can test out the filters and you don’t necessarily have to publish it if you don’t like any of them. It gives you a nice preview of what the original video looks like and what the video looks like after the filter is applied. Amazing stuff! Obviously I am a big video nerd and I get excited about this. Hopefully you do too because these are great and sophisticated features for a free program!

The fact that this is web based is even better because sometimes video editing software like Camtasia can be big and clunky and slow down your computer big time.

So there you have it. Making videos is now easier than ever with the editing features YouTube provides. I really hope my predictions are right where YouTube adds way more features to give programs like Camtasia a run for its money!

Try it out and start having fun making videos with these features! Leave a comment and let us know about the videos you create. We can’t wait to see them!