If you’re a budding video marketer out and about shopping for a camera to create your YouTube promotional videos, don’t make the same mistake I did; double check your chosen camcorder exports its video in a widely supported format.

I bought the JVC Everio, which appeared to offer all the “bells and whistles” I needed, including a “one touch upload to YouTube” option which I assumed meant that the camera exported video in a format supported by YouTube.

Oooops!

It doesn’t.

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The “Instant Video Articles” software, from Calvin Woon & Jonathan Teng, will be the subject of the first post in a new series called “I Buy, Try, And Review” (what I’m trying to accomplish here is pretty self-explanatory, but if you’d like a little more information about these reviews, and my thoughts for putting them together, please click here!).

I don’t really remember how I stumbled on this software, but since it deals with video creation and the leveraging of existing content – something I’m very interested in at the moment (as witnessed by the series of video marketing and creation articles on the site) I thought I’d plunk down my credit card and give it the old “test-run.”

Especially since Instant Video Articles claims to be able to “convert your articles into tracking-sucking videos in under 30 seconds.”

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As you know, I’ve spent a fair bit of time lately discussing the use of video marketing and how to use it to leverage your online business. For the most part, I’ve covered video creation and distribution to the main video services (YouTube, MetaCafe, Blip.Tv, DailyMotion, etc) via the TubeMogul service.

One thing I have not discussed is how to place a video in a custom player on your own web site. The easiest way to post video on your own web site is to publish your video to a service like YouTube, and then place the “embed” code on your own web pages and blog posts where you want the video to appear. Most of the time, this works well-enough for the needs of most net-marketers.

But what if you do not want your video to appear on YouTube?

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Over the last few months I’ve been talking a lot about online video marketing, and the traffic-driving and business-building possibilities that it offers to entrepreneurs of all levels of experience.

In this post, for instance, I discussed the logistics of how to create videos for your web site.

In this one, I introduced the strategy of converting your popular articles into videos, and finally, in this one, I outlined the process I developed for creating effective videos quickly.

However, one thing I have not discussed is how well my videos have fared at pulling in eyeballs, and more importantly, converting those viewers into visitors to my web sites. Well,  I’ve finally got a bit of data to draw from, so let’s do that now (incidentally, I’m going to report YouTube numbers only. I have submitted to other video sites, but the vast majority of views come from YouTube)…

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A few weeks ago, I posted about one of my new traffic-building experiments; using short (30-60 seconds) PREselling web videos to drive traffic to my main web site, UltimateFatBurner.com. Basically, this is about creating short, compelling videos, and using them as a “tease” to compel viewers to click through to your web site.

Since my initial post on the subject, I’ve created several other PREselling video commercials. Not surprising, it’s taking less and less time to do so. In addition, I’ve developed a streamlined process and taken steps to address the issue I identified as being the biggest possible detriment to the success of my videos.

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Today I’m back to talking about creating videos for your web site – this time using Animoto, an online service that promises to great looking videos quickly and easily.

As you may know, this is something I’ve been looking at fairly intensely over the last few months. In my last post, I showed you the “PRESelling” video commercial I created using the Camtasia software. Today, I am going to take a closer look at a really slick online service that you can use to make professional-looking videos in a matter of minutes.

That service is called Animoto.

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Over the last several months I’ve been talking a lot about video, and how I think it has real potential for small businesses trying to eke out a living on the Net. We know people love videos – heck, eMarketer is reporting 144 million online video viewers in the U.S. ALONE this year. And even better, Google really seems to like them, featuring them prominently in their search results.

One of the issues I’ve been wrestling with is figuring out how to use video efficiently; the videos I’ve created to date (see the “5-7 Day Free Scam” video and the “hCG” video) have been fairly time intensive. Since I wear “many hats” over at UltimateFatBurner.com, I can’t devote huge blocks of time to creating long and fairly complex videos.

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A few weeks ago, I put together a post on the growing popularity of online video. In it, I discuss how online video is exploding in popularity and why this surge of popularity has got me so excited. However, the majority of this article covers the logistics of video creation; what you need in the way of software and tools, and so on.

It doesn’t really address some of the really cool ways you can use video to leverage your web site, and its existing content. Since this discussion of video is near and dear to my own heart (I’m eager to find the best – and most efficient – ways to use it on my own site – UltimateFatBurner.com and Real-Customer-Comments.com), I’d like to share with you some of the more exciting avenues I’ve investigated, or am currently investigating.

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I highly doubt Bob Dylan had online videos in mind when he sang “the times, they are a-changing.” Nonetheless, his words are particularly apt in this case. Not too long ago, few people had access to the sort of affordable, high-speed internet services that made watching online videos practical. For most us, it was a hair-tearing, frustrating experience.

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