How to do a great product promo video for less than $200

How to do a great product promo video for less than $200(blog.kickofflabs.com)

166 points by swatermasysk 13 years ago | 50 comments

bennesvig 13 years ago |

Stop motion can be another cheap option. Though, it can take a considerable amount of time. I created a video for the launch of this product with no prior experience making professional videos. I used my wife's DLSR camera (if I didn't have one I could have cheaply rented one) and about $50 worth of props from Amazon. This was the result: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRdL55iSN-Y

skeletonjelly 13 years ago | |

Looks good! Only criticism is that you should keep it all manual to create a consistent look between each frame (manually set ISO, shutter speed and aperture).

bennesvig 13 years ago | | |

I wish someone told me this before the video! ha. Makes a HUGE difference. Doing that would have saved me a ton of editing time.

JoshLedgard 13 years ago | |

That turned out really cool!

gllen 13 years ago |

Was the $200 spent on Vimeo Pro? This is why I didn't host mine on Vimeo.

https://vimeo.com/help/guidelines

Businesses may not use basic Vimeo or Vimeo Plus accounts to host their videos. Businesses may, however, use a Vimeo PRO account to host their videos so long as they comply with the Vimeo PRO guidelines.

JoshLedgard 13 years ago | |

No - That should be called out as optional.

But the commenters here have added information on creating a better youtube experience.

gllen 13 years ago | | |

Where are you seeing it's optional? Do you mean it's just not enforced?

https://vimeo.com/help/faq/pro

Vimeo Plus is intended for individuals who want more features than a Basic (free) account, however Vimeo Plus users may not upload videos that are commercial in nature, or that are intended to sell or promote a product or service.

JonLim 13 years ago |

I posted this in the comments of OP's blog post, but I figure some other HNers could use the clarification around YouTube.

---

Hey Scott,

Simple video and it works - definitely better than many other product promo videos I've seen in my time (as a videographer.)

Just wanted to clarify something about YouTube: ads do not run before, during, or after if you don't allow them. Ads will only run if a video is "monetized," which is a setting that the uploader controls. In addition, I believe embedded content (such as the video embedded in this post) does not have advertisements running ever, but I could be wrong on this point.

That said, both Vimeo and YouTube are great video hosts. I tend to prefer YouTube (if absolutely everything inside your video is original) because it makes the video far more accessible and has a greater chance of being discovered by your desired audience. Vimeo's real advantage is its video page presentation and better compression, at least in my opinion.

Thanks for sharing VoiceBunny! I had no idea this existed, and will make my life easier.

JoshTriplett 13 years ago | |

> Just wanted to clarify something about YouTube: ads do not run before, during, or after if you don't allow them. Ads will only run if a video is "monetized," which is a setting that the uploader controls.

Not entirely true; by uploading to YouTube, you run the risk of a content provider claiming that your video contains their content, which will allow them to run ads on your video involuntarily. If your promotional video includes music (even if you have a license to that music), this seems quite likely.

JoshLedgard 13 years ago | |

And to repost my reply... Thanks for the comment. We love posting things that we've learned that could help out our customers.

The thing I couldn't figure out with Youtube was how to stop the post-roll "ads" for "related videos" that took the user out of our context.

And, no, removing it from the public index didn't effect the post-roll recommendations.

jldteixeira 13 years ago | | |

To remove the related videos from the end of your youtube embed just add "&rel=0" to the iframe url.

bunkat 13 years ago |

Another option for voice actors that I discovered is http://voiceactingalliance.com/board/forum.php. They are mostly amateurs but many of them do it as a pretty serious hobby and have high end equipment. We posted an ad and had 4 auditions in a week. We selected the best one and then worked with them over the course of a couple of weeks to get the results we wanted. Best of all, it was absolutely free.

Fortunately we also have an amazing designer in house so we could do the rest of the video ourselves. You can see the results at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5siDTau6Rvg (note that we went with YouTube since you can't use Vimeo for commercial purposes).

BryanB55 13 years ago |

PowToon looks really great. I need to create a few of these videos soon and I've been looking at different tools and thinking of using keynote but this seems like a much easier and faster solution.

tlogan 13 years ago |

Vimeo clearly states: Vimeo Plus users may not upload videos that are commercial in nature, or that are intended to sell or promote a product or service.

So how can Vimeo be an alternative to YouTube?

Am I missing something here?

JoshLedgard 13 years ago | |

I called this out before... Vimeo could be considered optional. Youtube can be configured as well for hosting the video. Or you could self host. The post was more about the production.

corkill 13 years ago | | |

Get a free account with http://wistia.com/, they let you do cool stuff like calls to action and capture emails.

They also give you the stats on the video, so you know which parts users watch, which parts they rewind etc.

Also can the OP break down what they spent the money on, Powtoon is not displaying pricing right now. Great post.

jameslevy 13 years ago |

It's worth noting that while YouTube could always run ads in your video, it is very rare to see ads in these types of videos. Ads are usually shown by high-trafficked videos, entertainment content, etc.

It depends on the product category you're in, and as always YMMV.

bbddg 13 years ago | |

YouTube will only show ads for videos that either use copyrighted content in some way (usually music) or are videos by a YouTube partner and they have a deal with Google to split ad revenue for the video.

This video would never have ads on YouTube.

jpdelatorre 13 years ago |

I'm curious how long the entire process took to finish (in terms of man-hours).

JoshLedgard 13 years ago | |

But, on the other hand, even if we'd paid a service to do it we still would have had to help a lot with the script. Which was one of the most costly (time consuming) parts.

JoshLedgard 13 years ago | |

About 8 hours. It was basically two half days to get it to what you see there.

So, to your point, our time was probably the most costly part. :)

swatermasysk 13 years ago | | |

Background music of some kind is on the short list. We wanted to get it out there and see what it does for conversions as is (we are testing it against an image on our home page. we will probably blog those results as well).

jpdelatorre 13 years ago | | |

It looks pretty decent and gets the message across. I would suggest to add either sound fx or background music to spice it up a little bit. :)

keeptrying 13 years ago |

Thats not a great video. I stopped after 10 seconds. Its grating, boring and needs me to read words.

I guess thats why the good ones charge so much. The content is pretty important.

JoshLedgard 13 years ago | |

The real verdict of the video success has much more to do with analytics than individual opinions.

Of course, since we just posted it, we won't have good results of our A/B test (against a static image slideshow) for a week or so.

keeptrying 13 years ago | | |

I would never ever put any of my friends through the pain of watching that thing - no offense.

I also really need an unbounce alternative. I'll have a look at your site when I get some downtime.

The big problem is you put every feature tahat you have in your app into the video. Thats why its kind of blah. Focus on one tihng you do based on which suorce the user comes from.

If he's coming from HN then just test your business should be enough. The user will find the other features as he explores.

jfdimark 13 years ago |

Thanks, I've been looking a good, economical, way of creating an intro video, this looks like a really solid option.

Can I ask, do you think it has advantages over, say, recording your screen while you record yourself taking someone through a demo? Then maybe replacing your voice with a voicebunny voiceover?

I imagine cartoon v screen demo is dependent on your audience and objectives, but intrigued as to why you went this route. Cheers!

JoshLedgard 13 years ago | |

When we first launched we had a screen recording with a voice over.

Our problem with that is that, as a startup, our UI was changing every couple of months. The premise/goal doesn't change for the user... but we keep making it better. So that video got old too quick. And editing screen recordings every couple of months got tiring.

We are also looking to do some how-to videos with voice-bunny instead of our voices though. It ends up sounding much better.

jfdimark 13 years ago | | |

Thanks - that makes a lot of sense actually. Good advice!

charleshaanel 13 years ago |

For scripting I recommend these books: 1) Words that Sell 2) Cashvertizing

I have produced opt in rates north of 51% and actual front end sales conversion rates of 5% percent using those resources to help with building a script

j45 13 years ago |

This is certifiably bad ass. Any hints as to pricing or what it was before?

It might be cool to license some more background music from a site like audiojungle.net to make it available.

JoshLedgard 13 years ago | |

Once I signed up for PowToon the pricing for our plan was $57 a month... which gives you 20 video exports.

I thought about music... but after an hour trying to find a good match I gave up and figured I could add music later.

ww520 13 years ago |

What are the options for recording Android apps? Post recording editing tools (on Windows)? The voice over can be embedded into the video at editing, right?

steveplace 13 years ago |

I would recommend easyvideoplayer as an alternative to vimeo. Your videos are hosted on Amazon S3 and you can control where your video can be played.

togasystems 13 years ago |

What considerations did you have for the type of voice used?

JoshLedgard 13 years ago | |

Voicebunny lets you select gender and add notes. They also seem to have a process that reads your notes and looks for the ideal talent.

Our first recording came back a little too whimsical. So we asked for a revision to have it more profesional sounding and got it for $16 more dollars. Still within our $200 budget.

andrew_wc_brown 13 years ago |

They lost me at "Were a one stop shop".

JoshLedgard 13 years ago | |

Then you got past the premise. :)

Beyond the education we were trying to go for a little bit of the corny/infomercial feeling.

aw3c2 13 years ago |

aaaaaah, you have a typo "a/b testng".

Nowyouknow 13 years ago | |

Also, first check "our" the video. Should be "Out."

JoshLedgard 13 years ago | | |

Thanks. Fixed the blog and now re-exporting the video.