
How to do a great product promo video for less than $200 - swatermasysk
http://blog.kickofflabs.com/how-to-do-a-great-product-promo-video-for-less-than-200/
======
bennesvig
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
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
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.

------
gllen
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
No - That should be called out as optional.

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

~~~
gllen
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.

~~~
_k
Commercial use is ok if you're a pro user or "You are a small-scale
independent production company, non-profit, or artist, in which case you may
use the Vimeo Service to showcase or promote your own creative works."

~~~
nitrogen
I'm not sure, but "independent production company" might refer to stage
production.

------
JonLim
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.

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

~~~
JoshLedgard
Thanks for the tip. We still like the stats and stuff we get from Vimeo... but
if that really works other people could save more $$.

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

~~~
JoshLedgard
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
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).

~~~
trevorcreech
Check out vidyard.com to get analytics on the video directly.

------
keeptrying
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
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
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.

~~~
bunkat
Any feedback on our video at www.bidkat.com? We did it at basically no cost
and I'm curious if you think we did any better.

~~~
keeptrying
This is brilliant. How did you do this at no cost ?

This is really good.

~~~
bunkat
Thanks! We did it ourselves over a couple of weekends. The voice actor we
found on a voice actor forum, I did the script and our designer did the flash
animation. This was the first animation that we did so we tried hard to make
it look professional.

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

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

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

~~~
JoshLedgard
Then you got past the premise. :)

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

------
aw3c2
aaaaaah, you have a typo "a/b testng".

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

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

