It certainly won't be any great news to anyone interested in making money online that the use of video is increasingly prevalent, and powerful.

I first dabbled in using video to promote a product when I reviewed the Kensington Wifi Finder Plus on my website about wifi. That thing has sold plenty for me since that review - actually probably the single most popular physical product I've promoted. Now the video itself is nothing special, so I don't know how much effect the video had or whether it just sold well because it's a good fit with the site. But certainly seeing an item in video form must be a persuasive factor when deciding to buy.

So I've done a new video review. This time I've reviewed the Kodak EasyShare EX1011 Digital Picture Frame. I've seen on YouTube that "unboxing" videos of equipment are fairly popular, and also I wanted to include a demonstration of what might be the most useful function for my users - the ability to wirelessly get photos onto the frame.



So I'll now be looking forward to finding out if seeing the product on video gives any extra lift to sales.

I found making the video to be significantly easier with a cheap tripod I bought in Argos, and once I done my filming, I did the editing in a piece of software called Magix Movie Edit Pro. There's also some free movie making software in XP which I want to try out. Unfortunately my microphone died half way through production, so I finished off with some awful one I had laying about, hence bad sound quality from half way through.

When making the video, I kind of struggled with the question of whether to overcome the inevitable embarrassment and make it a personal thing and become part of the review, or to just keep it in strictly product shots. I decided to appear in it, which seemed like a good idea at the time but I don't think I can bring myself to ever watch it again :-)

Sometimes in affiliate marketing its easy to push out sites that don't really add anything - they just parrot the merchant site and info, and you hope yours gets found by some means before the merchant. By getting in on video creation, you are actually going above beyond what most merchants are currently offering and really adding value.

Labels: affiliate marketing, video