This is the third installment of a 4-part tutorial series I’m doing, Freelancing 101: A Dead Simple Method to Get Your First Freelance Work. In this series, I’m walking you through the exact process I used to get my first freelance clients.
In this step, I’m going to show you how to create a video to promote your freelance services on YouTube.
And, let’s start by tackling the elephant in the room…
Do You Think You Can’t Create a Video?
Well, watch a little bit of this video:
You hear how bad that audio is? The “jet engine” screaming in the background it seems like. The ums, the uhs. The manic scrolling. The incoherence. It’s a BAD video.
I still got work from this video.
In fact, my first few freelance clients ever were people who watched this (very bad) video, searched me out and hired me to build this data feed for them.
So… you CAN do this.
And, I’m going to show how to make a much better video. But, one of the first objections I get is:
I Don’t Have Any Recording Software
The bottom line here is: the software you need to record your video DOES exist no matter what your budget is. Not having the software is NOT an excuse. If you want to go top of the line, then get Camtasia Studio. It’s the software I use, it’s built for doing the kind of screencast you’re going to do for this video and it has all the tools you could want for recording, editing and rendering your video.
It, also, costs $250.
So, that may be out of reach for you. No problem. There’s a FREE chrome extension called Screencastify that will let you create screen captures, as well. It does have a $2/month premium option which gives you even more tools, but I’ve had good success using it. It does what you’ll need to get done.
But, even if THAT doesn’t work, Camtasia has a free recorder you can use, as well, called Jing. With Jing, you can record screencasts much like you would with Camtasia Studio. The videos can be uploaded to Camtasia’s free video hosting site, screencast.com, and then you can download them as MP4’s from there. There is a 5-minute time limit for the free version, but you can record your video in 5-minute segments, download them all and then piece them together in editing software.
Again, bottom line, the software you need exists. But, the next big objection is:
I’m Not Good on Camera. I Don’t Know What to Say
First, NOBODY likes the way they look on camera. I’ve recorded over 500 videos, I still hate the way I look. Do it, anyway. Second, YOU don’t need to be on camera. We’re going to record a screencast, so your voice is the only thing people will hear. You can record a webcam along with it, but you don’t need to. Again, look at my video. I didn’t record my webcam.
As far as not knowing what to say…
Write out what you want to say as a blog post, first. Word for word is fine. Then, when you record, just use the blog post to know what to say. That will cut down on the ums and uhs and pausing to try and think what to say. Write it out and read it. Simple.
Ok, with all that out of the way, now we can get into…
How to Record Your Video
So, what exactly are we doing a screencast of? Good question. You remember that solution checklist we built in Part 1? That’s our video outline. Now, I think this will probably be the hardest part for you to get your head around, but in your video you are going to show people EXACTLY how to solve the problem you settled on in Part 1.
Yes.
The exact solution.
Wait, but won’t that mean they’ll have the answer and not need to hire me? Kind of. For some people, that’ll be absolutely true. However, there are always people who will just prefer to pay you to do it for them. Take a look at my video, for example. I show you exactly how to build the Google data feed. Buuuuut, it’s still a lot of coding. A lot of people aren’t going to be able to do that EVEN IF they know the answer.
Some people just won’t want to.
But, the bigger thing here is we need this video to be perceived as highly valuable to people who have this problem. The goal of the video is to get it to rank high on Google and YouTube. That will only happen if you actually help a lot of the people who view it to solve the problem. That’ll get the likes and shares and watch time that lead to high rankings.
And then, we’ll siphon off a few of those people who can’t or don’t want to do it themselves.
That’s the entire strategy here and it works. Remember our original problem keyword phrase: “error establishing a database connection”. It got 22,000 searches a month. Now, imagine a scenario where we create a YouTube video and it ends up ranking on the first page of Google for that search (easier than you might think).
Let’s say 10,000 people per month then view that video.
And 1% of those people hire you to fix that problem for them. That’s 100 clients per month. And, each one pays you $100. That’s still $10,000 per month. From ONE problem, ONE video, ONE freelance service. And, only charging $100 per project. What if you charge $200 or $300?
Or, you build out 5 or 10 or 20 videos and services like this?
Point is… even if a super low percentage of people end up hiring you from this video… you can still make a good chunk of change. Hell, if you charged $200 and only got 5 of those 22,000 people/month to hire you, that’s still $1,000/month. It’s not nothing.
So, how do you record your video?
You make a screencast where you just show them exactly how to solve the problem they’re having. And, it’s all the proof you need to demonstrate to someone who just wants to hire someone to do it that you know what you’re doing. They’ve literally watched you do it.
How You Sell Your Services In Your Video
Now, you might be wondering how you then sell your services in this video… if we’re just showing people how to solve the problem. At the beginning and the end of the video, you insert this line:
“By the way, if you’d prefer I just do this for you, you can learn more about hiring me at: YOURURL.com”.
That URL is the sales page we created in Part 2.
So, you might start off your video like this:
“Hey John here. In this video, I’m going to walk you through 7 different solutions to the ‘error establishing a database connection’ error you might be seeing on your site and show you how to fix each one. And, by the way, as I’m going through this if you start thinking to yourself ‘I’d rather just hire someone to do this for me’, I can do that. You can learn more about hiring me at: YOURURL.com. Ok, let’s get into this.”
And, then at the end of the video, say something like:
“Ok, that’s it. Thanks for watching. And, as I mentioned, if you’d prefer to just have me fix this for you, you can learn more about hiring me at: YOURURL.com.”
It’s that simple.
Big thing is to write this out BEFORE you record. So, you can just read it instead of trying to think it up on the fly.
Finally, the last thing…
The #1 Factor In Recording a High Quality Video Is…
The audio.
Sounds weird, but it’s true. All the research on this points to the same thing… people will turn off a video faster because of bad audio than anything else. And yes, the mic is important. But, you can get good quality audio out of okay microphones if you know how to set everything up and how to master the audio properly.
I’ve spent a lot of years figuring this out.
So, what I’ve done for Patrons of mine is I’ve recorded a video where I show the exact process I use for getting good quality audio on my videos. The things that are important to get right when you record, how to drastically reduce background noise, my exact mastering process and how to automate all of it. So, you get consistent, good quality audio in everything you record. If you’re already a Patron, you can watch that video here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/how-i-master-for-18267629. If you’re not yet a Patron, you can become one here: https://johnmorrisonline.com/patreon.
All right, so that’s it for today. In the next installment of this series, I will show you how to promote your video and get it seen by the exact people who would be most likely to hire you. So, be sure to check back for tomorrow’s installment.
