Can You Make Money with Your Video Screencasting Skills?

I get this question a lot in my coaching classes “Now that I’ve learned Screencasting with Camtasia and PowerPoint how can I make money with these skills?”. Now, some people decided that their goal is to break free from the service business and only use their skills to create videos for themselves and their own business. But in my own experience, there is nothing better than multiple sources of income so I have continued to do work for clients while building the Learn Camtasia site. I’ve found it to be, not only a great source of additional income. but helps to give me lots of things to write about and share with the students on our site.  Even Lon is now taking on clients and creating some fun and interesting new videos.

If you’ve thought about what it would be like to offer screencasting as a service I’d like  to share with you some ideas of what Lon and I are doing and also to invite you to join the “Career in Screencasting” course that starts on February 29th.

I hope the following case studies give you some ideas for how screencasts can be used as well as they types of services you can offer to clients:

Michelle’s Case Study #1: Experts Share their Advice

My client hires experts in career skills and creates full motion videos (with a greenscreen background)of them  teaching subjects like Networking and Negotiating a Salary.  Then, I take these videos, add a background, add text and images to the sides and some PowerPoints in between and create mini courses. This is giving me lots of practice with the new “remove a color” feature in Camtasia. I’m also creating lower thirds and using the Visual Properties feature to animate some of the text coming in and out. Love using these new features of Camtasia 8.2!

Michelle’s Case Study #2: Creating Super Fast Help Desk Training

My client has a software company which is expanding quickly and he’s started hiring more helpdesk personnel. It’s been taking him a lot of time to train these people as they are all being hired at different times. We decided to create a series of screencasts they could watch along with some quizzes to test their retention. We are also creating some Help Desk scenarios that require them to use the software for typical situations.  Because this is internal training and only for a handful of current, and then future helpdesk contractors will use we wanted to make it as fast and cheaply as possible.  We have set up 1 hour GotoWebinar sessions where the client teaches me the software, I record the session, then embellish it with zooms, callouts, PowerPoint titles and Process maps (and a few funny cartoons to keep it engaging).  Client love how quickly and inexpensively he can train his team,

Michelle’s Case Study #3: Consulting and Critiquing

This client is using me as a screencast consultant. He works at a large corporation and has been tasked with creating training and support videos for new software. He is new at creating videos but he wants them to come out very professional. He wants to learn how to do the work himself but he is on a tight deadline. I’ve helped him polish his script so it is more informal and conversational, show him the best ways to keep all his videos consistent (using a Style sheet) and then I critique each video as he completes it. Once you have enough videos under your belt you’ll feel comfortable offering consulting services yourself.

Lon’s Case Study #4: Credibility Building Videos

This is a project that Lon is working on this month. He is working with a commercial real estate lawyer with offices in California and Colorado.  This video project involves creating valuable, “must know” educational content that demonstrates the need for the lawyer’s expertise and services while avoiding the “legalese” mumbo-jumbo language usually used in the industry. Lon is creating 3 – 5 minute credibility building videos such as  “7 Concrete Steps You MUST Take To Close Your Sale” using a combination of PowerPoint 2010 and Powtoon. He is also editing some seminar camera work into smaller chunks that can be turned into more marketing and training content to promote this client.

If these case studies give you some ideas for services you could offer yourself (and you are not already on our subscriber list) please join us for A Career in Screencastig on January 29th.