In the last few episodes, I have been talking all about YouTube and why you should seriously consider adding it as an additional marketing channel for your business. 

In this episode of Art of Online Business, I’m diving into the video tools and equipment you’ll need to get started with your channel as a beginner. 

YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google. It is one of the best ways to get discovered organically which makes it a massive opportunity for us coaches, course creators, and membership creators. There is no better time than right now to get started with your YouTube channel. 

It doesn’t have to be overwhelming to get started. The simple tools I share in this episode will make your job so much easier. In fact, one of these tools is a complete game-changer and will set you up for success. 

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Tips for using your phone to record
• My microphone recommendations
• The best lighting options
• What you need if you’re recording with a DSLR
• Online tools for creating your thumbnails 
• How to find content ideas
• Project management flow tips
• Tools for adding in B-roll footage
• Where to get your analytics

Links & Resources:

• Check out YouTube from Scratch
• The Art of Online Business website
• DM me on Instagram
• Visit my YouTube channel
• The Art of Online Business clips on YouTube
• Full episodes of The Art of Online Business Podcast on YouTube
• The Art of Online Business Podcast website
• Check out my Accelerator coaching program

*Disclosure: I only recommend products I use and love and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission.

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Other Episodes You’ll Enjoy:

2 Things You Must Focus On To Grow Your YouTube Channel Quickly, with Pat Flynn (Part II)

Don’t Make THIS Same Business Mistake I Did

If I Were Starting a YouTube Channel Today, with Pat Flynn (Part I)

All right. What’s up, my friends? Welcome to today’s Quick Tip episode here on the show. And if you’ve been listening to the past few episodes, you know that I’ve been talking about YouTube a lot. And I just finished up a part one in part two with my with my good buddy Pat Flynn, talking all about YouTube and helping you create a plan and share with you some tips and strategies for starting to get a YouTube channel added on to your existing business. Because, you know, and I’ve talked about it a lot here in the past few episodes with with Pat and also the solo episode I did last. I did last Friday. It’s the second largest or it’s the second largest search engine. Right. Among other many other things, it’s one of the best ways to get discovered organically. And so that’s why I’m spending so much time on YouTube and talking with you about it, because it’s a massive opportunity for us coaches, course creators, membership creators to add another marketing channel to our business. And it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Right. And that’s really what the what I want to talk to you about today is I want to share with you 11 simple YouTube video tools for beginners and some also some equipment. And they’re all really, really they’re all going to make your job really a much that much easier or your team if you have a team. The last one I’m going to share with you later in this episode is a complete game changer. 

Can make so many things easier for when you’re coming up with ideas for your show, but also or for an episode. But also it can help you write descriptions, introduction of descriptions for your YouTube videos as well as helping you with bullet point out different points that you want to be hitting within a video. So I’ll share with you that at the at the end of this episode and I started using this, what I’m going to share with you a few weeks ago when I’m recording this and I absolutely love it. And so I’ll share more about that here in a few minutes. So the first thing, the first tool, it’s actually equipment is, all right, we need something to record our videos. Right. And this is the part where we oftentimes really overcomplicate it. All you need truly to get started is a phone, all the iPhone and Google Pixel and Android and all that stuff. They all have great cameras on them. That’s all you really need. At least to get started. You can move into DSLR or whatever down the road, but just to get started, your iPhone or your Android or whatever is a great option. So that’s number one. Number two is you need something. You need to stand for your phone. You need to put your phone somewhere. And so what I like is the switch pod. Now, that is one of Pat’s products. 

He created this that with his business partner, Caleb Wojcik. And the switch pod is is just a super simple yet really effective. You can carry it around, you can put it on your desk or what have you. And so anyway, the switchboard, it’s great. It’s on Amazon. I forget the price of it’s like on an under $100, but just any stand to put your phone on. I mean, heck, just that brings up a totally random story. Like several years ago, I was in Charleston, South Carolina, for a mastermind. And my friend Amber McCue, who I’ve had here in the podcast before, I had rented a an Airbnb apartment and she needed to do this webinar and she didn’t have any quiet space. I was like, Just do it at the you can just do it at the apartment. So anyway, I went out to grab dinner. I come back and she has her phone. Stuck in a toilet paper roll that stacked up on other pieces, other rolls of toilet paper on the desk. That was her tripod. That was what was holding her phone to give her webinar. So it doesn’t matter what you use, right? But you’ve got to have something to put the phone on to record your videos. Obviously, you’re recording in landscape vertical. Next thing you need some form of microphone. You want decent sound, at least decent sound when you’re beginning and you can do several different options. You can buy something for under $15 on Amazon. 

That is like a lapel mic. It’s going to be a condenser mic, so it’s going to pick up a lot of outside external noise. You can also just use the I know, I know some people who have really successful YouTube channels when they started out with their phone and they just use the microphone in their phone and it was totally fine. I recommend the road video n TG Road Road Road Video n is a Nancy T is and Tom G is in great shape. It’s under $50 and you can get a connector cable to connect it to your to your phone. And it’s a great microphone. It’s the one that I use for my videos and what I’m not using my podcasting mic and it’s great. I like it. Next thing you need to think about light, right? And again, don’t overthink it. You can just use a ring light or a lighting brand that I really like is called newer and e w e r and you can find something that’s super inexpensive from them. And here’s a here’s kind of a pro tip, if you will, have a light in the background of your office or your room or wherever you’re shooting your video that’s toward the back of the of the room. So if you’re watching this video right now on the art of online business YouTube channel, you can see over my shoulder, as I point to it, is I have a light back there on my bookcase that is literally a light.

I can dim it. It’s like that old fashioned kind of filament bulb. And I got it at Target. I think it was like $15 or something like that. But it adds depth to the video really simply right now you don’t need this, but it’s it’s kind of a pro tip to sort of elevate your videos really, really easily. Now, that’s that’s as far as equipment goes, right? If you are sort of shooting with a DSLR and starting at that level, then you’re going to want two different things. One one’s equipment, one’s a tool, one’s a software. So from an equipment standpoint, I’d recommend the Elgato cam link 4K. It allows you to record the video, your video, your YouTube video in 4K and there’s just an adapter. I don’t remember the price of it. It’s not that expensive, but it’s a USB adapter. And then on the other side of it, it I forget what kind of maybe it’s like mini HDMI or something. I don’t remember. Remember, but it, it goes from that adapter into your phone. So that is, that’s, that’s necessary and there’s other ways to do it. You don’t need that. But I use the Elgato cam link 4k and it’s super easy. And I just want to remind you, by the way, that I am so not a techie person. Like people ask me, I do have a DSLR, I recording this on a DSLR camera right now. 

People ask me like, Oh my God, your picture is so great. What kind of camera and what’s your lens? And I’m like, it’s a Sony, a 6400, and then it’s a sigma. So like, I don’t remember like 1.4 or something like 16 millimeter or whatever. I have no idea what that means. I just ask people, ask my buddy Pat. It’s like, All right, what kind of lens? This is what you told me. I’m like, All right, I’m going to go get 

1. You don’t need that that sort of fancy. It’s probably like $1,000 that kit altogether, but I don’t know what any of that does. So anyway, and then also I record my videos in using E cam e cam live pro and I think it’s like $7 a month or something like that. Of course you don’t have to. You can do it in iMovie or whatever it might be. But keep it super simple. All right. Canva for thumbnails. Canva for thumbnails. Just go into templates inside of Canva and you can literally search YouTube thumbnails. And there are hundreds of. Just templates there of YouTube thumbnails that you can customize for yourself and you can put obviously your picture in there in text and colors and all that stuff. So Canva, super simple. The other thing you can do is just you can outsource it. Go find somebody on fiber and you can they can create thumbnails for you as well. 

Remember, Pat talked about the most important thing that you can do that you’re going to do with your YouTube videos is title and thumbnail before you even figure out what you’re going to talk about in your video title first and then the and the thumbnail. Then you go into what you’re going to be talking about in your video, which is a real shift in how we think about it. But he broke that down. Why we do that in part one of the interview. So if you’ve not yet heard that, definitely recommend it. Now, as far as topic ideas and I’ll share this tool with you here coming up in just a minute. But one super easy, obvious thing that a lot of people overlook is the YouTube search bar. So if you go into YouTube and there’s the search bar there and you start typing in something, it will auto populate suggestions for finishing what you just put into the search bar. So for example, if I if I put in there like YouTube video and it will start auto populating, it will give you suggestions for how to finish that phrase. Those are all topic ideas. Those are things that people are searching on and that can be a great source of giving you ideas for videos to create. So the YouTube search bar, super, super easy, totally free. Obviously, it’s right. It’s right there. Now, speaking of topics, a project management workflow is going to be super helpful to manage the creation of your videos. 

Right? So from your ideas to this, I’m, I’m scripting it or something I need to create a thumbnail to okay, I’m filming it now, it’s in the editing process and then the different hooks and so forth. I highly recommend creating a project management workflow for yourself. In terms of the video creation process, I’ve created one for those of you who, as I mentioned in the past few episodes, if you’d like to enroll in Pat Flynn’s YouTube from scratch, course this is step by step, helping you create your channel. Get up to 1000 subscribers. It is the best YouTube course that I have come across. As I’ve been mentioning in the past few episodes. This is the fourth YouTube course that I’ve bought and by far it is the best one in terms of clarity, ease of use, boom, boom. I just follow the instructions step by step and it is also the least expensive Pat sells it for. I think it’s for 97 or for 99 or something like that. And as a listener of the show between September 22nd, so depending on when you’re listening to this, if you’re listening to this on Friday when it comes out, so starting yesterday, September 22nd through Tuesday, September 27th, Pat’s offering you $50 off YouTube from scratch. So just go to Rick Mull. Ready, forward slash pat. You can use the coupon code right there. And then also one of the bonuses that I’ve created for you is a YouTube video creation workflow template I’ve created for you in click up. 

So if you use click up, you can import it right to click up. If you don’t use click up and use other tools, Asana or Monday or whatever it might be, you can just copy what I’ve created for you into your own into your own tool. So again, it’s Rick Mulvaney dot com forward slash pat so as far as editing goes. Super easy screen flow for Mac Camtasia, which is it’s the same program, basically, but it’s for PC. And I will tell you, if I can use screen flow, anybody can use screen flow. It’s actually really intuitive. And once you get into it, it becomes very, very easy. And as Pat mentioned on one of his, I think I forget it was part one or part two. That’s the way that he edits his videos for the Pat Flynn Channel. And so Screen Flow or Camtasia for PC for PC, another just super simple editing tool. It’s an app called In Shot and it’s a really you can create videos right in in shot, get tools to adding text and captions and create transitions and all that stuff. But In Shot is a really good, simple app as well that will help you with with creating videos and like YouTube shorts and so forth too. So two more tool, three more tools, story blocks. So this is more advanced like as you get going here with your YouTube video creation, if you want to start adding in B-roll, right? So B-roll like from a stock footage perspective story blocks is a great site that you can get B-roll footage from and insert it into your videos.

Super simple. I don’t know the price is, but it’s really, really great in terms of going to search for B-roll, grabbing it, inserting it into your video. And again, don’t worry about B-roll at first, just like Pat talked about in in our interview. But you can progress as you progress in your videos and get better with your videos. You can start incorporating B-roll. All right. So two more YouTube studio for analytics. So this is probably the most important thing once you’ve got your video done, right. So as Pat mentioned in the interview, it’s less these days about subscribers and very much the YouTube algorithm is looking way more at like the click through rate of your video. How many clicks is your video getting views of your video and then the average view duration? So how long are people watching your video? And the better those numbers, the more that YouTube’s algorithm is going to push out that video. And again, this is like we have to be be consistent with the videos that we’re putting out. Otherwise, we’re not giving ourselves a chance to to get to get seen more to go viral potentially. Right. And so YouTube studio right inside your YouTube channel is a great free tool. 

It’s part of YouTube, obviously, and it’s going to help you out with your analytics. So probably my favorite tool. To help me come up with video title ideas as well as it can generate hooks for you. So as you learned in the past couple of episodes with Pat, you know, one of the most important things of once you get into your to start creating your video is the hook. Why should people stick around, you know, and catch you got to catch their attention in the first few seconds of that video and copycat. I will help you do that. It can give you it’ll generate video title ideas, it’ll generate hook ideas for you. And it can also write the introduction to your video description 

and it can also give you bullet points and stuff like that for your video. I started using copy a few weeks ago and I love it. It’s really, really good. I’ve tried some other I copyrighting softwares and I like this one the best. So copy I. It is a game changer my friends to help you come up with video video title ideas because remember, as Pat mentioned, you should be coming up with, you know, 10 to 15 different titles, just brainstorming. Well, copy, I can help you do that. And there’s a free version, too, by the way. Like, I forget they go by credits and you get some credits and stuff like that. 

Of course you can pay for it as well. So copy. I will give you video titles, idea ideas as well as hook ideas. Also write the introduction to your video descriptions. Pretty cool. So there’s 11 simple. I think I threw a couple extra in there. 11 simple YouTube video tools or equipment to help you get started on your YouTube journey. So let me just recap for you real quick. Don’t need anything fancy as far 

as video. You can use your phone or something to put your phone on in landscape to record. I like the switch pod. You can just get that on Amazon. As far as the microphone goes, I really like the road video MTG and it can connect to your phone. You just need a little adapter to be able to do that. It’s less than the the microphone is less than 50 bucks as far as lighting goes. You can do a ring light or something inexpensive from the brand. I really like the brand newer and EWR. If you are shooting on a DSLR, I recommend the Elgato cam link 4k. It’s a little adopt a USB adapter that will help you up level the quality of the video and then also just record video and EA Cam Live pro, I think it’s called EKM Live Pro or E Cam Pro Canva thumbnails. They have hundreds of templates for YouTube thumbnails. You can also use fiber to have somebody create thumbnails for you. 

The YouTube search bar for topics is often overlooked. Super easy right in front of you. Opportunity to give you ideas for four topics screen flow for editing. If you’re using a mac Camtasia for a PC, obviously you can outsource your editing, and I definitely recommend doing that. Once you get going with your videos for B-roll you can use story blocks is a great is a great site to grab B-roll in shot is another super simple app to create videos and add text and overlays and all that kind of stuff. Youtube Studio Right inside your YouTube channel to get the analytics that we talked about. And then finally, copycat AI is a game changer for you, giving you those title ideas and writing copy, literally writing copy for you hook it generates hooks for you so and then finally pats YouTube from scratch. Youtube course helping you get to your first thousand subscribers, $50 off pad. It’s a coupon there for you as a listener. Just go to Rick Mul Radio.com for Pat between September 22nd and September 27th to get that $50 off. I think the course is I think it’s 4.97 for 99, very inexpensive. And then you get an extra $50 off. And then also I’ve created that project management workflow template for you as a bonus. So thank you, my friend. I hope this was helpful for you. As always, I appreciate you tuning in to the show. And until next time, be well, my friend. I’ll talk to you soon.