Every Friday afternoon for the past month, I have been setting aside 90 minutes to create a few new videos to promote my ebook manuals for Dropbox, Google Drive, and Excel. Here are some recent titles:
Google Analytics Video Tutorial: Three Things You Must Monitor
How To Convert CSV Files In Excel
How to convert Excel files to Google Drive
How to export a PDF using Google Drive’s free spreadsheet program, Google Sheets
When I wrote the books, I saw this type of video — short clips on very specific topics — as supplementary material that added extra value for readers.
However, after a few weeks of posting the videos to YouTube, I noticed an interesting trend: The blurbs in the videos were driving traffic to the book websites. I assume that the visitors are not people who have already bought the book. Rather, they are people who have searched for these topics in Google or YouTube, and via the links in the blurb and the promos in the video, they end up on my sites. I have recorded at least one sale from a visitor tracked from YouTube who ended up purchasing a PDF. I suspect other video visitors who have come to my site and then gone to Amazon or iTunes have also ended up making a purchase, although it is not possible for me to confirm this.
Right now, the videos don’t take long to produce — typically one hour per video, including recording, editing, and posting online. The time investment seems worth it for now, although I worry about my availability in the months to come as consulting and other ebook responsibilities ramp up.
A new online video tutorial for Google Drive and Docs
(Update) These early YouTube experiments led to the creation of a full Google Docs video course that covers Docs and Drive. It’s about 30 minutes long, and is slicker than the above videos, including on-screen narration and callouts for special features. Check it out!
