Fear has kept the majority of Internet marketers from tackling video. The process of creating video to market products has been too complicated and too time consuming until just recently when a flood of video creation and marketing tools hit the web. The reason? The success of sites like YouTube, YahooVideo, and Google Video have proven that video is today's most successful marketing tool. The Internet has become: Videoized!

Think about it. Today we have come to expect to see video used as a selling tool or a means of providing information in a concise and entertaining way. Television commercials and product insertions in Hollywood films and in the newest crop of video games have all conditioned us to product pitches that persuade us to buy or complete an action. Add to the this, the fast paced lives most people live demand fast and convenient information at our fingertips ( or mouse).

This is not a technical article about how to create video, although you will find some good tips in that regard, it is more to convince you that you should not fear the video creation process and why you should start now to use video in your Internet marketing. There is nothing to fear and nothing that good software tools cannot overcome. Making video today is a simple point and click operation.

Get one thing into your head right now: Video does not have to be professional!

I am a retired TV News Editor and I can tell you that the videos being used for marketing on line are far from professional. Most are simply screen captures with some narration. Pretty simple stuff, really. The point is to talk about the product or service and what it might do for the customer. It's not about you!

That said, let me also say that you can eventually become a video star in your own right. As you get better at video production and presentation, you can start appearing on-camera yourself as you pitch your product or service. At that point you will be "branding" yourself as a professional marketer who knows the product or niche inside and out.

Here are some simple ways you can begin your video marketing campaign:

1) The cheapest way to capture video is free for anyone who runs WindowsXP or higher on their home computer. Windows Movie Maker is built in and offers a variety of ways to capture video right from your computer or after you have downloaded video from the Internet.

2) The next cheapest is to purchase a web cam and a microphone. Some web cams have built in microphones that are of good quality. These are available everywhere for 20 bucks or a little more. You can sit in front of your web cam and record your pitch and even capture screen shots if you are showing your product in action as in a tutorial video.

3) For about 100 bucks you can buy a digital camera that takes still photos and video too. These work well because you can record up to 30 minutes of video with sound as your narrate what you are recording. I use one for family videos and it works quite well.

4) If you have a little money to invest, buy a good camcorder for about 200 bucks. This will up the quality level of your video. By quality I mean resolution or picture quality. The better the pixel quality, the better your final video will be after final editing. This is my choice for video marketing because of the higher quality. Remember, each time you dub a video during editing, the quality will degrade a little so it's best to have the highest quality video to start with.

These are the main video capture devices you need to consider. Once your raw video is recorded, you download it into Windows Movie Maker or other video editing software, clean it up, and you are ready to upload to your website or to video sharing sites like YouTube. You can even add your website URL to the video so folks can find your website after watching.

It's important to talk about bandwidth usage. When you host your video on your website you will be eating up bandwidth which could cause your host to charge your more for hosting the videos. However, when you upload to sites like YouTube, Google Video and YahooVideo, you pay no bandwidth costs whatsoever. They host your videos for free. This is the main reason that smart video marketers use such video sharing sites and one you must copy in order to be successful with video marketing.

These sites also offer the opportunity for you to place links to your website, product, or service, in your Profile. People viewing your video can easily click through to your offering. In addition, videos can have a viral effect if they are entertaining or offer something really unique.

One final piece of advice about the content of your video. Make sure the video ties directly into your product, website or service. You can create a wacky video. How about a bungee jumping elephant? That will surely get thousands of viewers but do nothing to sell your product or service if the content of the video has nothing to do with what you are selling unless, of course, you are selling stuffed elephant toys for kids!