Evan Carmichael shares how he built his YouTube channel without spending money upfront. He started with a Nikon DSLR, upgraded to a Canon XA10 after viewers complained about audio, and hired editor Christina on Upwork to handle cuts and uploads. His rule: use what you have, reinvest only after the channel makes money.
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How to make YouTube videos. So I got a great question from one of my YouTube viewers, Jeffrey, who wrote in. Love you guys. He said, great videos, do you use a computer, a camera, or what? What about software? This is a great question, one I get asked a lot on the channel. Every couple months or so I end up doing a new video talking about the tools that I'm using. So I'm a big believer in not spending money till I'm making money. I hate spending money until I'm making money, and that applies to everything because I could I could have said, "Hey, you know what? I want to make YouTube videos. I'm going to go out and buy gear, buy a tripod, buy microphone and camera and all that stuff, and then do it once and hate it, and it just sits in my closet," right? Tons of times we get these ideas, we go out and spend money, and then nothing happens with it. Where I prefer to invest a lot of energy, time, put my passion into something and see if I can make money doing it. And if I can, I want to keep doing it, then I can invest the money that I make into getting better gear. Growing, whatever idea. This applies to anything, not just making YouTube videos. So when I started, I started with the gear that I had. I had a Nikon camera, a DSLR, and I just set it up. I put it on a shelf and I had it point at me, and I press record and went from there. You know, it had a built-in microphone that wasn't very good, but it was a microphone. And then people complained that, you know, they were too blurry and, you know, you couldn't hear hear my audio properly, so I had to have my sister or somebody on my team come and focus it on me and press record and then leave the room because I couldn't have them in the room while I was recording. I was too nervous and they threw me off, so I had to have them leave. And as the, as the audience grew and I started making some money off of it, I got a tripod. I just went to my local camera store and I got a tripod. And I started investing in better cameras. And I started going to Costco. I went to Costco because you have a longer return policy. The camera stores, I think it was like 7 days or something to try out a camera, where Costco was at least 30 days. And so that gave me time to really test it out, see if I liked it. The first camera that I really used for a long time— I found myself going through cameras quickly. I'd buy one and it wasn't what I needed, so I upgraded and brought that back, and then Bought that one back and upgraded. And I ended up getting the highest-end camera, video camera that they had at Costco. And I used that for maybe a year and a half, maybe 2 years. I still have it here. Here, let me pull it out. This was it. This is a— can we see? It's actually got some dust on it because it hasn't been used in a long time. But it's a Sony. Sony Handycam— I don't know what the model was. The reason why I got this one that I really liked was it had an external microphone jack, which means I could take a microphone and plug it into here because the biggest complaint I got from the audience was the sound wasn't great because when you're just picking it up off the camera, it's not as good as if you have a clip-on mic. So I went to the Sony store, I got a mic. So this is the mic that I've used for a couple years. It still works great. Just a clip-on mic that I run through my shirt. Cost me about $90 at the time, and then I could plug it into here, put this on my tripod, and And away I went. And that lasted me for a year and a half, 2 years. I was editing the videos myself. I was using Movie Maker, and then that's a free software that comes with your Windows computer and allows you to do basic stuff. Then I started learning Camtasia, which is more advanced. And then it got to the point where, you know, my best time is focused on being on camera. I'm never gonna be the world's greatest video editor. It wasn't something I was passionate about learning to become. I wanted to be better at speaking, and I needed to delegate that editing work. So I hired— I went to oDesk and I hired somebody to help edit all the videos that went up. So the process I used was I record, I then save it to my computer, put in the Dropbox folder, it would send off to my, my worker on oDesk, and then I would get it sent back to me the next day and upload it to YouTube. The next person I hired for my editing started doing a lot of cool effects. This is Christina now who I hired, who still does my videos. Hi Christina! And she started doing these cool things where she would zoom in on me. And the challenge with this camera was if you zoomed in, it reduced the quality. So it's getting a little blurry, it wasn't as good quality. And I thought, you know what, I'm doing better with the videos, you know, they're getting me speaking gigs, I'm getting opportunities from them, I need to invest in better gear. So I got rid of this. Well, I still have it, but I don't use it anymore. And I got— let me get the book— this. So this is what I use now. It's a Canon XA10. It was such a crazy world, you know, when I was trying to figure out what video to go with. I was overwhelmed. There's so many options out there. It's like, I just want something that I can put in, press record, it'll be awesome on automatic, and, and I'm good because I don't want to spend All this time figuring out what camera to go with. So I connected with a buddy of mine named Mark Drager, who runs a company called Fantamedia, and he was getting a little upset at me because he wanted to show me how to use all the manual settings, and to make the videos really good, you have to really, you know, set the settings properly and understand the lighting. And like, oh man, I don't want any of that. Give me a camera that is really good on automatic that will give me good quality when Christina zooms in on me, zooms in on me, and, and that's it. And that's all I wanted. And so he recommended this camera to me, I bought it, and so it cost me around $2,000. So my whole setup now, camera's about $2,000, tripod is maybe $75, the microphone is $90, the old camera, that was maybe $300. So it's not a huge investment. To get from Costco, maybe a little bit more, maybe $500, but still not a huge investment. And then as I stepped up, every time, as I got more money, as I got more confidence, I got more feedback, as I wanted to make them better, I invested more because I could. So I always focus on making money, and I can go out and spend it. In terms of the process of editing them, what happens now is, again, I want my focus to be on making the videos. So I started doing everything myself. Creating the videos, editing, cutting, intro, outro. I created my own music on my iPad doing it. And now all I really do is film. I come here, I see your question, I press record, I start talking, I film it, put it to my computer, and I send it to Christina. And that's the last I see of it. She will edit it, add the intro, the music, the outro, any fun clips that I put in, and then she will upload it to my YouTube channel, schedule it, and So she does all of that work. Awesome, thank you Christina. And that's the process I use. So I would encourage you, if you're just getting started on YouTube, you want your videos to be successful, start with what you have, right? Don't, don't feel like you have to go out and go buy the greatest gear. Start with your phone. I made videos off my phone that have gotten great results as well. Just start, start, because you're gonna suck at the start and you need to get better and improve. And if you see results and you're getting momentum and you're getting clients and getting business and you're growing because of it, then you can invest more into making your gear better. Believe. Thanks for the great question. If you guys like this video, want to see more like it, you can subscribe to the channel, and I will see you soon.
