Have you ever wanted to put a professional-looking video on your site or on YouTube? It’s not hard if you have the right tools available. Surprisingly, these tools do not cost a lot. In fact, they are less than $100 each.

What Mike Stewart (known as the Internet Audio Guy and Internet Video Guy) recommends, and what smart marketers use, are the following:

For audio recording and editing:

Sony Sound Forge
Sony Music Studio (if you want to create professional sounding CDs with your recordings, after editing them in Sound Forge)

Both of these are each less than $100.

Video editing:

Sony Vegas Movie Studio (which sells for about $80-$100)

For recording your own tutorials, Camtasia Studio is the best. I paid to upgrade from version 5 because version 6 allows you to convert your digital camera movies to a format that can be uploaded to the Internet. Previous versions of Camtasia Studio did not let you work with any files except those made by Camtasia, so version 6 is a big jump forward.

For putting video and audio on the web I use Mike Stewart’s new S3 Media Player, which makes allows you to upload your video or audio to the Internet in 2 or 3 clicks. It is super simple.

To host my audio and video files I use the same system that Mike and many other professionals use, Amazon S3. Usually the cost is about ten cents for each gigabyte you upload, but right now through June 30th it is only three cents per gigabyte.

Why use Amazon’s S3 instead of YouTube to host your videos? Because YouTube can decide at any time to cancel your account, in which case your videos disappear from the Web. By uploading your videos and audios to Amazon S3 you know that nothing is going to happen to all your hard work.

Mike’s S3 Media Player uploads your videos and audios to Amazon’s S3 in seconds and then gives you the code that you can paste into your Wordpress blogs or onto your html websites. You can set the videos to play as soon as someone lands on your page, or you can set them to play when someone clicks the play button. It’s a powerful tool that is reasonably priced.

No one else has a program like Mike Stewarts’ S3 Media Player, but you can get Sony’s products on Amazon or directly from Sony for less money than what Mike sells them for. Why I prefer buying from Mike is that he includes tutorial videos that tell you how to work with Sound Forge and Vegas Movie Studio, tutorials that he has created himself. I find it easier to learn something when I watch someone else, instead of just reading a manual.

Another benefit of buying from Mike is he includes a bunch of music clips, each about one minute long, that you can use in your recordings. I use them as background music for my videos, and as intro and exit music for audios.

Or, for $10 a month you can join his Two Buck Themes membership site. Each month you receive five new music clips, each about one minute in length, and a video tutorial on how to use Vegas Movie Studio, Sony Sound Forge, sound equipment, or anything you request in the forum. I have found this membership to be a good deal.

Video has been shown to improve website sales, and putting video onto YouTube and other video sites (after also uploading it to Amazon S3) is a great way to get exposure for your websites. With Sony Vegas Movie Studio, Sony Sound Forge, and S3 Media Player it has never been easier. And if finances are tight right now, you will appreciate that all three of these can be purchased for a small investment.

If you are interested in joining Two Buck Themes, then I recommend you join and then purchase the S3 Media Player. Members, at this time, get a good discount.

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Here is my first attempt at adding audio to one of my blogs.

Like I say in the audio I used Sony Sound Forge, a $5 mic (hope to get a better one real soon), and Podpress, which is a free plugin for Wordpress.

Once I got a audio that I was semi-happy with it only took 5 minutes to save it as an MP3, (first I saved it as a WAV in case I wanted to ever edit it), FTP it to my blog, and make a post to insert it in.

All to show you how easy it is to add audio to your Wordpress blog.

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