I just spoke to one of my partners about a video I just made.

It's less than 4 minutes long.

The goal of the video is to get people to come to our squeeze page. (It'll be seen on YouTube and other video distribution sites.)

What to you think?

Does it suck? If so, why?

Tell me your brutally-honest opinion, it won't bother me at all (well, maybe it will, but I'm willing to put my ego aside).

Created with Camtasia Studio 5

Hi, nice presentation slides. Your video has one characteristic most presentations that use Powerpoint have, just reading the slides. It's not interesting.

The point of slides is to have references in the talk and to reinforce key points you want them to remember.

Add value to the slides with your commentary. Instead of showing a question like, "What happened?" either show a confused picture of someone or just show a ? or something like that. Create interest, know your hooks and pull them forward. Make them practically beg you to show them the next slide.

GL

Don't take this the wrong way, but it's BORING!

The subject matter is very interesting, and you give a lot of good information, but after about 30 seconds I was fast forwarding it to get to the punchline!

Here's what I suggest you do to make this video really scream.

1. Redo the slides. I take it you're using Powerpoint or some other presentation software so this shouldn't be too difficult. Have a look at some of the templates that come with Powerpoint, and apply a theme to your slides. Have a good contrasting colour ratio. I find a blue background/yellow text works very well. As it's to do with money, you might consider a green background or a graphic that looks like a dollar bill or something. Black and white just looks really off-putting.

2. Break up the text with some graphics: Dollar signs, bags of money, houses ( a street of houses where every one is dark except for the bright one where the mortgage has been paid off), pie charts, graphs -- that sort of thing. Have some of your slides all text, some all graphics, and others text and graphics. It helps to break up the monotony. People don't take in what they see and what they hear in the same way, so your slides should have bullet points that reinforce what's being said in the narrative, not a transcript.

3. Practice your delivery. You've got a good voice, but right now it's obvious you're just reading what's on the slide. RELAX, and practice over and over until it sounds like you're giving some good advice to an old friend. People don't like to be lectured to.

4. Use the "Specific Window" setting on Camtasia so the viewer doesn't see the task bar on your computer desktop. It looks amateurish otherwise.

You've got the makings of and excellent video here, with a few changes, it can work really well.

Good luck!

Shaun Pearce
(the Video Guy)

It's good information but one thing that is annoying is hearing your breathing, and the "poppijng" when you exhale suddenly with the mic so close to your mouth.

Make sure you have a foam cover on your mic or a screen - or something.

If using a headset, position the mic just under your chin. That way you get your voice loud and clear without all the noise.

Good luck.