Becoming A Successful Vlogger Without Using A Camera
Vlogging relatively easy. You just take a camera, capture videos of yourself doing some stuff, and talk about it as you do so. Upload the video to your channel and wait for some viewers to watch it so you can gain revenue.
But such a chore may pose a problem. You might be too shy to show your face on camera or worse, you might not even be able to afford to buy one. Still, you want to be known as a Youtuber and dreams of having a decent income derived from it.
The solution? … is surprisingly simple. The steps that will guide you in this article are so easy even your grandmother or grandchildren can do it.
What you’ll learn here:
You can still become a famous vlogger, even without ever owning a camera. Yes, seriously! In fact…
“There are many prominent Youtube channels that are owned by people who haven’t shown their faces ever. Some of them just utilize existing video content and made some fresh spins on it, which eventually brought them to great heights of fame, and great piles of income.”
Let me guide you through the process of achieving that goal.
Kinds of vlogs you can create without a camera
Video slide shows
Have you ever used PowerPoint? If you have, then good. This type of video should be very doable by you. You can gather a considerable stack of good-quality images and arrange them sequentially. By strategically using them as supplements to your very compelling explanation of your chosen topic, you can certainly acquire some decent amount of followers and subscribers.
To achieve such output, you need to create a series of slides or screen elements with proper effects and transitions so that the points you’re trying to explain will be thoroughly absorbed by your readers. PowerPoint might not be a really good tool for this, it’s not even a video-editing software at all, but then, if you can truly come up with a good explanation about your topic, it’s what truly matters.
Animated videos
Some vloggers capture real-world objects and real people as they share their content with the world. Some, however, utilize images they have drawn by hand, or via graphics software. By setting up some movements and animations for those images, their videos become very engaging that it seems not to matter anymore if they’re animated or not.
With this type of vlog post, however, a high-level of artistry is really required. The key to being a good animator is being a good illustrator. If you have no sketching or drawing talent whatsoever, maybe you should decide on buying a camera or using this next approach.
Commentaries/analyses
Have you watched a video of anything on Youtube that you find really interesting? Are you itching about it so bad that you want to give comments or reactions about it? You should leverage that feeling and choose the “commentary/analysis” type of vlog channel as a niche.
What types of video commentaries would be most appealing to people? The following would be the most likely answer:
Movie teasers and trailers – People are excited about what a certain movie trailer means, and what are the implications of it once the actual movie comes out. By providing in-depth analyses on famous movie trailers, people would surely be drawn to you.
Sports commentaries – What are the latest match-ups in sports? What are the most heated rivalries? These would be good things to tackle in your commentaries vlog. The topics you can cater to here would be truly endless. You can talk about your predictions and about the possible outcomes of an upcoming game, or you can simply talk about one famous athlete.
Latest TV series episodes – Of all the most famous mediums, nothing beats the TV as the most accessible entertainment system. By providing analyses and commentaries on the latest episodes of the TV series you are so fond of watching, you can certainly gather a huge amount of followers in a very short time.
On-screen tutorials
This type of vlog posts are among the hottest kinds on Youtube. If you are pretty skillful with any software, or any kind of web activity, you might just be able to cash in on that. You can use a screen-capturing software (to be discussed later) as you perform comprehensible steps about how a particular software is used, or how anyone might use a piece of an app to make their lives easier.
The best kinds of apps and software to discuss on it would be:
Graphics/photo-editing software – People endlessly post pictures and graphics of all kinds on social media. By helping them about how they can look their best as they post digital versions of themselves on the internet, you can certainly attain some high viewership.
Office productivity – How to use office software, how to manage documents, how to secure digital information – these would be hot topics to discuss. The computer workforce will always be valuable within the corporate world. This means that people who want to attain knowledge related to it will always be in connection with content providers like you.
Gaming – The habit of playing computer games is something that will never go out of style. If you have some solid knowledge about how to play a video game in a more enjoyable way, teach it to people. They will embrace it with great warmth and intensity.
Podcast-style videos
This style may be a bit off within the Youtube community, but many vloggers are employing this style. By putting a single picture of anything (yes, a single picture!), or their channel logo on screen as they babble about a topic in which they’re so good at, they still managed to attract some viewers or more appropriately “listeners” to their vlogs.
Many professional vloggers avoid this technique, thinking that the best way to vlog is to show yourself as you teach and educate. However, no Youtube rule prohibits such a style. You should consider applying it if you want to hop into the “no face-showing” kind of vlog.
Before you get too excited, please be reminded that copyright issues should highly matter to you if you wish to become a successful Youtuber. When taking other people’s video/image content and posting them to your vlog channel, you have to study Youtube’s policies regarding the matter.
Knowing all such policies requires a lengthy amount of time so let me summarize it for you. The general rule of using someone else’s video as your own would be to mute its audio and make some commentaries about it.
Although not clearly specified, most experts believe that using video content with sound should fall within the 30-second range. You must never use any clip that exceeds that, just to play it safe. Better yet, make some moves to contact the real owners of those videos you plan to use. Some of them may require some payment, some of them will just give you a go, without any formalities whatsoever.
Great care must be exercised in using videos with sound. It would be terribly painful to grab some fame and earn some lawsuits along with it or worse, have your hard-worked videos be deleted by Youtube because you didn’t follow the rules.
About using images, the best ones to pick would be those that belong to the “fair use” and “creative commons” categories. There are lots of them that you can acquire with very little hassle and expense. In cases where they don’t exactly fit the graphical necessities that you desire, editing or tweaking them with a graphics editor would come in really handy.
Speaking of skills, you need to absorb the following…
Skills you need to have in vlogging without a camera
Whether you choose “in-your-face blogging” or “vlogging without-a-face”, one thing remains clear, you have to acquire specific skills to actually pull either of them off successfully. To be honest, the latter option would require a higher level of difficulty, since it is very evident that those who show their faces and bodies, (at least half their bodies) are known to be more successful in vlogging.
Either way, you have to do your damnedest, and your very best to achieve these following skills:
Proper cutting and sequencing – Vlogging while showing your face is relatively easy since you can just talk non-stop, capture some pretty good audio with it, and hit the stop button once you’re done. But if you vlog while just employing video clips and still images, you need to master the art of sequencing media elements so that their flow can be easily understood by your viewers.
Sound-syncing – In movies and all video types for that matter, audio is the “other half” that is as good as the video presentation itself. Without good audio, and video will be easily judged as “gruesome” by the onlookers that consume them. To be a really good vlogger, you need to also master the art of syncing audio, music, and sound effects to your video posts.
Subtitling – In cases when there’s a problem with the computer’s audio, or if the audience has hearing deficiencies, or if they can’t understand the language you’re speaking, the option of putting subtitles would greatly increase user experience to your vlog channel. You should learn it as well.
Basic graphics/photo-editing – Although being a vlogger is mainly about videoing, it doesn’t mean that you must not strive to acquire some basic skills in graphics manipulation. In making thumbnails, and in some image embellishments for your videos, some graphical touches might be needed. You need to attain some skills pertaining to it, at least within the basic level.
Good communication skills – This should go without saying, but let me say it here anyway. Regardless of your vlogging style or niche, you have to practice this skill that all of the best vloggers do effortlessly: you have to be a good speaker. It is the very medium that lets you communicate with your viewers. There is no better alternative to this.
Best software tools to use as a “camera-less” vlogger
Camtasia – Not really a video editor, it is the best software around that you can use to capture on-screen activity. By activating it as you go around performing any computer-related task, you can easily create a video presentation that viewers will find comprehensible, provided of course, that you are able to include some detailed explanation along with it.
Adobe Premiere Pro – As one of the very best software companies in terms of computer graphics, this one from Adobe is one of the ultimate choices among video professionals. If you think that it’s very heavy and resource-hungry, think again. User reviews actually declare that it is among the most lightweight video editing tools there is, without compromising on quality output.
Filmora – As its name suggests, it is a great tool for film-making, even when we talk about full-length feature films. If it’s very good enough for such huge projects, then it should be super ideal for those short videos that you wish to put on your vlog channel. It features smart transitions, overlays, and special-effects tools that can make your videos a lot more beautiful than your own face.
WeVideo – This one is quite special compared to the aforementioned because it can be accessed within your web browser. In the absence of an installed video editor on your computer, you can choose this amazing tool via the internet. Today, it is the editor of choice among web advertisers and those people who create video presentations for educational purposes.
iMovie – What if you don’t own a computer? Can you still effectively edit and craft high-quality videos? Of course! The best tool for this would be iMovie – a product of Apple computers that’s geared towards those who love to edit videos using their mobile phones. By prompting you to use their predefined templates that are within a feature-movie level, nobody can ever discern that you made your video projects with just your phone.
Adobe Character Animator – Adobe seems to own the entirety of computer graphics manipulation and in the aspect of making animations, they also have this entry. The mechanism behind this software is that you can capture the movements of someone’s face and body and the software will provide an animated version of those. Pretty cool right?
Stop Motion Studio – You can use this to animate those hand-drawn sketches of yours, or any of those still, 2-D images that you want to choose. Frame by frame, you can work on those images and direct their movements and how they should behave on screen. This is very ideal if you choose to be an animation vlogger.
Canva – This one is not a video editor, but you still have to learn it for your photo and graphic elements. Also accessible via a web browser like WeVideo, you can easily create captivating images that could be used as printables or thumbnails for your videos within its simple, yet powerful interface.
Do you need to learn all of those skills and all of those software tools?
To be a truly effective camera-less vlogger, you actually only need to learn at least one tool for every category: for video-editing, for animation, for on-screen capturing, and for basic graphic design. To narrow it down a bit further, you may just decide on the type of video you want to put on your vlog channel and work on the skills needed for it.
If you choose the slide show type of vlog, you only need to learn PowerPoint or ProShow and capture your slides with Camtasia. If you plan to embark on the commentary type of videos, you really need to learn the likes of Filmora and Adobe Premier.
If you’re planning to be an animation-style vlogger, you have to be informed that such an undertaking requires the highest level of skill and artistry among the types of videos discussed here. It would be much easier to just capture yourself with a camera as you explain your topics, although such an option would defeat the whole purpose of this article.
In addition to being a successful vlogger, be it with, or without a camera, you need to also acquire at least some basic skills in recording clean and crisp audio. You can do it with your phone and add your voice later to your video project’s timeline.
Or you can do it with software like Wavosaur and Audacity. They are super-lightweight and so easy to use that you can almost use them even with your eyes closed. (Okay, not really with eyes closed, maybe just use them with one hand. There I said it.)
Always bear in mind:
“No video can ever be declared as attractive enough if its sound can’t be clearly heard and absorbed.”
It’s a notion that all successful video editors and Youtubers never forget.
Many people think that you need to own an expensive camera and high-tech gear to become a successful vlogger. Wanna prove them wrong? Perform the guidance lectured here, and you can truly prove that you can be an effective vlogger without owning a camera.
They will surely find out that having solid ideas and some strong guts is just what you need in order to get the vlogging success anyone could aspire for.
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