Video marketing is quite popular these days and if you want to get started quickly (without actually facing the camera) consider free screencasting software. This type of tool helps you quickly capture live motion and demonstrations on your computer screen, then easily save it as a video file that could be uploaded to YouTube or embedded in a blog. Here are some options to consider.

Camtasia (trial version) -Camtasia is great! I own a copy and it's easy to use, easy to learn, and quite versatile You can upload Powerpoints and then create a voice track, and then turn it all into a YouTube-ready MPEG video file. Camtasia has sophisticated editing features, and the capacity to create a multitrack recording. You can indulge for free for 30 days by going to http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia/.

Jing - This is a free screecasting software that is published by Techsmith (the publishers of Camtasia). It is not as feature rich as Camtasia in its free version, but here's what you can do. You can record a screen demonstration with audio (maximum five minutes) as a Flash video. You can then upload this to Techsmith's Screencast.com where you can open a free account and store your videos (although you don't get much storage space). From there,, you can generate the embed code to put your video in a blog, but you won't be able to upload the video to YouTube, because it doesn't take the Falsh format. Look for some fee utilities that can turn the Flash in to a MPEG file that YouTube will accept.The quality of the ouput is not bad.

Cam Studio -This is an open source procject. Open source means that you can get yourself a free copy and the software is regularly updated by a community of programmer/users who care to improve the software. Cam Studio records audio and screen and is fairly good for creating video tutorials. it also has some editing features, one of which allows to add captions to your video. Once you are finished creating your video, you save it an upload it to YouTube.

Screencast-o-matic - This is a free web-based service that lets you record the screen (with audio ) and store it on site (storage is limited for a free acount and you can make videos up to 15 minutes long). You can save files in MPEG format for YouTube use, and you'll need to have Java on your computer. Consider only a five minute recording if you want to post your video on YouTube. As you can see there is no shortage of choices to being making videos for free screencasting software. They take the sweat out of video marketing and add another dimension to article marketing.