Essential YouTube Marketing Tools Checklist For Affiliate Marketers

When I got into video marketing and created my first YouTube channel years ago I thought you had to have all this expensive and fancy equipment to produce a professional-quality recording and video.

And that's simply not true.

Other than a few very inexpensive tools, you don't really need all that much.

So, to save you some time, I've made a list of all the tools I recommend and consider essential.

Anything you decide to invest in outside of this list is not a requirement to get professional results.

Recommended Tools For YouTube Marketing

• A Quality Microphone - For this I recommend a USB microphone like the Blue Yeti, which can be found on Amazon for about $100. Probably the most important element of a quality recording is having good audio and it's especially important if you're doing interviews.
• Lavalier Mic - In addition to your regular microphone that might be sitting on a desk, if you're considering doing any kinds of videos where you're walking around, maybe using your smartphone, I would highly recommend investing in an inexpensive lavalier microphone. This will increase the quality of the recording, as opposed to using the built-in mic on your smartphone, and help cutout a lot of the white noise and sounds like wind when recording outdoors.
• Screen Recording Software - If you're using a Mac I recommend ScreenFlow. And if you're on a PC I recommend Camtasia. Both of these softwares are fairly inexpensive and are very intuitive to use. They'll give you all the features and options you need to make and edit high quality videos without having to invest in a more expensive pro version video editing software.
• Lighting Kit - You don't necessarily need some fancy green screen setup, but I do recommend investing in an inexpensive lighting kit. Lighting in most rooms is usually pretty bad, so to improve the lighting on your face, especially if you're doing interviews with other people, I recommend picking up some lights that you can point towards your face, so it doesn't look like you're recording videos in a dark basement or closet.
• Video Equipment - You don't need some fancy DSLR. Honestly, most computers these days computers have very good built-in cameras. But, if yours doesn't, you may want to consider investing in an external webcam. In addition to that, using your smartphone to record video will work fine.
• Tripod Plus Smartphone Mount - If you're recording yourself and you don't want to have to hold the camera, I recommend investing in an inexpensive tripod. And unless you have a DSLR, you'll probably be using your smartphone to record, so you'll need to also pick up smartphone tripod mount.

And that's pretty much it.

Each one of the tools listed above can be purchased for less than $100, so your total investment in video marketing equipment for high quality recordings is only going to somewhere between $500-$1000.

That's not a very expensive startup cost and an expense you can easily make back in a short amount of time if you're creating content where you recommend products and services as an affiliate or you're selling your own online course on platforms like Udemy, Skillshare or Kajabi.