How to Video Blog - VLOG

This post is in response to Tim's questions in the comments to "It was a dark and stormy night" - which I thought could do with a full post instead of just a reply to his comment. He asked: How many hours did you spend researching before you mastered the Video blog? Are you hosting the video's from your own website?

My initial reluctance to video blog (or vlog as I believe it is know as) was because I thought that it was difficult and inaccessible. (i.e. You needed to host a server with plenty of bandwidth etc.) Nothing could be further from the truth. Vlogging is pathetically easy, fast and accessible. Here is the A to Z on how to host your own free vlog.

1. Set up a blogging account with blogspot/blogger like this one that you're reading - it's free.
2. Set up an account with YouTube - also free.
3. Record your video using your digital camera, web cam, or camcorder - your time is free but the equipment is not. Cheapest webcam is probably about $10.
4. Edit the video using Windows Movie Maker which I believe comes standard on Windows XP. After you've edited the video select to save it to about a 7Mb size. It think that YouTube's size limit is 10Mb.
5. Login and upload the video to YouTube and then go to the My Videos page.
6. Somewhere on that page you will see a link to blog the video. Click on this link and select blogspot as the type of blog you want to blog the video to. (This is a once off setup.) Enter the blog name, username and password for your Blogspot blog (not YouTube). It will then link your YouTube account to your blogspot account.
7. There should now be a link for you to click and it will automatically blog the video from YouTube to your blog. (The next time you do this you don't have to go through the setup stages and this will be much quicker. i.e. Just upload the video to YouTube and blog it.)

If any of this doesn't work or is wrong or unclear then post a comment and I'll try and fix/explain it. And post a link to the vlog that you created as a result of these instructions in the comments section.