I had the pleasure of presenting at SXSW interactive about going pro as a video blogger. I shared the stage with superstars, Zadi Diaz, Lisanova, and Lindsay Campbell and was wonderfully moderated by Tim Shey.

For my part I talked a little about my pathway in the field of video on the net. I started doing video art, which led to doing life-sharing video-blogging which led to being a video blogging school teacher which led to doing weekend projects which led to my current video work at Etsy.

I had a few hints for aspiring video-bloggers and thought it might be helpful to post them here.

1. Get a nose for good moments and try and have your camera running at that time.

2. Cut out everything that isn’t great. Really. Cut it tight. Don’t make me watch one second that isn’t relevant.

3. Publish often.

4. Make friends with musicians. I’m always looking for musicians who I can ask for 6 to 60 second ditties to throw into my videos. If you’re a musician, let video folks use your music under a creative commons attribution license.

5. Use your resources to get people to help you and teach you and give you critical feedback.

6. Tell your friends to compliment you and leave comments and get your mentors to critisize you.

7. Take acting classes.

8. Own as much as your own ip as possible. If you have never signed a contract, you own your own intellectual property.

9. Don’t do something easy. Easy is boring. Take risks and do things that you don’t know how to do (yet).

10. Take care of your teeth.