Echoes of Exploration: Your Step-by-Step Blueprint to Becoming a Travel Vlogger

How To Become A Travel Vlogger | The Ultimate Guide of Travel Vlogging

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

Want to become a travel vlogger?

Traveling around the world is one of life’s most exciting experiences – just ask anyone who has caught the travel bug. It is no wonder that travel videos are a big hit on YouTube. Any viewer can be instantly transported to another part of the world, all from the comfort of their seat.

With all the high-quality cameras and video editing software that are much more accessible to the general public now than even a few years ago, it has never been a better time to make a travel vlog.

Below, I have prepared a comprehensive guide on how to become a travel vlogger.

Table of Contents PART 1: TRAVEL VLOGGING EQUIPMENT 1.1 Travel Vlogging Cameras How To Choose A Travel Vlogging Camera Cameras That Are Good For Travel Vlogging Lenses That Are Good For Travel Vlogging 1.2 Travel Vlogging Accessories Camera Accessories That Are Good For Travel Vlogging Smartphone Accessories That Are Good For Travel Vlogging Camera Mounted Shotgun Microphone For Travel Vlogging Other Useful Travel Vlogging Accessories PART 2: TRAVEL VIDEO IDEAS PART 3: TRAVEL VIDEO EDITING Video Editing Software Travel-Themed Video Effects Music Libraries Sound Effects PART 4: TRAVEL VLOGGING TIPS

Create Your Travel Vlog with Wondershare FilmoraX

Wondershare FilmoraX is a video editing application that offers a lot of editing features that can be used both by a beginner and professionals alike. You can easily cut, split and trim your video, and apply transitions, filters, and texts, etc. to your travel vlog. What’s more, its advanced color grading settings and audio keyframing will add a unique flavor to your travel vlog. Just get started and make your video go viral!

PART 1: TRAVEL VLOGGING EQUIPMENT

In order to make travel videos, you’re going to need camera equipment. Below, I’ve prepared a comprehensive list of cameras and accessories that would be good for travel vlogging.

Filmstock Stock Media Library ](https://filmstock.wondershare.com/creative-theme-tourism?spm=rs.filmora%5Fweb&source%5Fchannel=seo%5Farticle )

1.1 Travel Vlogging Cameras

How To Choose A Vlogging Camera

When it comes to travel vlogging, you should look for a camera that ideally has the following eleven qualities:

It has a fully articulated screen (flip screen)
It has good continual autofocus while recording video
It has good focus priority through face recognition
It has touched to focus
It has good low-light performance
It has an external mic jack and a hot/cold shoe bracket
It has optical image stabilization
It is lightweight and portable
It has a good battery life
It is durable and weather-sealed
It has hyper-lapse/timelapse/slow-motion shooting modes

For more information on why a lot of these features are ideal to have in a vlogging camera, check out my post on the Top 15 Best Cameras for Vlogging 2020 .

Cameras That Are Good For Travel Vlogging

Considering my list on what to look for in a travel vlogging camera, I’ve prepared a table below of thirteen cameras I’d recommend for travel vlogging:

Camera	Camera Type	Flip Screen	Mic Port	Price
CanonEOSM50	February2018	Mirrorless	Fully Articulated	Yes	$-
PanasonicLumixDC-GH5S	January2018	Mirrorless	Fully Articulated	Yes	$$$
GoProHero6 Black	September2017	Action Camera	No	Yes	$-
CanonEOSM100	August2017	Mirrorless	Flip-Up	No	$
CanonEOS6D Mark II	June2017	Mid-size SLR	Fully Articulated	Yes	$$
CanonEOS RebelSL2	June2017	Compact SLR	Fully Articulated	Yes	$
CanonEOS RebelT7i	February2017	Mid-size SLR	Fully Articulated	Yes	$-
CanonEOSM6	February2017	Mirrorless	Flip-Up	Yes	$
SonyCyber-Shot DSCRX 100 V	October2016	Compact	Flip-Up	No	$-
PanasonicLumix DMCG85	September2016	Mirrorless	Fully Articulated	Yes	$-
PanasonicLumix DMCLX10	September2016	Compact	Flip-Up	No	$
CanonEOS80D	February2016	Mid-size SLR	Fully Articulated	Yes	$$
CanonPowerShotG7 X Mark II	February2016	Compact	Flip-Up	No	$

Lenses That Are Good For Travel Vlogging

Every travel vlogger should have a wide-angle lens. Wide-angle lenses fit much more of a scene into your camera frame, making it ideal for capturing establishing shots. You’ll also need a wide-angle lens if you plan on holding your camera out in front of yourself with an extended arm to get selfie footage.

As a travel vlogger, you’ll also want to show some close-up shots of the various subjects in your scene. If you don’t mind walking up to these subjects, the lens I recommend for this is a standard lens.

If, however, you want to be able to shoot these close-up shots from a farther distance, you’ll need a telephoto lens.

But you probably don’t want to carry and switch so many lenses as you travel, right? A convenient solution is to get a zoom lens that covers a wide range of focal lengths. For example, travel vlogger Sam Kolder shoots with a Canon EF 24-105mm f/4 lens – that’s a wide-angle lens, standard lens, and telephoto lens all in one lens!

If most of your travel video shooting will be done handheld, you should also definitely look for a lens equipped with optical image stabilization.

Check out my Best Camera Lens for YouTube to gain a more in-depth understanding of lenses and how they work.

1.2 Travel Vlogging Accessories

Camera Accessories That Are Good For Travel Vlogging

	1. Tripod Record stabilized shots and timelapse footage with a tripod.
	2. GorillaPod SLR-Zoom with Ballhead Wrap your camera around structures that your regular tripod can’t stay on. You can also hold out your camera further away from you using the GorillaPod as a selfie stick to fit in more of your background into your selfie shot.
	3. Stabilizing Gimbal Get super-smooth shots with a stabilizing gimbal.
	4. On-Camera LED Light Is there not enough light? Add an LED light to your camera’s hot/cold shoe.
	5. Neutral Density (ND) Filters Is it too bright outside to have your aperture wide open but you still want to get that cinematic look ? You can add ND filters to your lenses so that you can do just that in very bright conditions.
	6. Camera Cleaning Kit While traveling, you can get all kinds of unwanted substances on your lens and in your camera like dust, dirt, fingerprints, raindrops, snow, and sand, to name a few. If you bring along a portable camera cleaning kit with you on your travels, you can remove those things immediately so that your shots won’t be affected.
	7. Drone When it comes to travel vlogging, wide shots that establish the scene and setting are important. Drones are great for taking these kinds of wide shots from high places that you would not be able to get to by foot.

Smartphone Accessories That Are Good For Travel Vlogging

Using your smartphone as a travel vlogging device is a great idea! Your smartphone is a light and portable piece of equipment that you likely have with you at all times. Upgrade your smartphone travel vlogging setup with any of these 9 Best Smartphone Camera Accessories For Vloggers:

RAVPower Portable Charger
Arkon Tripod Mount
Mega Tiny Anti-Gravity Case
FLII Selfie Ring Light
Rode VideoMic Me
Aukey Optic 3-in-1 Smartphone Lens Set
iOgrapher Go for Android and iPhone
Manfrotto TwistGrip System
Zhiyun Smooth-Q 3-Axis Handheld Gimbal Stabilizer for Smartphones

Read more about each one of these items in my post The 9 Best Smartphone Camera Accessories For Vloggers .

Camera Mounted Shotgun Microphones for Travel Vlogging

These four shotgun microphones can mount directly onto your camera’s hot/cold shoe:

Rode VideoMic Go
Shure VP83
Rode VideoMic Pro+
Sennheiser MKE 440

Read more about each one of them in our post about The 19 Best YouTube Microphones 2020 – Options for Music, Voiceovers, Vlogging, and more!

Other Useful Travel Vlogging Accessories

Camera backpack
Extra batteries
Memory cards
External hard drive
Power plugs and cables
USB card reader
Universal plug
D-ring clips (to prevent your equipment from slipping out of your grasp)
Smartphone SD card tray key (if you’re storing your recorded footage in your SD card)

PART 2: TRAVEL VLOGGING IDEAS

If you’re needing some travel video ideas either to get you started or to bring some fresh content into your channel, here are ten travel video ideas that you can try.

1. Travel Vlog

Travel vlogging, the kind where you film yourself just going about your day in a different part of the world, is a great way to not only document your travel moments and memories for yourself, but also a great way to share your experience with others.

Rather than being too picky with your video shots and possibly ending up with a lack of footage to work with, shoot as much as you can.

Try to capture your thoughts and feelings around the things you taste, smell, see and hear. Sharing these details can help your viewers feel more like they’re with you on your travels.

2. Tips or Tricks for Traveling

Although learning from mistakes during your travels can be a rewarding experience, most people want to avoid them and, rather, enjoy their trip as much as they possibly can. After all, travel, for most people, happens in intervals that seem too short. You can help this sizable group by offering travel tips and tricks.

Prepare a list of tips and tricks, a shot list of all the footage you’ll need to go along with those tips, and then capture all your footage. As you go through your list, you can then cut away to your associated travel shots.

3. Video Tour of a Location

Many people are curious about different parts of the world and would love to join a tour without the high cost of flights, hotels, meals, and admission tickets. Give them that experience by making a video tour.

4. Review An Attraction or Experience

A lot of travelers having a limited amount of time and money to enjoy their chosen travel destinations want to know which attractions and experiences to prioritize and which ones to skip. Help them make their decision by making a video review.

5. Timelapse Videos

All you need in addition to your camera is a tripod to get started with making timelapse videos. Your tripod stabilizes your shot as your camera captures all the changes that take place in a given location.

When your footage is sped up, your viewers can appreciate all the changes that take place that they may not have had the patience to sit through in real-time. It’s also interesting to observe the passage of time in a different way.

6. Average Daily Cost

Before going on a trip, many people try to make a budget and figure out how much money to exchange into foreign currency. Making a good budget and getting just enough foreign cash, though, requires you to know how much, on average, things cost.

Make a helpful video on the average cost of daily expenses including meals and transportation like Paolo did in the above video “Average Daily Cost in Tokyo Japan | Is it Expensive?.” His video actually helped me a lot when I was trying to come up with a budget for my recent trip to Japan.

7. Interview Locals

People don’t travel only to see popular attractions. A lot of people travel to connect with and understand people from different parts of the world.

Interviewing locals and sharing their thoughts can help to provide that kind of connection.

8. What’s in My Backpack?

Packing for a trip can say a lot about who you are as a person because it involves prioritizing items based on your personal values.

For your next trip, share a little part of yourself with your audience through a video about the things you’ve packed in your bag.

9. Talk About Your Own Home City

When you’ve lived in your own home city for so long, you might forget that people all over the world may marvel at the things you take for granted because all those things just happen to be at your doorstep.

Take advantage of the expert that you already are in your own home city and make an informative video for others who are taking a trip there.

10. How To Become a Travel Vlogger

After you’ve done a lot of travel vlogging and learned so much along the way, you can make a video about how to be a travel vlogger.

In the above video, Andrew Santos teaches how to make a travel video, all while hilariously poking fun at many of the cliché trends in the travel genre.

PART 3: TRAVEL VIDEO EDITING

Video Editing Software

When it comes to editing your travel video together, there are different kinds of software you can do that with.

FREE VIDEO EDITING SOFTWARE	PAID VIDEO EDITING SOFTWARE
OpenShot Video Editor (Windows, Mac, Linux) ShotCut (Windows, Mac, Linux) Hitfilm Express (Windows, Mac) VideoPad Video Editor (Windows) Lightworks (Windows, Mac, Linux) VSDC Video Editor (Windows) Machete Video Editor Lite (Windows) Avidemux (Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD) Read more about each software in our post about The Best Free Video Editing Software for YouTube – Top 8 Reviews .	Wondershare Filmora X (Windows, Mac) - start at $49.99 for one year license and Free trial Final Cut Pro (Mac) - $299.99, Free trial Vegas Movie Studio (Windows) - $49.99

Travel-Themed Video Effects

If you use Filmora Video Editor, you can also take advantage of a variety of travel-themed video effects packs, like the one shown in the above video, filled with titles, transitions, filters, overlays, and other visual elements.

For my recent trip to Japan, I actually used Filmora Effects’ Japanese set.

At the 2:10 mark of the above video, I used an overlay of falling cherry blossom leaves. At the 3:03 mark of the same video, I used an anime-themed overlay.

At the 2:48 mark of the above video, I used a shoji door transition.

Music Libraries

Music is an important component of a lot of travel videos. Here’s where you can get them:

ROYALTY-FREE MUSIC LIBRARIES	PAID MUSIC LIBRARIES	PAID SUBSCRIPTION MUSIC LIBRARIES
Audionautix Bensound dig.ccMixter Free Music Archive Free Stock Music Incompetech Josh Woodward Moby Gratis Musopen Purple Planet Music TeknoAXE YouTube Audio Library	Premium Beat Audio Jungle	Audio Network Audio Blocks Epidemic Sound

Sound Effects

Free Sound Effect Sites

PART 4: TRAVEL VLOGGING TIPS

Vlog/Life Balance

Give yourself more time at each location if you want to have a good balance between getting the shots you need and enjoying your present moment.

Theft Prevention

Carry a backpack that doesn’t have zippers on the outside that thieves can easily get to.
If you’re shooting with a flashy smartphone, make it look less appealing to thieves with a grotesque smartphone case, like an Otterbox.
In locations with high crime, pre-plan the shots you want to capture and take your SLR camera out of your bag only to take those shots. Otherwise, keep your SLR camera concealed.
Never leave your equipment unattended in a visible area, not even in a locked car.

Pre-Production and Planning

Before shooting, make a shot list of all the footage you need.
Have all your filming equipment that needs to be calibrated all calibrated and ready to use.

Onscreen Performance

Look into your lens, not the projected image of yourself on your camera’s flip screen.
Show a lot of energy as you film yourself.
If you’re nervous about talking to the camera in public, keep your talking head clips short and gradually build your way up to longer clips. You can break up longer sentences by saying a few words from one scene, saying a few more in another, and finishing off your last words, again, in another scene. Later, in editing, you can stitch all of those clips together to make one fluid sentence.
If you’re nervous about talking to the camera in public, you can capture your talking headshots later when you find a more secluded space.

Audio Recording

Silence everything you don’t want your mic to record.
Put your mobile phone in airplane mode.
Block wind from reaching your mic with windscreens and dead cats.
Upgrade your mic.
Adjust your levels.
Get close to the sound you are wanting to record.

Check out 10 Recording Tips to Get The Best Sound From Your Microphone for more audio recording tips.

Filming

To avoid crowds, wake up early and grab your footage early while everyone else is still sleeping or getting ready.
Capture wide shots, medium shots, and close-up shots for better coverage.
Use the Sun Seeker app to set up your sunrise/sunset shots better.
If your camera can record 4K footage, record in 4K all the scenes that you want to zoom in closer later in editing without losing quality (your video project in editing has to be at 1920p x 1080p for this to work).

Stabilization

If you’re trying to get shots with movement by walking, rather than walking as you normally would walk with your knees bent for steadier shots.
If you’re shooting something in front of your handheld, lean your arm against your own body for steadier shots.
Use a stabilizing gimbal with your camera.

Timelapse/Hyperlapse

Select scenes where you can see a lot of change over time (not a still building in front of a cloudless smoggy sky).
Set longer intervals for scenes that change very slowly over time.
Pre-set your focus. Turn autofocus off.
Shoot time-lapses/hyper-lapses in manual mode to prevent the flickering that occurs with changing light conditions in automatic settings.
If your camera is set on a tripod in a fixed position, turn your optical image stabilization off.
If you aren’t holding onto your camera as it’s in the middle of making a timelapse video, at least keep your camera and tripod attached by some kind of leash mechanism.
For moving time-lapses or hyper-lapses, try to keep one point of reference in the same position within your camera frame.

Slow Motion

Shoot slow-motion videos when there is plenty of light.
For actions that are as slow as walking, slowing down your footage to 50% of the original speed looks good enough. If your video editing project is in 30 fps, shooting your video in 60 fps will give you a 50% slow-motion video. If your video editing project is in 60 fps, shooting your video in 120 fps will give you a 50% slow-motion video. Any slower is overkill for slowing down the speed of walking.
For actions that are as fast as water splashing, slowing down your footage as little as 15% of the original speed can look good. For a video editing project in 30 fps, you would need a camera that can shoot at up to 240 fps to slow your footage down this much.

Storage and Back-Up

If you’re using a phone that can store images and videos on a separate SD card, take advantage of that and record your travel footage onto your SD card. Later, you can easily get to your travel media as it will all be in one place.
If you have your laptop on you, regularly transfer your media files from your cameras to your external hard drives.
If you don’t want to bring your laptop on your trip and plan to video edit once you’re back home, use a USB memory card reader that connects with an app on your phone to transfer your files into your external hard drive.
If you have access to a reliable internet connection and you leave your laptop at your place of accommodation, have your computer upload your files onto cloud storage while you are out to travel vlogging.
Take advantage of Google Photos’ free, unlimited cloud storage for video files up to 1080p.

Video Editing

If you’re editing a video project with videos from multiple different cameras, make sure to set the correct time and date on all of them before you start filming. Later, in editing, you can import all your image and video files and sort them in the exact order that they were taken.
If your video editing software can work with proxies, transcode all your video files into proxy files for much faster editing.

Posting On YouTube

Choose a title that people will search for. Keep your target keywords at the beginning of your title. “S01E01: My Summer Backpacking Trip” is not an effective title. Instead, a title like “Going Up The Eiffel Tower… Beautiful View of Paris!” would be better.

Ready to Become a Travel Vlogger?

Here in this article, I shared travel vlogging cameras &accessories, travel video ideas& resources, and travel vlogging tips. Did you get more hints to become a travel vlogger? Stay tuned and start your own travel vlog! Leave your comments below if you have any suggestions about this travel vlogger guide.

This past year has been a challenge, so if you want to make a #travelanywhere video without traveling, you can try Wondershare Filmora X video editor.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

Want to become a travel vlogger?

With all the high-quality cameras and video editing software that are much more accessible to the general public now than even a few years ago, it has never been a better time to make a travel vlog.

Below, I have prepared a comprehensive guide on how to become a travel vlogger.

Create Your Travel Vlog with Wondershare FilmoraX

PART 1: TRAVEL VLOGGING EQUIPMENT

In order to make travel videos, you’re going to need camera equipment. Below, I’ve prepared a comprehensive list of cameras and accessories that would be good for travel vlogging.

Filmstock Stock Media Library ](https://filmstock.wondershare.com/creative-theme-tourism?spm=rs.filmora%5Fweb&source%5Fchannel=seo%5Farticle )

1.1 Travel Vlogging Cameras

How To Choose A Vlogging Camera

When it comes to travel vlogging, you should look for a camera that ideally has the following eleven qualities:

It has a fully articulated screen (flip screen)
It has good continual autofocus while recording video
It has good focus priority through face recognition
It has touched to focus
It has good low-light performance
It has an external mic jack and a hot/cold shoe bracket
It has optical image stabilization
It is lightweight and portable
It has a good battery life
It is durable and weather-sealed
It has hyper-lapse/timelapse/slow-motion shooting modes

For more information on why a lot of these features are ideal to have in a vlogging camera, check out my post on the Top 15 Best Cameras for Vlogging 2020 .

Cameras That Are Good For Travel Vlogging

Considering my list on what to look for in a travel vlogging camera, I’ve prepared a table below of thirteen cameras I’d recommend for travel vlogging:

Camera	Camera Type	Flip Screen	Mic Port	Price
CanonEOSM50	February2018	Mirrorless	Fully Articulated	Yes	$-
PanasonicLumixDC-GH5S	January2018	Mirrorless	Fully Articulated	Yes	$$$
GoProHero6 Black	September2017	Action Camera	No	Yes	$-
CanonEOSM100	August2017	Mirrorless	Flip-Up	No	$
CanonEOS6D Mark II	June2017	Mid-size SLR	Fully Articulated	Yes	$$
CanonEOS RebelSL2	June2017	Compact SLR	Fully Articulated	Yes	$
CanonEOS RebelT7i	February2017	Mid-size SLR	Fully Articulated	Yes	$-
CanonEOSM6	February2017	Mirrorless	Flip-Up	Yes	$
SonyCyber-Shot DSCRX 100 V	October2016	Compact	Flip-Up	No	$-
PanasonicLumix DMCG85	September2016	Mirrorless	Fully Articulated	Yes	$-
PanasonicLumix DMCLX10	September2016	Compact	Flip-Up	No	$
CanonEOS80D	February2016	Mid-size SLR	Fully Articulated	Yes	$$
CanonPowerShotG7 X Mark II	February2016	Compact	Flip-Up	No	$

Lenses That Are Good For Travel Vlogging

If, however, you want to be able to shoot these close-up shots from a farther distance, you’ll need a telephoto lens.

If most of your travel video shooting will be done handheld, you should also definitely look for a lens equipped with optical image stabilization.

Check out my Best Camera Lens for YouTube to gain a more in-depth understanding of lenses and how they work.

1.2 Travel Vlogging Accessories

Camera Accessories That Are Good For Travel Vlogging

	1. Tripod Record stabilized shots and timelapse footage with a tripod.
	2. GorillaPod SLR-Zoom with Ballhead Wrap your camera around structures that your regular tripod can’t stay on. You can also hold out your camera further away from you using the GorillaPod as a selfie stick to fit in more of your background into your selfie shot.
	3. Stabilizing Gimbal Get super-smooth shots with a stabilizing gimbal.
	4. On-Camera LED Light Is there not enough light? Add an LED light to your camera’s hot/cold shoe.
	5. Neutral Density (ND) Filters Is it too bright outside to have your aperture wide open but you still want to get that cinematic look ? You can add ND filters to your lenses so that you can do just that in very bright conditions.
	6. Camera Cleaning Kit While traveling, you can get all kinds of unwanted substances on your lens and in your camera like dust, dirt, fingerprints, raindrops, snow, and sand, to name a few. If you bring along a portable camera cleaning kit with you on your travels, you can remove those things immediately so that your shots won’t be affected.
	7. Drone When it comes to travel vlogging, wide shots that establish the scene and setting are important. Drones are great for taking these kinds of wide shots from high places that you would not be able to get to by foot.

Smartphone Accessories That Are Good For Travel Vlogging

RAVPower Portable Charger
Arkon Tripod Mount
Mega Tiny Anti-Gravity Case
FLII Selfie Ring Light
Rode VideoMic Me
Aukey Optic 3-in-1 Smartphone Lens Set
iOgrapher Go for Android and iPhone
Manfrotto TwistGrip System
Zhiyun Smooth-Q 3-Axis Handheld Gimbal Stabilizer for Smartphones

Read more about each one of these items in my post The 9 Best Smartphone Camera Accessories For Vloggers .

Camera Mounted Shotgun Microphones for Travel Vlogging

These four shotgun microphones can mount directly onto your camera’s hot/cold shoe:

Rode VideoMic Go
Shure VP83
Rode VideoMic Pro+
Sennheiser MKE 440

Read more about each one of them in our post about The 19 Best YouTube Microphones 2020 – Options for Music, Voiceovers, Vlogging, and more!

Other Useful Travel Vlogging Accessories

Camera backpack
Extra batteries
Memory cards
External hard drive
Power plugs and cables
USB card reader
Universal plug
D-ring clips (to prevent your equipment from slipping out of your grasp)
Smartphone SD card tray key (if you’re storing your recorded footage in your SD card)

PART 2: TRAVEL VLOGGING IDEAS

If you’re needing some travel video ideas either to get you started or to bring some fresh content into your channel, here are ten travel video ideas that you can try.

1. Travel Vlog

Rather than being too picky with your video shots and possibly ending up with a lack of footage to work with, shoot as much as you can.

Try to capture your thoughts and feelings around the things you taste, smell, see and hear. Sharing these details can help your viewers feel more like they’re with you on your travels.

2. Tips or Tricks for Traveling

3. Video Tour of a Location

4. Review An Attraction or Experience

5. Timelapse Videos

6. Average Daily Cost

7. Interview Locals

People don’t travel only to see popular attractions. A lot of people travel to connect with and understand people from different parts of the world.

Interviewing locals and sharing their thoughts can help to provide that kind of connection.

8. What’s in My Backpack?

Packing for a trip can say a lot about who you are as a person because it involves prioritizing items based on your personal values.

For your next trip, share a little part of yourself with your audience through a video about the things you’ve packed in your bag.

9. Talk About Your Own Home City

Take advantage of the expert that you already are in your own home city and make an informative video for others who are taking a trip there.

10. How To Become a Travel Vlogger

After you’ve done a lot of travel vlogging and learned so much along the way, you can make a video about how to be a travel vlogger.

In the above video, Andrew Santos teaches how to make a travel video, all while hilariously poking fun at many of the cliché trends in the travel genre.

PART 3: TRAVEL VIDEO EDITING

Video Editing Software

When it comes to editing your travel video together, there are different kinds of software you can do that with.

FREE VIDEO EDITING SOFTWARE	PAID VIDEO EDITING SOFTWARE
OpenShot Video Editor (Windows, Mac, Linux) ShotCut (Windows, Mac, Linux) Hitfilm Express (Windows, Mac) VideoPad Video Editor (Windows) Lightworks (Windows, Mac, Linux) VSDC Video Editor (Windows) Machete Video Editor Lite (Windows) Avidemux (Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD) Read more about each software in our post about The Best Free Video Editing Software for YouTube – Top 8 Reviews .	Wondershare Filmora X (Windows, Mac) - start at $49.99 for one year license and Free trial Final Cut Pro (Mac) - $299.99, Free trial Vegas Movie Studio (Windows) - $49.99

Travel-Themed Video Effects

For my recent trip to Japan, I actually used Filmora Effects’ Japanese set.

At the 2:10 mark of the above video, I used an overlay of falling cherry blossom leaves. At the 3:03 mark of the same video, I used an anime-themed overlay.

At the 2:48 mark of the above video, I used a shoji door transition.

Music Libraries

Music is an important component of a lot of travel videos. Here’s where you can get them:

ROYALTY-FREE MUSIC LIBRARIES	PAID MUSIC LIBRARIES	PAID SUBSCRIPTION MUSIC LIBRARIES
Audionautix Bensound dig.ccMixter Free Music Archive Free Stock Music Incompetech Josh Woodward Moby Gratis Musopen Purple Planet Music TeknoAXE YouTube Audio Library	Premium Beat Audio Jungle	Audio Network Audio Blocks Epidemic Sound

Sound Effects

Free Sound Effect Sites

PART 4: TRAVEL VLOGGING TIPS

Vlog/Life Balance

Give yourself more time at each location if you want to have a good balance between getting the shots you need and enjoying your present moment.

Theft Prevention

Carry a backpack that doesn’t have zippers on the outside that thieves can easily get to.
If you’re shooting with a flashy smartphone, make it look less appealing to thieves with a grotesque smartphone case, like an Otterbox.
In locations with high crime, pre-plan the shots you want to capture and take your SLR camera out of your bag only to take those shots. Otherwise, keep your SLR camera concealed.
Never leave your equipment unattended in a visible area, not even in a locked car.

Pre-Production and Planning

Before shooting, make a shot list of all the footage you need.
Have all your filming equipment that needs to be calibrated all calibrated and ready to use.

Onscreen Performance

Look into your lens, not the projected image of yourself on your camera’s flip screen.
Show a lot of energy as you film yourself.
If you’re nervous about talking to the camera in public, keep your talking head clips short and gradually build your way up to longer clips. You can break up longer sentences by saying a few words from one scene, saying a few more in another, and finishing off your last words, again, in another scene. Later, in editing, you can stitch all of those clips together to make one fluid sentence.
If you’re nervous about talking to the camera in public, you can capture your talking headshots later when you find a more secluded space.

Audio Recording

Silence everything you don’t want your mic to record.
Put your mobile phone in airplane mode.
Block wind from reaching your mic with windscreens and dead cats.
Upgrade your mic.
Adjust your levels.
Get close to the sound you are wanting to record.

Check out 10 Recording Tips to Get The Best Sound From Your Microphone for more audio recording tips.

Filming

To avoid crowds, wake up early and grab your footage early while everyone else is still sleeping or getting ready.
Capture wide shots, medium shots, and close-up shots for better coverage.
Use the Sun Seeker app to set up your sunrise/sunset shots better.
If your camera can record 4K footage, record in 4K all the scenes that you want to zoom in closer later in editing without losing quality (your video project in editing has to be at 1920p x 1080p for this to work).

Stabilization

If you’re trying to get shots with movement by walking, rather than walking as you normally would walk with your knees bent for steadier shots.
If you’re shooting something in front of your handheld, lean your arm against your own body for steadier shots.
Use a stabilizing gimbal with your camera.

Timelapse/Hyperlapse

Select scenes where you can see a lot of change over time (not a still building in front of a cloudless smoggy sky).
Set longer intervals for scenes that change very slowly over time.
Pre-set your focus. Turn autofocus off.
Shoot time-lapses/hyper-lapses in manual mode to prevent the flickering that occurs with changing light conditions in automatic settings.
If your camera is set on a tripod in a fixed position, turn your optical image stabilization off.
If you aren’t holding onto your camera as it’s in the middle of making a timelapse video, at least keep your camera and tripod attached by some kind of leash mechanism.
For moving time-lapses or hyper-lapses, try to keep one point of reference in the same position within your camera frame.

Slow Motion

Shoot slow-motion videos when there is plenty of light.
For actions that are as slow as walking, slowing down your footage to 50% of the original speed looks good enough. If your video editing project is in 30 fps, shooting your video in 60 fps will give you a 50% slow-motion video. If your video editing project is in 60 fps, shooting your video in 120 fps will give you a 50% slow-motion video. Any slower is overkill for slowing down the speed of walking.
For actions that are as fast as water splashing, slowing down your footage as little as 15% of the original speed can look good. For a video editing project in 30 fps, you would need a camera that can shoot at up to 240 fps to slow your footage down this much.

Storage and Back-Up

If you’re using a phone that can store images and videos on a separate SD card, take advantage of that and record your travel footage onto your SD card. Later, you can easily get to your travel media as it will all be in one place.
If you have your laptop on you, regularly transfer your media files from your cameras to your external hard drives.
If you don’t want to bring your laptop on your trip and plan to video edit once you’re back home, use a USB memory card reader that connects with an app on your phone to transfer your files into your external hard drive.
If you have access to a reliable internet connection and you leave your laptop at your place of accommodation, have your computer upload your files onto cloud storage while you are out to travel vlogging.
Take advantage of Google Photos’ free, unlimited cloud storage for video files up to 1080p.

Video Editing

If you’re editing a video project with videos from multiple different cameras, make sure to set the correct time and date on all of them before you start filming. Later, in editing, you can import all your image and video files and sort them in the exact order that they were taken.
If your video editing software can work with proxies, transcode all your video files into proxy files for much faster editing.

Posting On YouTube

Choose a title that people will search for. Keep your target keywords at the beginning of your title. “S01E01: My Summer Backpacking Trip” is not an effective title. Instead, a title like “Going Up The Eiffel Tower… Beautiful View of Paris!” would be better.

Ready to Become a Travel Vlogger?

This past year has been a challenge, so if you want to make a #travelanywhere video without traveling, you can try Wondershare Filmora X video editor.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

Want to become a travel vlogger?

With all the high-quality cameras and video editing software that are much more accessible to the general public now than even a few years ago, it has never been a better time to make a travel vlog.

Below, I have prepared a comprehensive guide on how to become a travel vlogger.

Create Your Travel Vlog with Wondershare FilmoraX

PART 1: TRAVEL VLOGGING EQUIPMENT

In order to make travel videos, you’re going to need camera equipment. Below, I’ve prepared a comprehensive list of cameras and accessories that would be good for travel vlogging.

Filmstock Stock Media Library ](https://filmstock.wondershare.com/creative-theme-tourism?spm=rs.filmora%5Fweb&source%5Fchannel=seo%5Farticle )

1.1 Travel Vlogging Cameras

How To Choose A Vlogging Camera

When it comes to travel vlogging, you should look for a camera that ideally has the following eleven qualities:

It has a fully articulated screen (flip screen)
It has good continual autofocus while recording video
It has good focus priority through face recognition
It has touched to focus
It has good low-light performance
It has an external mic jack and a hot/cold shoe bracket
It has optical image stabilization
It is lightweight and portable
It has a good battery life
It is durable and weather-sealed
It has hyper-lapse/timelapse/slow-motion shooting modes

For more information on why a lot of these features are ideal to have in a vlogging camera, check out my post on the Top 15 Best Cameras for Vlogging 2020 .

Cameras That Are Good For Travel Vlogging

Considering my list on what to look for in a travel vlogging camera, I’ve prepared a table below of thirteen cameras I’d recommend for travel vlogging:

Camera	Camera Type	Flip Screen	Mic Port	Price
CanonEOSM50	February2018	Mirrorless	Fully Articulated	Yes	$-
PanasonicLumixDC-GH5S	January2018	Mirrorless	Fully Articulated	Yes	$$$
GoProHero6 Black	September2017	Action Camera	No	Yes	$-
CanonEOSM100	August2017	Mirrorless	Flip-Up	No	$
CanonEOS6D Mark II	June2017	Mid-size SLR	Fully Articulated	Yes	$$
CanonEOS RebelSL2	June2017	Compact SLR	Fully Articulated	Yes	$
CanonEOS RebelT7i	February2017	Mid-size SLR	Fully Articulated	Yes	$-
CanonEOSM6	February2017	Mirrorless	Flip-Up	Yes	$
SonyCyber-Shot DSCRX 100 V	October2016	Compact	Flip-Up	No	$-
PanasonicLumix DMCG85	September2016	Mirrorless	Fully Articulated	Yes	$-
PanasonicLumix DMCLX10	September2016	Compact	Flip-Up	No	$
CanonEOS80D	February2016	Mid-size SLR	Fully Articulated	Yes	$$
CanonPowerShotG7 X Mark II	February2016	Compact	Flip-Up	No	$

Lenses That Are Good For Travel Vlogging

If, however, you want to be able to shoot these close-up shots from a farther distance, you’ll need a telephoto lens.

If most of your travel video shooting will be done handheld, you should also definitely look for a lens equipped with optical image stabilization.

Check out my Best Camera Lens for YouTube to gain a more in-depth understanding of lenses and how they work.

1.2 Travel Vlogging Accessories

Camera Accessories That Are Good For Travel Vlogging

	1. Tripod Record stabilized shots and timelapse footage with a tripod.
	2. GorillaPod SLR-Zoom with Ballhead Wrap your camera around structures that your regular tripod can’t stay on. You can also hold out your camera further away from you using the GorillaPod as a selfie stick to fit in more of your background into your selfie shot.
	3. Stabilizing Gimbal Get super-smooth shots with a stabilizing gimbal.
	4. On-Camera LED Light Is there not enough light? Add an LED light to your camera’s hot/cold shoe.
	5. Neutral Density (ND) Filters Is it too bright outside to have your aperture wide open but you still want to get that cinematic look ? You can add ND filters to your lenses so that you can do just that in very bright conditions.
	6. Camera Cleaning Kit While traveling, you can get all kinds of unwanted substances on your lens and in your camera like dust, dirt, fingerprints, raindrops, snow, and sand, to name a few. If you bring along a portable camera cleaning kit with you on your travels, you can remove those things immediately so that your shots won’t be affected.
	7. Drone When it comes to travel vlogging, wide shots that establish the scene and setting are important. Drones are great for taking these kinds of wide shots from high places that you would not be able to get to by foot.

Smartphone Accessories That Are Good For Travel Vlogging

RAVPower Portable Charger
Arkon Tripod Mount
Mega Tiny Anti-Gravity Case
FLII Selfie Ring Light
Rode VideoMic Me
Aukey Optic 3-in-1 Smartphone Lens Set
iOgrapher Go for Android and iPhone
Manfrotto TwistGrip System
Zhiyun Smooth-Q 3-Axis Handheld Gimbal Stabilizer for Smartphones

Read more about each one of these items in my post The 9 Best Smartphone Camera Accessories For Vloggers .

Camera Mounted Shotgun Microphones for Travel Vlogging

These four shotgun microphones can mount directly onto your camera’s hot/cold shoe:

Rode VideoMic Go
Shure VP83
Rode VideoMic Pro+
Sennheiser MKE 440

Read more about each one of them in our post about The 19 Best YouTube Microphones 2020 – Options for Music, Voiceovers, Vlogging, and more!

Other Useful Travel Vlogging Accessories

Camera backpack
Extra batteries
Memory cards
External hard drive
Power plugs and cables
USB card reader
Universal plug
D-ring clips (to prevent your equipment from slipping out of your grasp)
Smartphone SD card tray key (if you’re storing your recorded footage in your SD card)

PART 2: TRAVEL VLOGGING IDEAS

If you’re needing some travel video ideas either to get you started or to bring some fresh content into your channel, here are ten travel video ideas that you can try.

1. Travel Vlog

Rather than being too picky with your video shots and possibly ending up with a lack of footage to work with, shoot as much as you can.

Try to capture your thoughts and feelings around the things you taste, smell, see and hear. Sharing these details can help your viewers feel more like they’re with you on your travels.

2. Tips or Tricks for Traveling

3. Video Tour of a Location

4. Review An Attraction or Experience

5. Timelapse Videos

6. Average Daily Cost

7. Interview Locals

People don’t travel only to see popular attractions. A lot of people travel to connect with and understand people from different parts of the world.

Interviewing locals and sharing their thoughts can help to provide that kind of connection.

8. What’s in My Backpack?

Packing for a trip can say a lot about who you are as a person because it involves prioritizing items based on your personal values.

For your next trip, share a little part of yourself with your audience through a video about the things you’ve packed in your bag.

9. Talk About Your Own Home City

Take advantage of the expert that you already are in your own home city and make an informative video for others who are taking a trip there.

10. How To Become a Travel Vlogger

After you’ve done a lot of travel vlogging and learned so much along the way, you can make a video about how to be a travel vlogger.

In the above video, Andrew Santos teaches how to make a travel video, all while hilariously poking fun at many of the cliché trends in the travel genre.

PART 3: TRAVEL VIDEO EDITING

Video Editing Software

When it comes to editing your travel video together, there are different kinds of software you can do that with.

FREE VIDEO EDITING SOFTWARE	PAID VIDEO EDITING SOFTWARE
OpenShot Video Editor (Windows, Mac, Linux) ShotCut (Windows, Mac, Linux) Hitfilm Express (Windows, Mac) VideoPad Video Editor (Windows) Lightworks (Windows, Mac, Linux) VSDC Video Editor (Windows) Machete Video Editor Lite (Windows) Avidemux (Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD) Read more about each software in our post about The Best Free Video Editing Software for YouTube – Top 8 Reviews .	Wondershare Filmora X (Windows, Mac) - start at $49.99 for one year license and Free trial Final Cut Pro (Mac) - $299.99, Free trial Vegas Movie Studio (Windows) - $49.99

Travel-Themed Video Effects

For my recent trip to Japan, I actually used Filmora Effects’ Japanese set.

At the 2:10 mark of the above video, I used an overlay of falling cherry blossom leaves. At the 3:03 mark of the same video, I used an anime-themed overlay.

At the 2:48 mark of the above video, I used a shoji door transition.

Music Libraries

Music is an important component of a lot of travel videos. Here’s where you can get them:

ROYALTY-FREE MUSIC LIBRARIES	PAID MUSIC LIBRARIES	PAID SUBSCRIPTION MUSIC LIBRARIES
Audionautix Bensound dig.ccMixter Free Music Archive Free Stock Music Incompetech Josh Woodward Moby Gratis Musopen Purple Planet Music TeknoAXE YouTube Audio Library	Premium Beat Audio Jungle	Audio Network Audio Blocks Epidemic Sound

Sound Effects

Free Sound Effect Sites

PART 4: TRAVEL VLOGGING TIPS

Vlog/Life Balance

Give yourself more time at each location if you want to have a good balance between getting the shots you need and enjoying your present moment.

Theft Prevention

Carry a backpack that doesn’t have zippers on the outside that thieves can easily get to.
If you’re shooting with a flashy smartphone, make it look less appealing to thieves with a grotesque smartphone case, like an Otterbox.
In locations with high crime, pre-plan the shots you want to capture and take your SLR camera out of your bag only to take those shots. Otherwise, keep your SLR camera concealed.
Never leave your equipment unattended in a visible area, not even in a locked car.

Pre-Production and Planning

Before shooting, make a shot list of all the footage you need.
Have all your filming equipment that needs to be calibrated all calibrated and ready to use.

Onscreen Performance

Look into your lens, not the projected image of yourself on your camera’s flip screen.
Show a lot of energy as you film yourself.
If you’re nervous about talking to the camera in public, keep your talking head clips short and gradually build your way up to longer clips. You can break up longer sentences by saying a few words from one scene, saying a few more in another, and finishing off your last words, again, in another scene. Later, in editing, you can stitch all of those clips together to make one fluid sentence.
If you’re nervous about talking to the camera in public, you can capture your talking headshots later when you find a more secluded space.

Audio Recording

Silence everything you don’t want your mic to record.
Put your mobile phone in airplane mode.
Block wind from reaching your mic with windscreens and dead cats.
Upgrade your mic.
Adjust your levels.
Get close to the sound you are wanting to record.

Check out 10 Recording Tips to Get The Best Sound From Your Microphone for more audio recording tips.

Filming

To avoid crowds, wake up early and grab your footage early while everyone else is still sleeping or getting ready.
Capture wide shots, medium shots, and close-up shots for better coverage.
Use the Sun Seeker app to set up your sunrise/sunset shots better.
If your camera can record 4K footage, record in 4K all the scenes that you want to zoom in closer later in editing without losing quality (your video project in editing has to be at 1920p x 1080p for this to work).

Stabilization

If you’re trying to get shots with movement by walking, rather than walking as you normally would walk with your knees bent for steadier shots.
If you’re shooting something in front of your handheld, lean your arm against your own body for steadier shots.
Use a stabilizing gimbal with your camera.

Timelapse/Hyperlapse

Select scenes where you can see a lot of change over time (not a still building in front of a cloudless smoggy sky).
Set longer intervals for scenes that change very slowly over time.
Pre-set your focus. Turn autofocus off.
Shoot time-lapses/hyper-lapses in manual mode to prevent the flickering that occurs with changing light conditions in automatic settings.
If your camera is set on a tripod in a fixed position, turn your optical image stabilization off.
If you aren’t holding onto your camera as it’s in the middle of making a timelapse video, at least keep your camera and tripod attached by some kind of leash mechanism.
For moving time-lapses or hyper-lapses, try to keep one point of reference in the same position within your camera frame.

Slow Motion

Shoot slow-motion videos when there is plenty of light.
For actions that are as slow as walking, slowing down your footage to 50% of the original speed looks good enough. If your video editing project is in 30 fps, shooting your video in 60 fps will give you a 50% slow-motion video. If your video editing project is in 60 fps, shooting your video in 120 fps will give you a 50% slow-motion video. Any slower is overkill for slowing down the speed of walking.
For actions that are as fast as water splashing, slowing down your footage as little as 15% of the original speed can look good. For a video editing project in 30 fps, you would need a camera that can shoot at up to 240 fps to slow your footage down this much.

Storage and Back-Up

If you’re using a phone that can store images and videos on a separate SD card, take advantage of that and record your travel footage onto your SD card. Later, you can easily get to your travel media as it will all be in one place.
If you have your laptop on you, regularly transfer your media files from your cameras to your external hard drives.
If you don’t want to bring your laptop on your trip and plan to video edit once you’re back home, use a USB memory card reader that connects with an app on your phone to transfer your files into your external hard drive.
If you have access to a reliable internet connection and you leave your laptop at your place of accommodation, have your computer upload your files onto cloud storage while you are out to travel vlogging.
Take advantage of Google Photos’ free, unlimited cloud storage for video files up to 1080p.

Video Editing

If you’re editing a video project with videos from multiple different cameras, make sure to set the correct time and date on all of them before you start filming. Later, in editing, you can import all your image and video files and sort them in the exact order that they were taken.
If your video editing software can work with proxies, transcode all your video files into proxy files for much faster editing.

Posting On YouTube

Choose a title that people will search for. Keep your target keywords at the beginning of your title. “S01E01: My Summer Backpacking Trip” is not an effective title. Instead, a title like “Going Up The Eiffel Tower… Beautiful View of Paris!” would be better.

Ready to Become a Travel Vlogger?

This past year has been a challenge, so if you want to make a #travelanywhere video without traveling, you can try Wondershare Filmora X video editor.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

Want to become a travel vlogger?

With all the high-quality cameras and video editing software that are much more accessible to the general public now than even a few years ago, it has never been a better time to make a travel vlog.

Below, I have prepared a comprehensive guide on how to become a travel vlogger.

Create Your Travel Vlog with Wondershare FilmoraX

PART 1: TRAVEL VLOGGING EQUIPMENT

In order to make travel videos, you’re going to need camera equipment. Below, I’ve prepared a comprehensive list of cameras and accessories that would be good for travel vlogging.

Filmstock Stock Media Library ](https://filmstock.wondershare.com/creative-theme-tourism?spm=rs.filmora%5Fweb&source%5Fchannel=seo%5Farticle )

1.1 Travel Vlogging Cameras

How To Choose A Vlogging Camera

When it comes to travel vlogging, you should look for a camera that ideally has the following eleven qualities:

It has a fully articulated screen (flip screen)
It has good continual autofocus while recording video
It has good focus priority through face recognition
It has touched to focus
It has good low-light performance
It has an external mic jack and a hot/cold shoe bracket
It has optical image stabilization
It is lightweight and portable
It has a good battery life
It is durable and weather-sealed
It has hyper-lapse/timelapse/slow-motion shooting modes

For more information on why a lot of these features are ideal to have in a vlogging camera, check out my post on the Top 15 Best Cameras for Vlogging 2020 .

Cameras That Are Good For Travel Vlogging

Considering my list on what to look for in a travel vlogging camera, I’ve prepared a table below of thirteen cameras I’d recommend for travel vlogging:

Camera	Camera Type	Flip Screen	Mic Port	Price
CanonEOSM50	February2018	Mirrorless	Fully Articulated	Yes	$-
PanasonicLumixDC-GH5S	January2018	Mirrorless	Fully Articulated	Yes	$$$
GoProHero6 Black	September2017	Action Camera	No	Yes	$-
CanonEOSM100	August2017	Mirrorless	Flip-Up	No	$
CanonEOS6D Mark II	June2017	Mid-size SLR	Fully Articulated	Yes	$$
CanonEOS RebelSL2	June2017	Compact SLR	Fully Articulated	Yes	$
CanonEOS RebelT7i	February2017	Mid-size SLR	Fully Articulated	Yes	$-
CanonEOSM6	February2017	Mirrorless	Flip-Up	Yes	$
SonyCyber-Shot DSCRX 100 V	October2016	Compact	Flip-Up	No	$-
PanasonicLumix DMCG85	September2016	Mirrorless	Fully Articulated	Yes	$-
PanasonicLumix DMCLX10	September2016	Compact	Flip-Up	No	$
CanonEOS80D	February2016	Mid-size SLR	Fully Articulated	Yes	$$
CanonPowerShotG7 X Mark II	February2016	Compact	Flip-Up	No	$

Lenses That Are Good For Travel Vlogging

If, however, you want to be able to shoot these close-up shots from a farther distance, you’ll need a telephoto lens.

If most of your travel video shooting will be done handheld, you should also definitely look for a lens equipped with optical image stabilization.

Check out my Best Camera Lens for YouTube to gain a more in-depth understanding of lenses and how they work.

1.2 Travel Vlogging Accessories

Camera Accessories That Are Good For Travel Vlogging

	1. Tripod Record stabilized shots and timelapse footage with a tripod.
	2. GorillaPod SLR-Zoom with Ballhead Wrap your camera around structures that your regular tripod can’t stay on. You can also hold out your camera further away from you using the GorillaPod as a selfie stick to fit in more of your background into your selfie shot.
	3. Stabilizing Gimbal Get super-smooth shots with a stabilizing gimbal.
	4. On-Camera LED Light Is there not enough light? Add an LED light to your camera’s hot/cold shoe.
	5. Neutral Density (ND) Filters Is it too bright outside to have your aperture wide open but you still want to get that cinematic look ? You can add ND filters to your lenses so that you can do just that in very bright conditions.
	6. Camera Cleaning Kit While traveling, you can get all kinds of unwanted substances on your lens and in your camera like dust, dirt, fingerprints, raindrops, snow, and sand, to name a few. If you bring along a portable camera cleaning kit with you on your travels, you can remove those things immediately so that your shots won’t be affected.
	7. Drone When it comes to travel vlogging, wide shots that establish the scene and setting are important. Drones are great for taking these kinds of wide shots from high places that you would not be able to get to by foot.

Smartphone Accessories That Are Good For Travel Vlogging

RAVPower Portable Charger
Arkon Tripod Mount
Mega Tiny Anti-Gravity Case
FLII Selfie Ring Light
Rode VideoMic Me
Aukey Optic 3-in-1 Smartphone Lens Set
iOgrapher Go for Android and iPhone
Manfrotto TwistGrip System
Zhiyun Smooth-Q 3-Axis Handheld Gimbal Stabilizer for Smartphones

Read more about each one of these items in my post The 9 Best Smartphone Camera Accessories For Vloggers .

Camera Mounted Shotgun Microphones for Travel Vlogging

These four shotgun microphones can mount directly onto your camera’s hot/cold shoe:

Rode VideoMic Go
Shure VP83
Rode VideoMic Pro+
Sennheiser MKE 440

Read more about each one of them in our post about The 19 Best YouTube Microphones 2020 – Options for Music, Voiceovers, Vlogging, and more!

Other Useful Travel Vlogging Accessories

Camera backpack
Extra batteries
Memory cards
External hard drive
Power plugs and cables
USB card reader
Universal plug
D-ring clips (to prevent your equipment from slipping out of your grasp)
Smartphone SD card tray key (if you’re storing your recorded footage in your SD card)

PART 2: TRAVEL VLOGGING IDEAS

If you’re needing some travel video ideas either to get you started or to bring some fresh content into your channel, here are ten travel video ideas that you can try.

1. Travel Vlog

Rather than being too picky with your video shots and possibly ending up with a lack of footage to work with, shoot as much as you can.

Try to capture your thoughts and feelings around the things you taste, smell, see and hear. Sharing these details can help your viewers feel more like they’re with you on your travels.

2. Tips or Tricks for Traveling

3. Video Tour of a Location

4. Review An Attraction or Experience

5. Timelapse Videos

6. Average Daily Cost

7. Interview Locals

People don’t travel only to see popular attractions. A lot of people travel to connect with and understand people from different parts of the world.

Interviewing locals and sharing their thoughts can help to provide that kind of connection.

8. What’s in My Backpack?

Packing for a trip can say a lot about who you are as a person because it involves prioritizing items based on your personal values.

For your next trip, share a little part of yourself with your audience through a video about the things you’ve packed in your bag.

9. Talk About Your Own Home City

Take advantage of the expert that you already are in your own home city and make an informative video for others who are taking a trip there.

10. How To Become a Travel Vlogger

After you’ve done a lot of travel vlogging and learned so much along the way, you can make a video about how to be a travel vlogger.

In the above video, Andrew Santos teaches how to make a travel video, all while hilariously poking fun at many of the cliché trends in the travel genre.

PART 3: TRAVEL VIDEO EDITING

Video Editing Software

When it comes to editing your travel video together, there are different kinds of software you can do that with.

FREE VIDEO EDITING SOFTWARE	PAID VIDEO EDITING SOFTWARE
OpenShot Video Editor (Windows, Mac, Linux) ShotCut (Windows, Mac, Linux) Hitfilm Express (Windows, Mac) VideoPad Video Editor (Windows) Lightworks (Windows, Mac, Linux) VSDC Video Editor (Windows) Machete Video Editor Lite (Windows) Avidemux (Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD) Read more about each software in our post about The Best Free Video Editing Software for YouTube – Top 8 Reviews .	Wondershare Filmora X (Windows, Mac) - start at $49.99 for one year license and Free trial Final Cut Pro (Mac) - $299.99, Free trial Vegas Movie Studio (Windows) - $49.99

Travel-Themed Video Effects

For my recent trip to Japan, I actually used Filmora Effects’ Japanese set.

At the 2:10 mark of the above video, I used an overlay of falling cherry blossom leaves. At the 3:03 mark of the same video, I used an anime-themed overlay.

At the 2:48 mark of the above video, I used a shoji door transition.

Music Libraries

Music is an important component of a lot of travel videos. Here’s where you can get them:

ROYALTY-FREE MUSIC LIBRARIES	PAID MUSIC LIBRARIES	PAID SUBSCRIPTION MUSIC LIBRARIES
Audionautix Bensound dig.ccMixter Free Music Archive Free Stock Music Incompetech Josh Woodward Moby Gratis Musopen Purple Planet Music TeknoAXE YouTube Audio Library	Premium Beat Audio Jungle	Audio Network Audio Blocks Epidemic Sound

Sound Effects

Free Sound Effect Sites

PART 4: TRAVEL VLOGGING TIPS

Vlog/Life Balance

Give yourself more time at each location if you want to have a good balance between getting the shots you need and enjoying your present moment.

Theft Prevention

Carry a backpack that doesn’t have zippers on the outside that thieves can easily get to.
If you’re shooting with a flashy smartphone, make it look less appealing to thieves with a grotesque smartphone case, like an Otterbox.
In locations with high crime, pre-plan the shots you want to capture and take your SLR camera out of your bag only to take those shots. Otherwise, keep your SLR camera concealed.
Never leave your equipment unattended in a visible area, not even in a locked car.

Pre-Production and Planning

Before shooting, make a shot list of all the footage you need.
Have all your filming equipment that needs to be calibrated all calibrated and ready to use.

Onscreen Performance

Look into your lens, not the projected image of yourself on your camera’s flip screen.
Show a lot of energy as you film yourself.
If you’re nervous about talking to the camera in public, keep your talking head clips short and gradually build your way up to longer clips. You can break up longer sentences by saying a few words from one scene, saying a few more in another, and finishing off your last words, again, in another scene. Later, in editing, you can stitch all of those clips together to make one fluid sentence.
If you’re nervous about talking to the camera in public, you can capture your talking headshots later when you find a more secluded space.

Audio Recording

Silence everything you don’t want your mic to record.
Put your mobile phone in airplane mode.
Block wind from reaching your mic with windscreens and dead cats.
Upgrade your mic.
Adjust your levels.
Get close to the sound you are wanting to record.

Check out 10 Recording Tips to Get The Best Sound From Your Microphone for more audio recording tips.

Filming

To avoid crowds, wake up early and grab your footage early while everyone else is still sleeping or getting ready.
Capture wide shots, medium shots, and close-up shots for better coverage.
Use the Sun Seeker app to set up your sunrise/sunset shots better.
If your camera can record 4K footage, record in 4K all the scenes that you want to zoom in closer later in editing without losing quality (your video project in editing has to be at 1920p x 1080p for this to work).

Stabilization

If you’re trying to get shots with movement by walking, rather than walking as you normally would walk with your knees bent for steadier shots.
If you’re shooting something in front of your handheld, lean your arm against your own body for steadier shots.
Use a stabilizing gimbal with your camera.

Timelapse/Hyperlapse

Select scenes where you can see a lot of change over time (not a still building in front of a cloudless smoggy sky).
Set longer intervals for scenes that change very slowly over time.
Pre-set your focus. Turn autofocus off.
Shoot time-lapses/hyper-lapses in manual mode to prevent the flickering that occurs with changing light conditions in automatic settings.
If your camera is set on a tripod in a fixed position, turn your optical image stabilization off.
If you aren’t holding onto your camera as it’s in the middle of making a timelapse video, at least keep your camera and tripod attached by some kind of leash mechanism.
For moving time-lapses or hyper-lapses, try to keep one point of reference in the same position within your camera frame.

Slow Motion

Shoot slow-motion videos when there is plenty of light.
For actions that are as slow as walking, slowing down your footage to 50% of the original speed looks good enough. If your video editing project is in 30 fps, shooting your video in 60 fps will give you a 50% slow-motion video. If your video editing project is in 60 fps, shooting your video in 120 fps will give you a 50% slow-motion video. Any slower is overkill for slowing down the speed of walking.
For actions that are as fast as water splashing, slowing down your footage as little as 15% of the original speed can look good. For a video editing project in 30 fps, you would need a camera that can shoot at up to 240 fps to slow your footage down this much.

Storage and Back-Up

If you’re using a phone that can store images and videos on a separate SD card, take advantage of that and record your travel footage onto your SD card. Later, you can easily get to your travel media as it will all be in one place.
If you have your laptop on you, regularly transfer your media files from your cameras to your external hard drives.
If you don’t want to bring your laptop on your trip and plan to video edit once you’re back home, use a USB memory card reader that connects with an app on your phone to transfer your files into your external hard drive.
If you have access to a reliable internet connection and you leave your laptop at your place of accommodation, have your computer upload your files onto cloud storage while you are out to travel vlogging.
Take advantage of Google Photos’ free, unlimited cloud storage for video files up to 1080p.

Video Editing

If you’re editing a video project with videos from multiple different cameras, make sure to set the correct time and date on all of them before you start filming. Later, in editing, you can import all your image and video files and sort them in the exact order that they were taken.
If your video editing software can work with proxies, transcode all your video files into proxy files for much faster editing.

Posting On YouTube

Choose a title that people will search for. Keep your target keywords at the beginning of your title. “S01E01: My Summer Backpacking Trip” is not an effective title. Instead, a title like “Going Up The Eiffel Tower… Beautiful View of Paris!” would be better.

Ready to Become a Travel Vlogger?

This past year has been a challenge, so if you want to make a #travelanywhere video without traveling, you can try Wondershare Filmora X video editor.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Flawless Foundations: Top YouTube Skincare Routines

Ultimate Guide to Beauty on YouTube - Gear, Makeup Tutorials, and More

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

Beauty and lifestyle are two of the most popular categories on YouTube, and they might also be the categories most associated with brand deals. Whether you’re hoping to earn revenue as a beauty influencer, or just want to post some fun makeup tutorials, this guide is for you!

We’ll walk you through deciding on a theme for your channel, setting up your equipment, and give you tips for actually recording your videos.

1. **[Finding Your Niche in Beauty or Lifestyle](#niche)**

Types of Beauty Videos – Your Content Strategy
How to Get Products to Review
Simple Camera Setup for Beauty Vloggers
Lighting for Beauty
Top Ring Lights for YouTube
Build Your Own Diva Ring Light
How to Make a Makeup Tutorial – Before You Start
How to Make a Makeup Tutorial – Recording
How to Make a Makeup Tutorial – After Shooting

Best YouTube Video Editor- Wondershare Filmora

Wondershare Filmora is specifically made keeping quality on priority and to make sure all the videos are edited well with the highest accuracy. You can trim, merge, crop, add background music, rotate videos as well as add motion elements, animated texts, overlays, and filters, etc. to your makeup video, and the video can also be uploaded to YouTube or burned to DVD directly.

Finding Your Niche in Beauty or Lifestyle

As a new makeup, beauty, or lifestyle YouTuber you’ll be jumping into a category that’s already packed with thousands of channels. In order to gain any momentum, you’ll have to decide on a particular thing you want to be known for. That’s your niche.

People looking for beauty tutorials are often looking for someone who has something in particular in common with them. Hairstyling for a specific ethnicity, for example, is a potential niche because people want to learn how to style their own hair, not a hair in general.

Another way you could find a niche is by taking on a specific area of interest, like a skincare channel with a focus on coping with acne or a makeup channel with a focus on natural products.

SunKissAlba has a lifestyle channel that focuses on a ‘natural’ niche. She posts videos about every aspect of her lifestyle from putting on makeup to cooking, but natural/non-toxic products are a constant theme through everything she does. By niching her channel she hasn’t limited what kinds of videos she can do at all - she posts a huge variety of different types of videos. What she has done is to make her channel particularly valuable to audiences interested in things that are natural or organic.

Types of Beauty Videos – Your Content Strategy

It’s a lot easier to come up with weekly video ideas when you have an overarching strategy.

The easiest way to figure out what kinds of videos you should make (and this can also help determine your niche!) is to think about what you already do and enjoy. If skincare is particularly important to you, for example, then you could build a content strategy that includes things like your favorite sunscreen, what different ingredients in skincare products are for, or even how to make a DIY face mask.

The same thing goes if you love doing big glamourous makeups for going out. Think about what you like, and that will determine what you should talk about in your videos.

Instead of buying new products to use in videos, try to use and showcase what you already have.

Here are some common types of beauty and lifestyle videos:

Get Ready With Me: a video where you put your makeup on which helps your audience get to know you better.

Monthly Favorites: showcases your favorite products from the last month.

Makeup Collection: viewers will want to see what you have.

DIY: create something, like a homemade moisturizer, and show your viewers how to make their own.

Makeup Hauls: show off what you’ve bought recently.

Lookbooks: put together a few looks based on a theme, like a specific color or event.

First Impressions: show yourself using a new product for the first time.

Makeup Tutorials: teach your viewers how to achieve a particular look, like a smokey eye.

What’s In My Bag: empty your handbag to show viewers what you carry around with you, particularly your most essential makeup.

My Routine: show viewers your morning skincare routine, or how you usually take your makeup off before bed. Any of your beauty-related routines will be interesting to your followers.

You should also be ready to jump on trends as they jump up. You can get a bump in viewership from people searching for a particular trend. Here are a couple of examples of past trends:

Boyfriend Does My Makeup
Kid’s Makeup Challenge
No Mirror Makeup Challenge

How to Get Products to Review

You probably already know that a lot of the products popular beauty YouTubers review in their videos were sent to them for free. Brands want to get their products into the hands of creators who have ‘influence’ both in the hopes that their audiences will decide to buy them and as part of generating buzz – getting more people talking about their products so more people become interested.

In order for a brand to consider sending you a free product to review or feature in a video, you will first have to have a large enough following.

What is ‘large enough’? There’s no magic number of YouTube subscribers or Instagram followers. How large your following needs to be will depend on what brands you want to work with, as well as whether your channel has a specific niche.

Large brands will want to work with larger creators. Smaller brands that are still trying to build notoriety may be more open to working with creators whose followings are not as large.

If you have a very specific niche then that could create more opportunities for you as a mid-sized YouTuber. If you specialize in styling curly black hair, and a brand is marketing a product made specifically for styling curly black hair, then your smaller following will be more valuable to that brand than the larger audience of a more general channel.

Here are 4 tips for getting free products for review:

Follow your favorite brands on Instagram and subscribe to their YouTube channels. Make sure to take them when you feature their products in your posts or videos.
Focus on growing your community/audience. As you start getting more subscribers and building up momentum for your channel, brands might start reaching out to you. We’ve got some tips on growing your YouTube channel here .
Make a pitch to a brand. The first step in this is figuring out who to pitch to. You can send smaller brands DMs via Instagram or Twitter and politely ask for contact info for a PR person. Never ask for free product or sponsorship at this point, just information you can use to contact PR.
Send an email with your pitch to the brand’s PR person. Your email should introduce yourself, describe your content, and talk about what type of audience you have (how many subscribers, where are they located, how old are they, etc. This information is all available in your Creator Studio analytics).
Make sure to link to your channel so they can verify what you say (do not hide your subscriber count).
Emphasize what value you could provide the brand with (i.e. ‘I’ve had a lot of success with videos on managing acne and I’m sure my subscribers would love to see a review of your cream’) and outline what kind of video you’d like to make (i.e. a five-minute review focusing on the product, or a short feature in a longer makeup tutorial).

Simple Camera Setup for Beauty Vloggers

There are a lot of different ways to set up your camera for a ‘talking head’ video (anything that is primarily you talking to the camera). Keep reading to learn about a popular ring-light setup for beauty videos, or click here to learn 4 different camera setups .

In an ideal situation, this is what you’ll build your setup out of:

Camera with a flip-out screen
Ring light
Camera-mounted shotgun mic
Tripod (unless you can mount your camera inside your ring light)

If you don’t have access to all of the equipment above, try some of these:

Smartphone camera
DIY ring light
Smartphone shotgun mic or LAV

Step 1: Set your camera and ring light (your camera should be sitting directly behind your ring light, or mounted inside of it) up about 3 feet away from your subject (yourself).

You might want to experiment with sitting at different distances to see how the lighting looks on your face.

Step 2: Set your camera up a bit higher than your face and tilt it down towards yourself (shooting from slightly above is always more flattering). It should be set up at about a 15° angle to you.

Step 3: Check your frame (this is easiest if your camera has a screen that flips out) to make sure there’s not too much empty space in your shot.

Step 4: Adjust your camera’s focus so your picture is clear. You may need to set up a lamp, chair, or stuffed animal as a stand-in for yourself while you stand behind the camera adjusting the focus.

Turn off autofocus and adjust your focus manually by turning the focus ring on your lens, if you’re using a DSLR or mirrorless camera.

Step 5: Set your f-stop (aperture) so that your depth of field is deep enough for you to lean forwards or backward without becoming blurry.

An aperture of f/5.0 is good if you’re going to be moving around a lot, but if you’re not going to be moving much and want a blurry background you might want to go with f/2.8 or lower.

Step 6: Set your ISO (film speed). A lower ISO will give you a darker, but higher quality, image. A higher ISO will lower your quality and give you a brighter image.

ISO 400 should be a happy medium for shooting inside with your ring light, but you may need to try out a couple of settings to find one perfect for your situation.

For more info on camera settings for beauty videos, click here .

Lighting for Beauty

The key to achieving a high-quality picture for your beauty video is having a lot of light.

A ring light (whether it’s one you purchase or one you make) will give you even light over your whole face, and that may be enough. Ring lights are considered one of the biggest ‘secrets’ to beauty on YouTube (as explained in this Racked article ).

There are, however, some reasons you might want additional light:

To Light your Background/Space

If you only have a ring light/front light then you may end up looking like you’re surrounded by shadows. If you want more light for your space you can use windows, household lamps, or professional video lights like softboxes or LED panels.

To Stand Out Against your Background (‘Backlighting’)

A front light that’s lighting you evenly is also lighting whatever’s behind you evenly, which can make your overall picture look flat.

Setting up a light to shine up at you from behind will help you pop out from your background by creating a silhouette.

You can use an LED panel or a household lamp as a backlight.

To Add Dimension to Your Face (Side Lights/ Fill Lights)

Setting up lights to hit you from the sides will help you look more three dimensional. It can also give your video a general quality boost because the picture quality is always better when there’s tons of light.

You can use softboxes, LED panels, clamp lights, household lamps, or any other light source you can think of.

Lighting Tips!

* **_Use ‘daylight’ bulbs in any household lighting/clamp lights you use._ This way, your light will all be the same color and you won’t have to do a lot of color correction (the more yellow-colored light most indoor lights give off will make you look orange).**

You can buy daylight-colored bulbs for about $5.

Clamp lights ($10 each) and paper lanterns ($10 each) provide great lighting and are much more affordable than professional lighting kits. The paper lanterns will provide even, diffused, light and the clamp lights will be easy to set up wherever you need them.
Check out these DIY tips for creating your own reflectors and diffusers .

Top Ring Lights for YouTube

1. Neewer Dimmable Fluorescent Ring Light - $110

One cool feature of the Neewer Ring Light is that you can choose between daylight and a more orange-tinted light depending on which of the included filters you use. In almost all situations you’ll want to use white light/daylight because the orange light will make you look orange, but if you ever wanted to create a warmer image to achieve a particular effect you’d have that option with this light.

This light is dimmable and can be adjusted to the angle that suits your shot. That’s true of our number 2 pick too, and the second place light actually has a slight edge over the Neewer light because its color temperature is 5400K which is slightly closer to daylight than Neewer’s 5500K, but that’s honestly not super important for YouTube. They’re close enough that you won’t be able to tell the difference, and this light is over $100 more affordable.

2. Prismatic Halo Ring Light - $260

This lightweight ring light is easy to transport, set up, and mount your phone or camera to. It’s a fluorescent ‘daylight’ (5400K) light, so the colors in your videos will look natural.

This light is dimmable, so you can turn it down if it’s too bright, and the Prismatic Light Stand will allow you to tilt your light to the perfect angle. This will be handy if you’re mounting your camera inside the ring but want to place it slightly above your face instead of having it look at you head on.

Build Your Own Diva Ring Light

A ring light is an important tool for a lot of beauty YouTubers, but it doesn’t fit into everyone’s budget. Here’s one popular way to create your own ring light for about $20.

A lot of people have done this DIY, but we’re using Kevin’s video because we love how he added the stand.

What you need:

A wire wreath frame
Zip ties
LED rope light (16 ft, daylight)
Tinfoil
Metal paper towel stand
Scissors

Step 1: Wrap your wreath frame in tinfoil. Make sure the tinfoil is shaped to the wreath so that there is a curve on the inside where your rope light can sit.

Step 2: Place your rope light inside the curve of your frame. Wind it around for 3 loops so you have 2 rows of lighting tube sitting next to each other.

Step 3: Use the zip ties to fasten in the rope light. Wrap them tightly around your frame and lights in several (6-8) places.

Step 4: Cut off the tails of the zip ties.

This is your ring light. Continue to step 5 if you want it to have a stand (you might just want to clip it up somewhere).

Step 5: Fasten your ring light tightly to your paper towel stand securely with several zip ties. Make sure to fasten it at the bottom (where the excess rope light is coming out of your ring light). Cut off the tails of the zip ties.

How to Make a Makeup Tutorial – Before You Start

Before you start recording your makeup tutorial there are a few things you should do.

Write an outline. You might even want to write yourself a transcript. Having a concrete plan before you start recording will help ensure your tutorial is useful for viewers. You’ll realize where you might need to slow down and show a particular step in more detail, or where your viewers might find a particular step tricky, in a way you want if you just jump into a makeup routine you know perfectly.
Layout your supplies. Make sure everything you need for your tutorial is laid out neatly in front of you so you can access it all easily. Try to use clean brushes – it just looks nicer.
Tidy up. If you want your viewers to trust you when it comes to aesthetics, it’s important that your studio area is clean and tidy. You may even want to use a backdrop.
Do a video test. Before you start your video for real, start recording and shoot some test footage. Watch that back to make sure you like the look of your frame, your face is never blurry, and you’re happy with the overall look of things.
Do an audio test. If you’re going to be talking in your video instead of recording a voiceover after, do an audio test to make sure your audience will be able to hear you clearly.

How to Make a Makeup Tutorial – Recording

Here are some things to keep in mind while you record your makeup tutorial:

Show what you’re using. When you use a product, brush, or any other beauty supply make sure to let your audience know what you’re using and why you chose it. This isn’t about promoting brands, it’s about making it easy for viewers to duplicate your results.
If you’re using autofocus, you can hold products up to the screen and wait for it to kick in. If you’re not using autofocus, just hold them up next to you for a moment. You can also shoot separate closeups of each product and cut them into your main tutorial video.
Highlight small details. Describe what you’re doing in a lot of detail and don’t gloss over anything. Assume the person watching your tutorial doesn’t know anything about putting on makeup.
Take stills for your thumbnail. Remember to take some still photos of your finished makeup to use in your YouTube thumbnail.

How to Make a Makeup Tutorial – After Shooting

Once you’ve finished recording and put away all your camera gear, there’s still work to do. You still need to edit your video and post it on YouTube. Here are some tips for that:

Add transitions and effects. If you have several clips or even just distinct sections of your main clip, then adding transitions can be a great way to hold your viewers’ attention.
If you spend a lot of time on a repetitive step, you may want to speed that part up and make it a time-lapse.
Add your intro. Having a short (usually around 5 seconds) intro sequence is a great way to strengthen your personal lifestyle brand. You can download free intros right here on filmora.io .
Title your video. Make sure your most important keyword – the type of look you’re creating, or a product you’re reviewing – is near the beginning of your video’s title. Searching for the topic of your video and writing a title similar to the highest-ranking results is a good way to start.
Remember to include what type of video you made, i.e. ‘tutorial’, ‘review’, or ‘get ready with me’, in your title. People might include these kinds of words in their search queries and, even if they find your video another way, they’ll probably want to know what they’re clicking on before they click.
Customize your thumbnail. Again, search for your video’s topic and see what comes up. You want your thumbnail to look related to the top results, but you also want it to jump out at potential viewers. There may be something you can add to the thumbnail photos you took that will help you stand out, like a bright border, an emoji, or a closeup of a product you feature in the video.
Write a detailed description. Putting the products you use in your video description will help your viewers, and it’s a great place to include affiliate links if you ever join an affiliate program (like Amazon’s) to generate some revenue.

Are you already making beauty videos? If so, let us know if you have any of your own tips!

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

We’ll walk you through deciding on a theme for your channel, setting up your equipment, and give you tips for actually recording your videos.

1. **[Finding Your Niche in Beauty or Lifestyle](#niche)**

Types of Beauty Videos – Your Content Strategy
How to Get Products to Review
Simple Camera Setup for Beauty Vloggers
Lighting for Beauty
Top Ring Lights for YouTube
Build Your Own Diva Ring Light
How to Make a Makeup Tutorial – Before You Start
How to Make a Makeup Tutorial – Recording
How to Make a Makeup Tutorial – After Shooting

Best YouTube Video Editor- Wondershare Filmora

Finding Your Niche in Beauty or Lifestyle

Another way you could find a niche is by taking on a specific area of interest, like a skincare channel with a focus on coping with acne or a makeup channel with a focus on natural products.

Types of Beauty Videos – Your Content Strategy

It’s a lot easier to come up with weekly video ideas when you have an overarching strategy.

The same thing goes if you love doing big glamourous makeups for going out. Think about what you like, and that will determine what you should talk about in your videos.

Instead of buying new products to use in videos, try to use and showcase what you already have.

Here are some common types of beauty and lifestyle videos:

Get Ready With Me: a video where you put your makeup on which helps your audience get to know you better.

Monthly Favorites: showcases your favorite products from the last month.

Makeup Collection: viewers will want to see what you have.

DIY: create something, like a homemade moisturizer, and show your viewers how to make their own.

Makeup Hauls: show off what you’ve bought recently.

Lookbooks: put together a few looks based on a theme, like a specific color or event.

First Impressions: show yourself using a new product for the first time.

Makeup Tutorials: teach your viewers how to achieve a particular look, like a smokey eye.

What’s In My Bag: empty your handbag to show viewers what you carry around with you, particularly your most essential makeup.

My Routine: show viewers your morning skincare routine, or how you usually take your makeup off before bed. Any of your beauty-related routines will be interesting to your followers.

You should also be ready to jump on trends as they jump up. You can get a bump in viewership from people searching for a particular trend. Here are a couple of examples of past trends:

Boyfriend Does My Makeup
Kid’s Makeup Challenge
No Mirror Makeup Challenge

How to Get Products to Review

In order for a brand to consider sending you a free product to review or feature in a video, you will first have to have a large enough following.

Large brands will want to work with larger creators. Smaller brands that are still trying to build notoriety may be more open to working with creators whose followings are not as large.

Here are 4 tips for getting free products for review:

Follow your favorite brands on Instagram and subscribe to their YouTube channels. Make sure to take them when you feature their products in your posts or videos.
Focus on growing your community/audience. As you start getting more subscribers and building up momentum for your channel, brands might start reaching out to you. We’ve got some tips on growing your YouTube channel here .
Make a pitch to a brand. The first step in this is figuring out who to pitch to. You can send smaller brands DMs via Instagram or Twitter and politely ask for contact info for a PR person. Never ask for free product or sponsorship at this point, just information you can use to contact PR.
Send an email with your pitch to the brand’s PR person. Your email should introduce yourself, describe your content, and talk about what type of audience you have (how many subscribers, where are they located, how old are they, etc. This information is all available in your Creator Studio analytics).
Make sure to link to your channel so they can verify what you say (do not hide your subscriber count).
Emphasize what value you could provide the brand with (i.e. ‘I’ve had a lot of success with videos on managing acne and I’m sure my subscribers would love to see a review of your cream’) and outline what kind of video you’d like to make (i.e. a five-minute review focusing on the product, or a short feature in a longer makeup tutorial).

Simple Camera Setup for Beauty Vloggers

In an ideal situation, this is what you’ll build your setup out of:

Camera with a flip-out screen
Ring light
Camera-mounted shotgun mic
Tripod (unless you can mount your camera inside your ring light)

If you don’t have access to all of the equipment above, try some of these:

Smartphone camera
DIY ring light
Smartphone shotgun mic or LAV