How I made a killer explainer video in less than 48 hours and $150 without any experience.

Here's the video.

You can probably guess that I simply leveraged ChatGPT, Fiverr, a stock footage site (Storyblocks), and some free video editing software (DaVinci Resolve).

It's mind-boggling what you can pull off as a scrappy boot-strapped founder nowadays thanks to all of the great services out there.

Some tips.

For ChatGPT: I started the prompt with: "Help me write a script for a 45-second product explainer video that will be used on a landing page." From there, the rest of the prompt was pretty sizeable. I made sure to include:

• The brand positioning/vibe I wanted
• The name of our company (obviously)
• Who (we think) are customers are. Not just demographics, but who they are emotionally and what drives them.
• The value proposition
• A one-sentence description of what our product/service is/does.
• A list of steps that goes into more details about how the product service works
• Any other color

I blown away that ChatGPT nailed it on first pass: it got the timing right, it made puns!, and it even inserted storyboard shot descriptions throughout (which I wasn't expecting!). Stuff like:

[The video opens with upbeat music and a shot of a person looking confused and anxious in front of a garden.]

For Upwork, I simply hired a voice-actor and a splash animator. One small tip for being on a budget: try sorting by newest profiles and look for promising people there. You'll get better turnaround and prices, because those people are hungry. And for good karma, return them a stellar review, of course (assuming they do a job).

As I side note, I am absolutely enamored with Wistia for video hosting. They have a super solid free plan and provide tons of customization and great analytics.

The video has had a huge impact on our landing page conversion metrics for our ad tests in Meta. Hope to have some other great updates and learnings on that front soon! (Minor ask, if anyone has feedback for our site, that's greatly appreciated).