Camtasia is hands down the best screencasting software (techsmith.com/camtasia). When I knew I wanted to make the jump from EurekaDiary to BuildAndEarn, buying ScreenCasting software was on my list of things to do. I did the research and found that nothing compared to Camtasia, a product made by TechSmith. Nothing compared to the price at $299 either.

After using my 30day trial I had a few back and forths with a couple contacts at TechSmith and they decided Sponsor Build and Earn by giving me a free copy of Camtasia.

The terms of the sponsorship are rather interesting:

• They give me a Full Camtasia 6 license for free

That’s it. And its smart of them, too. They don’t EXPECT anything back but they know that through a no-strings sponsorship I’m even MORE likely to be in love with their product/company and trumpet my praises off the highest of mountains. And that’s kind of what I’m doing right now… writing this post purely because I believe, if you need screencasting software, you need to get Camtasia. I’m also going to put Camtasia in my “Recommended” section.

The first screencast I ever did with Camtasia was my WFReview Tutorial and while a couple things need to be improved, namely a better microphone and maximizing video quality after conversion/upload, I think I’m off to a pretty good start.

Screencasting is most often used with tutorial type stuff and therefore fits in great with affiliate marketing and B&E, but if you’re creative, you should be able to utilize Screencasts on unrelated sites as well. Afterall, people do things on their computer besides build websites, don’t they?

Some totally random ideas:

• Compare websites in a niche. Do you have a cooking website? Compare different recipe sites and explain what you do or don’t like about them.
• Do members “sign up” for your site? Why not send them a welcome e-mail that includes a screencast that highlights various areas of the site and how to get the most out of it?
• How often do non-techish friends ask you WTF you are talking about over AIM/Facebook/etc… instead of a long explanation just tell them to shutup while you Screencast it real quick.
• Highlight cool websites from around the interwebz.

That’s a small list that I just thought of in about 30 seconds but the real issue is you’ll have that AHA moment (i miss you eureka diary) when you’re like, “Yeah, I should totally Screencast that,” and you’ll be good to go.

I have a few pretty extensive websites that can just be overwhelming if you land on them for the first time. I think sometimes we take for granted that we know our own website in and out since we put the entire thing together piece by piece and thought about all the setup/display/options to death. But what about a computer newbie who just plops on your page from the search engines? With a screencast you can hold their hand and walk them through your entire site, showing them what is important and how to use all the features, etc…

Bottom line is Camtasia rocks and TechSmith is a great company. If you have an idea for a screencast head over to the website and Download the Free Trial. You’ll be happy you did.