Episode Summary: A behind-the-scenes look at the 2017 Mike Murphy Holiday Gift & Gear Guide for Content Creators — why it exists, how it's produced across video, text, and audio, and where it all gets distributed.
What You'll Learn
- Behind the scenes of the 2017 Mike Murphy Holiday Gift & Gear Guide for Content Creators
- Why Mike started the Gift Guide in 2016 by teaching himself After Effects the hard way
- The 3 pillars behind the guide: video, text, and audio, distributed everywhere
- The exact gear used to produce it: camera, mic, and editing software
Backstory
The Gift Guide traces back to November 2016, when Mike taught himself After Effects specifically to animate gear demos and how-tos — which turned into the original 2016 Holiday Gift & Gear Guide. Being new to After Effects meant videos were eating 4–6 hours a night, a pace that wasn't sustainable to repeat in 2017 while keeping the format going.
Tip: when learning a new tool like Photoshop, After Effects, or Premiere, jump straight into finished projects instead of just learning the program's overview — get your hands dirty and let real projects force the learning.
A genuine milestone: a video uploaded every single day since November 1, 2016 — a long streak by any measure.
What Is the Gift & Gear Guide?
A combination of video, text, and (via this podcast) audio — the three pillars of content creation. The 2017 guide includes roughly 25–30 products picked as good gifts for creatives and online business owners. Each product gets its own video plus a mini blog post covering the details, distributed across Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and (for some) Medium.com, with a dedicated page on the website collecting all the videos and links.
Why Create the Gift & Gear Guide?
- Business and brand building — honing a tech-review/tutorial style that could eventually attract vendor and brand partnerships, refined over time into something genuinely quality and helpful.
- Monetization — gear videos drive traffic to Amazon affiliate links, building a passive income stream over time as part of a sustainable creative business.
- Uniqueness — staying genuine and doing things the "one man band" way, distinct from the standard influencer gift-guide format.
How the Content Gets Made
- Camera: Logitech C920
- Microphone: Rode NTG3 Shotgun Mic
- Video editors: ScreenFlow (recording), Camtasia and Premiere (editing), Adobe After Effects (polish)
- Free 30-day trial of Adobe Creative Cloud
Where It Gets Distributed
YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Medium, and a dedicated page on the website.
2017 Mike Murphy Holiday Gift & Gear Guide
Gifts get uploaded to the guide as each video releases.
Read the complete show notes and resources on mikemurphy.ai.
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