In a previous episode of the Weekly Web Tools Podcast I commented on the Amazon S3 Player from Mike Stewart. Well I just found out that the S3 Media Player has a free demo version available. Try S3 Media Player Demo For FREE!
HTML code: Try S3 Media Player Demo For FREE!
While I have not used the demo (I purchased the software, I did notice that it changes the file name when uploading audio. I did make it incredibly easy, but if you are using it to podcast (and for me I like to use a particular naming convention for my files) I found this annoying.
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When you put a YouTube video on your website, at the end of the video YouTube does its job by finding a similar video tat you may like. The bad news is this may grab the attention of your visitor, and worse have them click and watch a video from your competitor.
You SHOULD use YouTube to promote your business. It’s HUGE. There are TONS of people there. Every video you put at YouTube should have your URL featured in it to drive traffic back to your site. So please don’t think I’m saying you should not use YouTube.
The solution to the start/stop video
You can host your video at Amazon S3 and host them for next nothing (pricing), but the problem is getting them loaded into Amazon S3. In the past we’ve mentioned the Firefox plugin the “S3 organizer.” However, it doesn’t make it super easy to get these files to show up on your website. Now there is with these two tools.
EZS3 is a subscription tool for $20 a month that allows you to build custom players for video, audio, flash, pdfs, etc and easily manage all your files at amazon. The really cool feature that I like is EZS3 shows you how many times a video has been played. So you get some stats and trends, etc. Very cool.For the record I have not used this product. There is a 14 day trial for a buck.
I Just Saved You 100 Bucks
If you are not a fan of subscription services, check the Mike Stewart “The Internet Audio Guy” and his Amazon S3 Media Player. This has many of the features of EZS3, it also can have redirects at the end of the video (great for marketing). The price of the S3 Media Player is $247 and is bundled with Mike’s royalty free music. I think this is a dumb business model. Not everyone using Amazon S3 needs royalty free music. However, if you sign up for his “Two Buck Themes“ website FIRST, you can access a link that allows you to buy the Amazon Media player for one hundred bucks off the regular price ($147). So you would spend $157 (10 for the membership site, and 147 on the Amazon S3 player). Then you could cancel your subscription.
