I had a client ask me to help him post 11 hours of video online. After trying to talk him out of it, I listened to his reasoning.

He wanted to post an online course and charge students.

This would have been unheard of even 2 years ago. Now, with Amazon S3 ready to take whatever you give it (and deliver it back) this approach is now cost efficient.

If you store 11 hours on S3 it will cost you less than $1 per month. To stream, it will cost you less than $1 per student (unless they watch multiple times).

The long tail of the digital world is reaching way on down to distribution. Now it makes economic sense to deliver all those long videos of even longer seminars, sales meetings, and school board hearings over the net for a nominal cost.

Many, many, many business opportunities here.

Perry via Treo