The question I get is: “How do I use ‘the cloud’ for my business?”
More specifically: “How do I use Amazon’s EC2 and S3 for my business?”
About 18 months ago we switched the hosting for my blog to use Amazon EC2 Cloud Computing and Amazon S3 Cloud storage.

It wasn’t simple.

(since…we’ve moved everything over to Amazon’s web services)

Why I moved to “the cloud”

My goals with moving my blog to “the cloud” were to:

• understand how to use the cloud effectively
• document how to use amazons cloud
• see how much it would cost (about $80/month to host my blog, which gets between 1000-2000 visits per day, and runs LOTS of bandwidth with all the videos)
• and make everything accessible to people who maybe don’t have a tech staff

My experience setting it up

I had one of my GUYS set up everything and document every step of the way.
He did an amazing job of it.
We’ve been running my wordpress blog on amazon’s EC2 cloud for about 18 months and have learned A LOT!
We’ve been through crashes, downtime, expensive time, and now cheap time.
We’ve figured out things to do and things not to do.

Documentation for how to use Amazon’s cloud computing

You’ll notice 2 things about the doc:

1. The dates on the title page are older. We’ve updated the document, we just haven’t updated the title page.
2. It’s written by a Filipino. He’s a programmer, not an english major! (you’ll laugh at some of the language

Who this is for (and who it’s NOT for)

This document is for you if:

• you’re technically inclined
• you want to use “the cloud” but don’t want to spend all the time figuring stuff out
• you’re interested in using reliable dedicated servers at a reasonable price

This document isn’t for you if:

• you struggle with FTP
• the word “server” scares you
• you’re not making money with your current website

Why I’m doing this

I want feedback!
I know the document is rough.
I want a few people to follow it and implement what it goes through in their business. Take notes and let me know what’s missing, what you don’t understand, and how you figured it out.
I’m interested in making this document a more thorough guide so more people can take advantage of this resource for their business.
If using this interests you, read through it. See if it’s way over your head. See if it makes sense. See if anything jumps out at you immediately as being lacking.
I hope to make this a guide which more people can use.

It’s free!

So, this video is a bit longer than I said yesterday was acceptable, but I think you’ll find it interesting. If not, you can always watch it at 2x normal speed!

I met Matt at Wordcamp Utah back in September.

Here’s where you can find Jeff’s outsourcing workshop and his monthly outsourcing coaching as well as his free ebook on outsourcing.

The websites I show in this are:

• OnlineVideoToolkit.com
• Woopra.com
• VideoSalesLetter.com
• Semiologic.com

My point of this is to help you realize that you can make wordpress do anything. I think it’s worth spending a few hours of your time looking at the wordpress plugins, wordpress themes, and looking at the options inside your wordpress website and configuring it to do the things you want it to do. I think that time will pay off over and over again over the years as you use WordPress to build different websites. It’s amazing how much easier your business becomes when you know you can make your website do whatever you want without having a webmaster or a programmer to do it.

It makes your home (or work, or media) computer always accessable. It’s convenient. It makes getting a new adwords account possible. It makes it easy to give an employee (maybe one in the Philippines) access to your softwares so they can do your work for you.

Here are 4 tools I use in my business to connect to other computers and share screens.

The 4 tools are:

• Remote Desktop – Comes with Windows
• LogMeIn.com (a free alternative to GoToMyPC.com)
• Adobe Connect Now – shares screen, mic, web cam without installing software.
• CrossLoop – Great for doing tech support (or getting tech support)

Please post other tools you use and/or questions in the comments.

I didn’t talk about VNC just because it’s a bit more complicated. It’s still a great tool.

But sometimes it’s necessary. So here you go.

Audacity is a great free audio editing tool. You can use it to edit or record mp3′s or just about any other audio file you have.

The reason I show how to use a tool like this is because I think it’s important to know the basics of editing so that you’re not always dependent on other people. Obviously my video isn’t a full tutorial on how to use Audacity, but you can find one here.

You can find audacity here.

It makes any computer job, whether it’s an online business or not, easier.

Jing allows you to easily and quickly capture images or video on your computer screen and then to share it. The 3 best parts of it are:

• There’s not software to start up when you want to use it. It’s already started.
• It makes it a total no brainer to upload it to the internet. You don’t have to do anything.
• It makes it even an easier no brainer to share the capture. All you have to do is paste (you don’t even have to copy!)

Thanks Techsmith! for this amazingly useful piece of software.
Download Jing Here