I’ve recently moved all of my videos, downloadable media files, podcasts, images, e-books, and more to the Amazon S3 platform. 

Why?  

That’s the same question my assistant asked me. She seemed puzzled as to why I’d pull all of those files from my dedicated web hosting server, which has plenty of hard drive space and costs me a fixed fee each month regardless of usage, and move them all to a hosted service that is going to charge me for usage (albeit inexpensively).

Well, there are two answers to that very good question.

The first reason is that serving up large media files really takes a toll on a web server and its connection to the internet. It slows things down, especially when a lot of people are accessing large media files at the same time, which has become the case due to the sheer volume of traffic to my sites combined with the fact that thousands of people are now accessing a large amount of free audio and video content that I give away.

Serving up large media files slows down a web server, and I want to make sure my pages load lightning-fast for the best possible user experience.

The bigger reason, though, has to do with Google, and is more of a selfish reason for me. Not too long ago, Google announced that landing page load time is now a major factor in determining AdWords quality score for a landing page. That means a home page that loads slowly will negatively affect my AdWords quality score, and consequently drive up my keyword bid prices.

That is a bad, bad thing, especially with the sheer volume I do on AdWords.

By moving my media and image files to Amazon S3, I pay a small amount per month for hosting and transfer, which speeds up my own server and saves me potentially THOUSANDS of dollars per month in inflated cost-per-click charges that would result from letting a slow server destroy my quality score.

So, even if you’re not using AdWords, you need to host large files on S3 to give your users a quality, lightning-fast experience.

And if you are using AdWords, you REALLY need to use S3 because those big files will slow your server, lower your quality score, and cost you big bucks in needlessly high cost-per-click charges!