Web 2.0 and Web marketing is a match made in heaven. There are many ways to create traffic to your website using the power of Web 2.0. Below I am going to examine what I consider to be the top five.

Jack Humphrey, a well-known Web 2.0 expert, defines it this way in his Authority Black Book:

Generally speaking, if people can submit links to content, submit content, make comments and vote good/bad content up/down thus affecting the amount of traffic that content can generate, it’s Web 2.0.

Blogs, wikis, file sharing sites, content rating systems, book-marking sites, and social networking sites are all examples of Web 2.0. Some of the more well-known Web 2.0 sites are YouTube (file sharing), Facebook and MySpace (social networking), Wikipedia (wiki), del.icio.us (book-marking) and Digg (content rating system). The líst is almost endless, and the traffic that these websites generate is absolutely staggering.

So how can you harness some of this traffic?

1) Create original, quality and compelling content and submit them to Web 2.0 websites.

For example, if you write an original and compelling article, you can submit it to content sharing and content rating system websites such as Digg, Propeller, Newsvine, MarkTD or Reddit. Sometimes content sharing and content rating system websites specialize in a particular industry. MarkTD specializes in marketing, for example.

When you submit your article to these sites, people will give it a vote, and each vote moves the article up where it can be seen by more and more people. This has the potential of creating a lot of traffic for your website since each reader will need to click on the link to go to your site to read the full article. And you’re building a permanent link pointing to your website that can be followed for months and years to come. (And don’t forget, a link from a quality site to your website helps in your search engine rankings too.)

Or you can create an original video and submit it to YouTube. Here it will get rated and possibly seen by many people. If the video contains your website or a plug for your business, then all the better. YouTube is not the only video sharing website however. There are many, and one video can be submitted to them all. This same concept applies to your original images, photographs, digital art and audio files.

2) Web 2.0-ize other people’s sites that contain a link back to your website

I’ll assume you already know how your bookmarks (or Favorites) work in your browser. There are websites that exist that act in the same way, but the bookmarks you set are public. Del.icio.us was one of the first and a very popular example of this. People’s public bookmarks are browsed by others and lead to clicks to the sites you’ve bookmarked. So be sure to bookmark your business website and inner pages that are important. Also, these bookmarks can appear in search results in engines like Google and Yahoo. And some even think that search engines use book-marking sites in their algorithms, although this has not been conclusively proven. Simpy and BlinkList are two more examples of these kinds of Web 2.0 book-marking sites.

Let’s say you write an original, quality article and post it to your business website. Then let’s say you submit the article to a handful of content rating websites like some of the ones explained above. To further market this article, you can then use social book-marking sites to bookmark the page on the content rating websites that líst your new article and that contain a link back to your article. This can be very powerful.

Or let’s say you notice that an authority in your industry has a link on its website that points back to your website. Go ahead and bookmark the page on the authority site, thus marketing it, which in turn markets your site as well. One particular Web 2.0 website that is very popular and can generate tons of traffic is StumbleUpon. This site allows people to give any page you deem worthy a “thumbs-up”. And if you get enough “thumbs-up”, people browsing StumbleUpon will see it and click over to that page. So I always make it a point to “Stumble” my business websites’ homepages and sites that contain links to my business websites as well.

If you become an active member in a handful of Web 2.0 websites and utilize these first two suggestions alone, you will be amazëd at the kind of traffic you can generate.

3) Engage in the conversations and activities

When I suggest above to become an active member I mean that you need to visit a few of your favorite Web 2.0 sites on a regular basis and actually contribute to the site with your opinions, votes, comments and submissions. For instance, if you like Digg or Newsvine, visit them often and submit quality articles, content and sites to them. And they don’t all have to be your sites. In fact, the more impartial you are, the more people will trust you when you submit one of your articles. And you ought to vote for other people’s Digg submissions as well. You may enjoy Facebook, Linkedin or MySpace. First, create a profile on the site, then go out and make connections within the community. The more you do this, the more you can harness the power of the people you meet to help market your website or yourself.

Visit and comment on blogs in your industry. This is another tried and true way to engage in the online conversation. Blogs are Web 2.0 and have been around for a while now. Unfortunately, leaving blog comments has been abused by so many people that you absolutely must only leave blog comments that contribute to the overall blog post.

Only add your website’s link if you’re asked to. These links won’t help your search engine rankings but can drive traffic to your site.

4) Encourage visitors to bookmark and tag your content

If you have a blog, add a feature that shows up at the end of every post that allows users to bookmark or submit your post to other Web 2.0 websites. ‘Share This’ is just such a blog add-on (or plug-in) that can do this for you. If you have a WordPress blog you’ll be able to find a plug-in that allows you to integrate this type of feature (including Share This) into your blog very easily and without the need for any technical knowledge. If you write a memorable or compelling post, people can use this to make bookmarks to the post, Stumble it, Digg it and so forth. All of this can lead to more traffíc.

5) Add a Web 2.0 feature to your website

First of all, your business website needs a blog. If you don’t have one, then stop reading this and go to it. A blog provides you and your employees an easy way to post new information that is relevant to your business and helpful to your customers. And it allows your customers to easily communicate with you by leaving comments.

But beyond a blog, what other Web 2.0 features can you add to your website? If you’re selling products, consider adding in a feature that allows customers to rate each product. It can be something as simple as one to five stars or more elaborate where they leave reviews. Amazon does this and it one of the major driving forces in their sales. When potential customers see that your products are rated by existing customers, they’ll be more likely to trust you and buy.

You could add a wiki to your website. A wiki is software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content. By encouraging your website visitors to create content for you, you’re allowing your site to grow and become more informative, thus creating more chances to be found in search engines. These features can be found as third-party software packages and integrated into your existing website surprisingly easily.

The power of Web 2.0 is substantial. It’s time you begin to harness its potential and by following these five suggestions, you’ll be well on your way.

(By Jason OConnor – The Net Gazette )

UPDATED: It’s no cheap exercise to implement a surveillance system to record what goes on at home or at one’s place of business. And as for the hardware, it can still be a pricey endeavor. As with most anything else, much depends on engineering and utility. But there’s a name that seeks to extend such artificial eyes into what it calls Web 2.0 video storage, and do so very inexpensively. GoToMyCamera, based in Palo Alto, Calif., operates with the aid of Amazon’s S3 cloudware and enables remote access to video (’surveillance-as-a-service’) at a rate that many will financially regard to be very manageable.

Let’s get right into the numbers. According to GoToMyCamera, part of Eptascape Inc (no affiliation to Citrix, the maker of GoToMyPC), there exist three plans operating on a month-to-month contract. While sign-up costs $5 across the board, a Solo account, allowing for 1 camera, 1 user, and 100 MB of included storage space ($0.25 for extra 100 allotments), will cost just $5. Basic will run you $10 per month, enabling 4 cameras, 1 user, and 200 MB included. And despite what the website may describe, it is $0.50 for each additional 200MB of space.

Higher still is GoToMyCamera’s Business plan, costing $30/month for service with a 10-camera allowance, 10 users, 500 MB included cloud storage. For each additional 500MB, it is $1.50.

There’s a bit of a disparity in the extra storage allotments offered among the Solo, Basic, and Business plans. If storage should be proportional, 500MB would be $1.25 rather than the published $1.50. We’ve contacted the folks behind GoToMyCamera about this. We’ll let you know of their response.

Yet, even with these adjustments, the cost/service ratio is intriguing. Once you have one, two, four, ten network cameras (only Axis Network cameras supported at present), and connect them as required, material pushed to the Web is easily accessed. Vacation on the mind? Perhaps you’re just across town and want to maintain a connection. This is one way to do that – and keep lots of dollars in your pocket.

Update: Marco Graziano of GoToMyCamera wrote back to us about the matter over storage pricing. Here is his reply in full:

I have tried intentionally to keep only storage for additional fees over the monthly fee. It is true that there is an (intentional) small discrepancy between the $0.25/100MB for Solo subscribers and the $1.50/500MB for the Business subscribers. On the other hand, Business subscribers have up to 10 times the cameras of the Solo subscribers with increased bandwidth costs that is not a factor in the pricing. It is not easy to map what Amazon S3 charges us into a simple schema for end-users and this is an initial attempt. I would like to refrain from using number of ‘HTTP PUTS’ and bandwidth in the pricing schema for our subscribers. Somehow they need to be factored in. We will be able to refine the pricing once we have a better understanding of the common usage patterns in real situations.

(Via Mashable!.)