Due to the recent posts about online advertising and the debate as to what is “Caribbean Traffic” this is how I define Caribbean Traffic:
1. Online users who live in the Caribbean region and surf to their Caribbean based sites and non-Caribbean based(site owners don’t live or work in the Caribbean) Caribbean content-focused sites.
2. Caribbean Diaspora users who are online, are based in UK,UK and Canada primrily and surf to Caribbean-based and non Caribbean-based Caribbean content-focused sites because they travel back home; send money back home; buy goods online and send back home; want to know what’s happening back home; want to continue to consumer their music, fashion, entertainment and news from back home. This group is reported to have a purchasing power of over US$50 billion and send home over US$1billion in remittances to Jamaica alone.
3. Global online user traffic that surfs to Caribbean based and non-Caribbean based Caribbean content-focused sites because they travel here, invest here, gamble here and consume the music, food, fashion, entertainment, culture of the Caribbean.
So the question is, how can you make money from Caribbean Traffic as defined above?
N.B. Pic in post is the screeshot of realvibez.com, site owners are jamaican, living and working in Miami,USA
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My feeling is that ad based businesses will not make a lot of money from Caribbean traffic (at least not yet). My reasoning is simple. Businesses need to be already making money from Caribbean traffic and competing with each other for customers before they will pay for ads.
So the question then becomes how do you make money by selling products and/or services to people who surf Caribbean flavoured websites. How do you make eCommerce work for your business? What do you sell? Who do you sell to? How do you make it all work?
I have a different definition, a more narrow one – traffic from the region. I will elaborate in my column.
Stuart is correct in that the ad-based business online is extremely limited and a website operator would starve if they were to depend on Caribbean businesses to advertise to Caribbean people in the region i.e. Caribbean traffic by my definition.
You make money from Caribbean traffic by selling directly to them – selling the same things that are sold in stores, the web is no different.
People buy books, DVDs, clothes, electronics and services. Obviously the problem of accepting electronic payment exists to some degree but that will eventually disappear and those who are already in operation stand to become the 800lb gorilla.
I like where this conversation is going.
“David you said that a site publisher/website operator would starve if they were to depend on caribbean businesses to advertise to Caribbean people in the region” Why is this..is it that they simply don’t understand how to, where to and why and no one as yet, as presented them ith the information that will make them pull their purse strings.
I am in the marketing side of technology and I also do cross media campaigns and I can tell you we are experiencing the shift from mainstream into email marketing, mobile marketing and online advertising. Companies are answering more questions that before.
So maybe site operators need to package and position themselves and begin pitching.
I am assuming that the main reason for a business to buy online ads is to drive traffic to their online store (where they can sell something to make money to pay for the ads and make a profit).
I don’t know how effective it would be to buy online ads to drive traffic to brick and mortar stores (I assuming it wouldn’t be effective. I mean if your brick and mortar store is in Kingston and the visitor seeing the online ad is in Trinidad or the US then you have probably wasted your money).
So if all of the above is true then it seems to me to be putting the cart before the horse to try to sell online ads before there is significant online buying.
Having said that I suppose if a site operator can attract traffic cheaply enough then it wouldn’t matter if they didn’t make much money initially and they can try for that “first-mover” advantage we used to hear so much about.
This conversation has reminded me of a article I came across recently in the San Jose Mercury News about Guy Kawasaki, the famous marketer/VC (author of “The Art of the Start” and founder of Garage.com). The idea seems to be to create online business that don’t cost a lot of money. The full article is at http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_7059903
Patience, Perception and Perseverance
It’s really about being patient enough in building perception, more than anything else and then making a pitch in layman’s terms to the potential advertiser.
A simple case study of a local(St.Kitts & Nevis) online company, that struggled in their first 3 years of operation with their events and island content site.
After years of beating the pavement though, they switched their content model up, and before long their site was in everybody’s mouth..from baby to granny, and they then moved swiftly to pitch to the major telecom companies when the competition race was in full stride.Nevermind they padded their web stats(I suspect, based on figures that were presented) to elevate their stature.
With the big boys on board, it gave their site instant credibility..which they further milked by ensuring that it remained fresh daily.
I believe Caribbean companies are open to online advertising, at least the more competitive ones are. If a very competitive environment exists, and the target market has access to the internet…then it should only be logical that online advertising is a serious option to consider.