Jamaican Internet mogul making strides from his home.

Message from Sean Conway, The Millionaire's Plan:

On the next page is an article which recently came across my desk and which I thought you may be interested to read. It’s a case study of someone who has started an internet business from scratch and built it in to a viable income stream. What I like about it, is that it is realistic and gives quite a lot of detail. I had a look at the article and then I had a look at his web site and I learnt some things.

The main point of the article is that there are so many ways to generate cash through a website drawing from a remote and global customer base providing you have a well thought through strategy. The strategy has to include what part of the internet marketing industry you will focus on, what niche you will focus on and how will you sustain yourself (in terms of cash flow) whilst you are building your new business.

I recommend you check out his web-site: http://www.top5jamaica.com. It’s a fun looking web site and it obviously works! He says he gets 250,000 visitors per month – that’s amazing!!! I cross-referenced it with another website called Alexa which ranks him at 175,576 in the world. So I think the facts he has stated in the article are fairly accurate.

What I like about this article is it demonstrates how someone has transitioned from their life as a corporation employee to a business owner with a revenue stream.


Jamaican Internet mogul making strides from his home

By Julian Richardson
Sunday, October 01, 2006
www.JamaicaObserver.com

Sandor Panton defies the corporate stereotypes. This entrepreneur does not wear crisp designer suits, expensive ties or carry a briefcase to work.
In fact, his luxurious office setting, comprising a leather recliner chair, laptop computer, bookcases, artwork and windows providing a view to the city, is the closest he comes to displaying any material traits befitting of a successful CEO. However, unlike most corporate heads, Panton also calls his office 'home'.

Indeed this young entrepreneur is living most persons' dreams - he makes a lot of money right from the comfort of his home, an upscale apartment in upper St Andrew. Panton is principal of some of the fastest-growing online communities in Jamaica, which includes the popular www.top5jamaica.com, a marketing site which he started in 1998 as part of a project for his Masters' programme (MSc) at the University of the West
Indies (UWI).

After Panton received a MSc in Computer-Based Management Information Systems at UWI in 1999, he migrated to Canada in 2001. In Canada, he found employment almost immediately as a search engine optimisation specialist with a small Internet marketing company in Ontario. Panton disclosed to Sunday Finance that it was during this time that he decided to turn his websites into a source of income. The plan was to make them profitable by selling advertisements and utilising them as a marketing medium for other websites.

"It was there (in Canada) that I realised that there are so many ways to use a website to make money. just the same way you can use your newspaper to sell advertisements, if you have a website that generates enough traffic, you can sell the ad spots," says Panton. "So just realising that this whole world of making money on the Internet exists, I just said to myself when I move back home, this is what I am going to do."

That was exactly what he did. His top5jamaica.com moved from a mere hobby to a business while Panton was in Canada. With minimal start-up cost, comprising domain registration fee and spending a "couple of hundred US dollars" for hosting rights, Panton developed a sizeable visitor base (traffic) between 1998 and 2002. The growing popularity of his website had lured some amount of interest and in no time Panton had a viable enterprise selling ads on his website.

He remained employed to the said Internet marketing company while abroad before moving back to Jamaica in 2005. However, this savvy entrepreneur did not completely end ties with his most secured source of income. Displaying a knack in wealth generation, today Panton, while running his business in Jamaica, is remotely employed to the same company that he was working for in Canada.

"I still work for the Internet marketing company in Canada," notes Panton. "From a few months before I was planning to leave Canada for good, I told them about my plans to return home, and offered the option for them to retain me as a remote consultant. They chose to and we are almost a year into this new relationship."
Adds Panton: "During the first half of the day, I do their work. then for the rest of the day I do my company's work."

But it is the type of business Panton runs that gives him such incredible leeway to stretch his money. Besides top5jamaica.com, other websites in Panton's network of sites branded the Top5Network include jamaicabusinesscalendar.com, and www.jamaicanjokes.com.

According to Panton, his premier site, top5jamaica.com, attracts some 250,000 unique visitors per month, and is a major attraction to advertisers. He stated that 70 per cent of his sites' visitors are from the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. This highlights the endless growth potential of such an operation, especially in an era where brandjamaica gets even more potent.
Panton stated that his site's popularity is despite the fact that he spent "little to nothing" on marketing cost - typically a major expense in order to generate traffic.

"You can get started up for little or nothing but if nobody knows about your website, typically you will have to pay to get the word out," notes Panton. "I've not done that though. I chose to take the other route. I did things as simple as sending an email with a signature of my website - forwarding then spreads the word. or by simply making someone put my link on their website.
"There are ways to market without money, just note that it won't be overnight. if you can afford to wait and 'kick back' it will be okay. That's what I did with Top5Jamaica."

Tight-lipped on the amount of revenue he generates, he nevertheless gave a hint of the "potential" of his operation.
"I won't use me as an example, but there are other people all over the world who are doing the same thing that I do that are making plenty of thousands of dollars per month," says Panton. "Not that Top5 is making that sort of money, but it does good and has a lot of potential."

Panton states that the industry is just beginning to grow in Jamaica, highlighted by the foray of Jamaican community websites that have made their way onto the Internet in recent times. He commends the initiative now being taken, acknowledging that this could be the 'long-lost' means of financial viability for many Jamaicans who are adverse to the 'structured' corporate ladder.

"Everybody is getting into some aspects of it now and a lot of people are now trying to meet that need; there is a lot of variety now and it can only get better," says Panton. "For me, this is the life! I don't want to wake up and have to work from 'this time to this time'. but sometimes at 3:00 am when the typical person is asleep, I am working. The structure is for you to make."