Sandor Panton, creator and chief executive officer of Top5jamaica.com, said the lack of web sites that focused on providing links to Jamaican interests on the Internet acted as a catalyst in the creation of Top5Jamaica.com.

"When I created it there weren't many sites on the Web that offered links to Jamaican web sites so I decided to do Top5Jamaica with the intention of showcasing the best of Jamaica online in various categories," said Panton who began running the web site from his home in Kingston, Jamaica before migrating to Canada in 2001. The CEO now specialises in Internet marketing and continues to run Top5jamaica.com from his new home in Ontario, Canada.

With over 2,000 web sites listed in almost fifty different categories, Top5Jamaica.com aims to meet the needs of anyone, anywhere in the world in search of links to Jamaican and Jamaican related web sites. Described as a free guide to the Internet's top Jamaican web sites, Top5Jamaica.com runs the gamut from those seldom visited web sites to the ones with high levels of traffic and features the best of the lot. Its nearly fifty categories include reggae, dancehall, hotels, destinations, technology, culture, personalities and politics.

CATEGORIES

"From potential visitors to the island who are looking for accommodation-related links to students who might be doing research or looking for certain Jamaican web sites, you name it an you are likely to find it listed within one of the categories on Top5Jamaica," said Panton.

Since its emergence in 1998, Top5 Jamaica.com's popularity has escalated with "an average of 8,000 unique individuals visiting the site on a daily basis," he said. "The site is also very popular among local webmasters who acknowledge it as a good source of traffic for the sites that are listed there," observed the CEO. Although Panton attributes the popularity of Top5Jamaica mainly to word of mouth he revealed that he has applied numerous low and zero cost marketing techniques to increase the site's visibility. Some of these include contests and give-aways of items like dancehall and reggae CDs; an annual "Surfer's Choice" of the year award which sees Jamaican web site owners urging visitors to their sites to vote for them as the best web site of the year on Top5Jamaica.com; including Top5 Jamaica.com in various popular search engines such as Google; and exchanging links with other Caribbean related web sites. He plans to expand his marketing campaign to offline promotion this coming holiday season through sponsoring events and distributing Top5Jamaica paraphernalia to the public.

OPERATIONAL EXPENSES

With Panton as the company's only employee, receiving occasional help from his wife, Aiesha, Top5Jamaica has few operational expenses.

"My main expense is web hosting," said Panton who explained that hosting costs for web portals could cost approximately US$360 per year for an average sized site.

"Initially, I operated at a loss for a couple of years because I had very few advertisers," he said. Today, the web site's major source of income comes from advertising and "costs for hosting are easily covered, said Panton.

"What's most rewarding for me right now is that the site is achieving exactly what I intended," he said alluding to the web site's success. "People no longer have to search high and low for local sites, a visit to Top5Jamaica gives them all the links to Jamaican web sites."

In the near future Panton hopes to trade his Internet marketing job for work on Top5jamaica.com full time. "I hope to be working on it and other spin-offs of the Top5 concept on a full time basis," he said. This is already becoming a reality since Panton managed to launch Top5Trinidad.com at the end of 2002 and confessed that plans to launch a Top5Caribbean.com are in the making.

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