Hello! I'm the editor for one of the websites mentioned here
www.bonche.com. We checked our stats today and noticed some refereed traffic from this thread.
Bonche.com came to be as part of a bigger cluster of websites. This particular site targets the Dominican nightlife and currently works with 38 of the best establishments in the country and over 68 party organizers and promoters. We receive an average over 3,000 uniques a day, 56% domestic, 42% foreign, 2% military or unknown. Most of our foreign traffic is thru search engines, since we have optimized our code structure for search engines.
I'd like to point out that the biggest failure I can observe in the local market is the lack of know-how a lot of marketers I've met tend to have towards the web. Even lacking knowledge in telling the difference between hits and unique hits, Opt-in Vs. Spam or Banner Click-thrus and conversion ratios. So, on their campaigns they buy ad space on sites without verifying traffic or sites which do not relate to their product, simply because the salesman told them the internet is viewed by millions and gave them a "good deal".
Regarding credit cards, we think that the best, and probably the only, way you'll get a local online store to sell to Dominican consumers would be on the B2B level. Businesses ordering parts and materials from other businesses. We ran a survey last year regarding on-line shopping, since it was our first idea, and the most common answer selected was "I'd rather drive to the store", when it came to shopping for things they'd normally wouldn't think twice of buying on amazon.com.
My background, I come from the online casino industry and have managed over 116 websites related to this area of the internet, helping iGlobalMedia, the company I worked for, rank in the top 3 online casino companies during my 3 years as director there. I aided and oversaw the creation of some of the highest grossing casino sites.
Thanks for mentioning our site.
www.bonche.com