Puerto Rico Is For Online Business

Throughout the 10 years i've been online,i have experienced some unpleasant events and occurrences concerning my location.Whether is shopping online,trying to do some business online,club memberships etc.I was born and raised and still living here in sunny Puerto Rico .And I'm still amazed of how so many online business and people don't take Puerto Rico as a great opportunity to grow their business.There are a lot of people out there who doesn't even know where Puerto Rico is located.They think it's a mexican island near Cancun.I know the main reason why this is happening is due to our political situation,but that's another story and i'm not here to talk about politics.The only fact I need to address here about Puerto Rico's political situation so you people can have an idea is that Puerto Rico has been a United States territory since 1898.We have U.S. citizenship,we use the dollar as our currency and we use the U.S. Postal Service as our main postal carrier.Being said that,I still don't understand why some online stores,clubs,business in the US still don't wanna do some business with us online.Some of the things i have experienced online with this issue include,online shops not offering shipping to Puerto Rico(PR from now on),there are even some sites that don't include PR on their states list neither on their countries list!!.I was amazed when i first saw that.Another problem i have experienced is with PPC(pay per click) search engines and PTR(paid to read) sites.Some of this sites,specially they ppc search engines list PR as a non-approved country.Why is that??.I still don't understand.Let me give you an idea of the potential Puerto Rico has as a prosper online market with some data i have gathered.According to the Internet World Stats Website,as of 2006 PR had a population of 3,966,468.The percentage of that total population who has an internet connection is 25.2%.That's more than a million potential costumers waiting for the online shops and other sites to offer their products and services.And believe me folks when i tell you that those numbers are growing rapidly as the minutes go by.Some of the big names of the online business are already taking advantage of this market.Electronic Stores like Circuit City and Best Buy(which we still don't have any of those stores here on the island yet),and online stores like Amazon and Tigerdirect are offering shipping to PR.We even have our own classifieds local site called Clasificados Online which already has more than a million hits.Not to mention all the local newspapers like El Nuevo Dia,local chat rooms and local forums like Pulsorock.comwhere thousands of young internauts gather and discuss the everyday issues.Wanna more stats??Just go to social networks like MySpace and Facebook and type the name Puerto Rico and you'll see how many people from here are registered in those sites.So for all of you big and small marketers and businessmen around the US,I say you better take us into consideration when you plan to expand your market,business etc.You're missing a high profitable business opportunity if you let this small island with big commercial potential pass you by.