Hundreds of thousands of marketers turn to Inetekk.com every year to accelerate the building of their organizations. Using our Veretekk automated marketing and lead service, subscribers receive from our proprietary technology, the finest entrepreneurial premium leads. Inetekk.com connects you directly with these active prospects in three steps: Prospects complete an online Request-for-Service form from one of over 200 Traffic Portals. The prospect's information is verified and then added to your Premium leads control panel. Matched prospects, including their full contact information and survey results, are immediately uploaded to your management control panel exclusively. Unlike any other lead generation program, Inetekk.com's unique system provides you with the most targeted, exclusive and timely prospect to help improve your marketing
Feeds for Marketing/Ecommerce Research [Ecommerce, web marketing and development news and research by Michael Bloch of Taming the Beast.net ]

1. Be wary of Twitter links
I used to be extremely hesitant to click links generated by URL shortening services, but with the advent of Twitter, I dropped the paranoia level a bit. Probably not a good idea. URL shortening services are certainly very handy, but the links they generate give you no indication of where they lead; so you’re always taking [...]

2. The price of success
What is the price of success? Be it online or any career? What is success anyway? I originally wrote this post after the tragic death of Australian born actor Heath Ledger last year, but the passing of Michael Jackson brought these questions to mind again recently and how they relate to the online world. The reaction [...]

3. Shopping cart abandonment survey
Paypal and ComScore recently conducted a survey among active shoppers in relation to shopping cart abandonment - and not much has changed over the years. Consumers are still abandoning carts at a frightening rate. Of the 553 people surveyed, nearly half (45 percent) abandoned their carts multiple times in the three weeks previous to the survey [...]

4. Turning around time burglars
Have you ever had an ongoing debate with a customer or peer via email that’s sucked up a lot of your time and wound up being more frustrating than fruitful? Here’s how to turn it into something more constructive and possibly profitable. The sites I’m involved with at the moment see around 20,000 visitors a day [...]

5. Affiliate fraud warning
Affiliate programs are a great way for merchants to mobilize a large sales force with minimum outlay, particularly if the program is handled in-house; however, there are hazards. Here’s an excerpt of an email I received today from a merchant. “…regret to inform you that effective immediately we are discontinuing our affiliate program in it’s present [...]

6. Automated spell checking for sites
Being your own proof reader is fraught with hazards. This tool may help. If you crank out content at a fairly brisk pace, chances are you don’t spend a lot of time on proof reading your own work. In my early days of working the web, I used to invest a great deal of time on [...]

7. PCI compliance update
Starting next year, credit card accepting online merchants doing business in Nevada will need to be PCI compliant. What many merchants may not realize that regardless of where they are, they probably already have a contractual obligation for PCI compliance, While usually a contractual obligation, Nevada is the first state writing the requirement into law. PCI [...]

8. Fully loaded - humor in advertising
The world of marketing can be a rather serious place. Times are tough and a good laugh is always appreciated. However, if you can turn that laughter into profits, even better. We’re all so jaded by ads that basically say stuff like “we’re the best”, “we can’t be beaten” etc. and it all gets a [...]

9. Google enhances Flash indexing
Google announced yesterday improvements that should see better indexing of Flash components. According to Google, they’ve added external resource loading to their Flash indexing capabilities. Google says that when a SWF file loads content from some other file such as text, HTML, XML, another SWF, etc.; they can now index this external content and associate [...]

10. Twitter’s looming demise?
In Australia we have a term “tall poppy syndrome” and it seems that Twitter has become one of its victims. In this country, we’re often cheering on the underdog, but once the battler hits the big time as we then have the tendency to cut them down. I’m a relatively late convert to Twitter after having sat [...]

11. Partner canvassing and attachments
I’ve often said that friends don’t send friends large attachments (without warning); but that extends to business owners seeking partners or publicity too. This morning when I checked my email over what was a pretty slow connection, something was gumming up the works. I was in a hurry to get on with my day. The culprit turned [...]

12. Internet Explorer 8 bugs
If you’re a web developer used to using Firefox and you’ve assumed that Internet Explorer 8 will be pretty much the same compatibility-wise as IE7 in terms of how pages display, think again. If you haven’t updated to IE8 yet, I strongly recommend you do so and take a look at your sites as many folks [...]

13. Ad overkill works
Why do well known brands continue to advertise? Not only because it works to attract new customers and reminds existing ones about the brand, but it’s also a signal of strength. Consumers may say they hate advertising, but data from Ad-ology Research and reported by eMarketer shows that many consumers base their perceptions of a company’s [...]

14. Microfinancing for US entrepreneurs
I’ve written a few times about Kiva - the micro-financing networking service usually associated with assisting entrepreneurs in developing countries. The organization has just announced it will be extending its coverage to entrepreneurs in the USA. I’ve been involved with Kiva for a while and have found it to be a great way to give other [...]

15. Bing equals ka-ching?
Microsoft’s new search engine, aka “decision engine” or “results engine” as they now like to call it, is turning out to be an interesting beast. Launched at the beginning of this month, Bing is more like Google than I thought it would be given the pre-rollout fanfare - even the SERPs rankings are quite similar for [...]

16. Email marketing survey results
According to a recent survey, there’s distinct differences in different parts of the world in relation to unsubscribing from marketing communications and newsletters, with some countries having far more tolerance to unappealing email than others. Epsilon’s Global Consumer Email Study was run in April 2009 and surveyed over 4000 consumers in 13 countries. Email is certainly [...]

17. Browser and monitor resolution statistics
It’s been a while since I last reported on the most popular browsers and monitor resolutions and their market share, so let’s see how things stack up these days. Top ten monitor resolutions (May 2009) 1024 x 768 - 33.44% 1280 x 800 - 20.46% 1280 x 1024 - 12.12% 1440 x 900 - 8.82% 1680 x 1050 - 5.76% 800 x [...]

18. Email and partnership approaches
Each morning I go through a pile of email that’s come in overnight - newsletters, spam, etc.; the same mix that everyone with an inbox gets. But I also get quite a few partnership approaches or businesses requesting coverage on my sites or projects I’m involved with. Some of them are so vague that I ignore [...]

19. Premium content model rush
Where Rupert leads, others often follow. Mr Murdoch’s plans to have Internet users pay for premium online newspaper content among his brands have set others considering the same. Newspapers have been hemorrhaging cash for a while and some have failed altogether in the last couple of years. Around two dozen newspaper executives are meeting in Chicago [...]

20. Microsoft’s machine that goes “bing”!
Apologies to Monty Python fans. Microsoft is revving up the spin machine for it’s new search engine, called Bing. Silly name for a search engine, but I said that about Google back in 2000. Actually, I also got the search engine bit wrong, Microsoft says Bing a decision engine. If you take a trip out to [...]

21. RIP direct mail marketing?
The writing is on the wall for direct mail marketing (hallelujah); but the future of email marketing is looking even rosier as a result. According to a Borrell Associates Inc. report entitled “Direct Mail Falls, Email Soars”, the Internet is about to claim yet another medium - direct mail; the junk snail mail that’s directly addressed [...]

22. To blog or not to blog
..that is the question: whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the taunts of blogging peers, or to join in and compete against a sea of other blogs.. If you’re still struggling with whether or not to start a blog, I’d like to share this pearl of wisdom that popped up during an IM [...]

23. Display ads & affiliate sales leaks
News of the demise of display ads have been greatly exaggerated if this report is anything to go by. However, how people interact with ads poses some serious challenges for marketers and even more problems for affiliates. While clickthrough ads on banners aren’t great and haven’t been for years - what about beyond the click? The findings [...]

24. Taking on employees
Adding employees is something I’ve resisted over the last close to 10 years, aside from a couple of admin support staff on a part time, independent contractor basis. Here’s why. Basically, it can tie you down in a big way and cause major problems that you never had before, taking you in directions you never wanted [...]

25. Online spending - a rosy outlook
Performics’ recent “2009 Online Buyer Economic Trend Study” survey report shows many consumers aren’t reining in their online spending during the recession - in fact, some will increase it. The survey of 300 consumers who have made an online purchase in the last 6 months found 60 percent of respondents say they will spend the same [...]

26. Your email address says a lot
Looking for partnerships? Having trouble getting responses? Maybe it’s your email address. Most of us look to setting up partnerships on the web, whether they be link exchanges or searching for affiliates to promote our products. First impressions count in business, and that extends to email as well. Even if the copy you use in your partnership [...]

27. Silly solicitations
There’s a ton of companies offering design, development and marketing services out there. The competition is so fierce, some will try anything to get your business or to generate a referral commissions. I received the following email in relation to another site I work with, which is a really simple site consisting of few pages. “Hey, I [...]

28. The 30 second interstitial ad
Eek! Imagine landing on your favorite site’s home page, clicking a link to an article and then having to endure a 30 second video ad before you got to the next page. According to MediaWeek, ShortTail Media will initiate a beta test of what it terms the Digital 30 (D30), a full-screen, deliberately intrusive ad [...]

29. Browser compatibility tools
Do you know what your site looks like in browsers such as Avant 11.7, Minefield 3.2 or Shiretoko 3.5? Should you even care? Most likely no; you could go nuts trying to make your site look exactly how you want it in every possible configuration - but what about in IE6? Around 16% of people still [...]

30. Adwords oddness
I was messing around in Google this evening and came across an odd behavior - whether it was a glitch or a new feature in Adwords, I’m not sure. I ran a search on the term “buy lawn mower” and the appropriate Adwords ads came up. Then I ran a search on “buy solar panels” and [...]