Latest Posts

A mixed bag of cool

Let’s try something different. Posting the newsletter. This was the TalkBiz News issue for November 16, 2015. Lots of cool tools, new courses, and useful tips in this one. New income streams, security notes, video schtuff, lead generation, and more. And it’s not 10 pages long, like the last one. 😉 After that issue, the […]

Big Brother’s little helper – Hacking Team

This is the (so far) 3-part TalkBiz News series on the recent explosive Hacking Team revelations. Part 1 – “Who Hacks the Hackers?” – July 6 In what may be the scariest story on digital security since the hacking of systems to spy on the international community’s discussions with Iran over it’s nuclear program, a […]

“Honey, have you seen my computer?”

Like most geeks, when I look at changes in electronic gadgets, I can be momentarily fascinated by the tech behind them. Once the “Oooo, shiny!” factor wears off, though, I spend time thinking about what they mean for real people. You know… folks who use them to actually Do Stuff. “How will this change what […]

Digital Insecurities

No, this is not about who hangs with the coolest kids on Facebook or has the biggest social media klout. (Seriously? Does anyone believe Klout scores mean anything?) It’s not even about those late-night drunk texts, although you really should stop that. Think of it as a minor rant in a major key, and it’s […]

7 Easy, High-impact ways to leverage your content

Adding THUD to an offer is one way to get more results from your work. Another, and often easier, way is to leverage your content. The main ways to do that are to increase distribution and to repurpose what you’ve written, recorded, or licensed. There’s some overlap, but we’re going to focus this time around […]

Why change to HTML mail?

Why the shift to HTML mail after 17 years of plain text? Sometimes you just get dragged into the present, despite your best intentions… I did one of my occasional romps through the unsubscribe folder recently and found two reasons that accounted for around 90% of the unsubscribes.

Welcome to the TalkBiz News blog.

Sit back, relax, and browse a bit. The blog is still new, so there may not be all that much to read for a while, but I promise... It will get interesting. On top of the constant changes in this market, I have thousands of pages of back issues, articles, reports, and unpublished material to sort through. I'll be updating and adding the still-applicable stuff as time allows.

I hope you enjoy the ride.

TalkBiz News is one of the oldest continually published newsletters on the subject of doing business online.

We don't do things the usual way, as you'll see from the sign-up page. Instead of the common 6 lines and a flashy graphic, it's an actual explanation of what you get when you join. Including the 117-page book, "Need to Know," and an editable mindmap of the PLANTS System to help you plan your online strategy.

Check it out and see for yourself why we've still got subscribers who joined us 17 years ago.

Get the full details, and join the fun here.

This is a collection of 6 powerful tools you can use for planning out an online business. We don't just hand you flat graphics, which can be intimidating when they get into detail. You get the actual mindmap files, in Freemind and XMind formats, so you can edit them to fit your own goals and experience.

Take it all in at your own pace, and as you need it.

You'll also get my intro course on mindmapping. This is one of the most profitable skills you can learn to organize your thoughts and systems, and create better products in far less time.

The quick-start guides will have you creating a complete, original, and useful mindmap of your own within 30 minutes or less. Even if you've never used a mindmapping program before.

Check it out here.

After publishing a plain text email newsletter for so long, why start a blog now?

Easy answer: Blog posts don't land in the spam folder.

There are a lot of other reasons. Some things that are fit for a blog post wouldn't make proper issues of a newsletter. Blogs allow more interaction between readers. It's easier to share the link to a post on Twitter or Facebook than to forward whole issues of a newsletter. They're easier to read on mobile devices.

If I get inspired and start posting every day for a while, people won't freak out like they would if I started sending issues of the newsletter that often.

There's also the fact that you can leave a lot more resources in one place this way than you can via email.

It seemed time to do it again.