Author Archives: Tom McKay

The Finnish town of Nokia, made famous by the cellphone company, is going mobile. All mobile, all the time. Sound like a giant marketing stunt? Nope. Actually, the cell phone maker moved out years ago and had no role in the town’s decision. It’s cheaper. Nokia’s municipal workers will get cellular handsets. The only landline […]

We saluted writer Anne Lamott on (OK, shortly after) her birthday recently. Today the author of Bird by Bird was a guest on Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me, the very funny NPR news quiz. Hear it here. Another tip of the writer’s hat to William Zinsser, author of the classic, On Writing Well. Next month […]

Darren Rowse is a blogger’s blogger. He’s actually making a comfortable living via his blogs (yes, he’s got a bunch of them). His primary income comes from the ads on his sites, via AdSense and Chitika mini malls. Sounds like a perfect way to make a fortune, right? Fat checks rolling in every month, and […]

Does your business take PayPal? Don’t, um, “forget” to pay your taxes. The IRS has just won court approval to turn over information about people who may try to fiddle the taxman by hiding income in other countries. I.R.S. Asks PayPal for Taxpayer Data A federal court gave the I.R.S. permission to ask PayPal for […]

As if you needed another reason to optimize the content of your Web site for search engines… A new survey uncovered this shocking news: Most people get no farther than the first three pages of search results before clicking a link — or giving up and switching to a different search engine. Actually, almost two-thirds […]

Yaro Starak of Entrepreneur’s Journey calls it “probably the most important component, the glue that keeps my business together.” It’s his email autoresponder and list builder. An autoresponder, as the name suggests, automates the process of responding to emails (or signups) from clients and prospects. Instead of writing individual responses to each query, an autoresponder […]

Merlin Mann at 43 Folders reminds us that yesterday was Anne Lamott’s birthday. (Unlike Merlin, I’m far too much of a gentleman to reveal her age.) If you’re a writer — or you just struggle to be — you really owe it to yourself to read Anne’s work, especially her book on writing, Bird by […]