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Cancelled for selling, nope

Sep 23

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Not today anyway.

In the early days of the Internet it really did happen.

As I discovered.

It was a lot like the way crows behave.

In an experiment one crow was captured and caged by a person wearing a costume.

Fortunately they were wearing a mask as you’ll soon see.

The crow was released unharmed and it wasn’t tormented even a little.

But, from then on every time the experimenter went outside wearing that costume they were mobbed by crows.

For over a decade.

The crows didn’t just remember, they shared the news and passed it onto their young.

Luckily the costume included a mask because crows recognise faces.

That’s what flaming was like in the early days online if you dared to offer something for sale.

I had to put on a mask and a costume to be able to avoid the flaming, even from people who hadn’t seen my sales page.

Tossers.

These days, selling online is normal enough that it’s easier and safer.

Delivering products can be an issue.

There are many products that can help with delivery, some have security built in, some don’t.

Most of these cost you money and time.

The most robust platform I have found for product delivery is Amazon S3, but it’s a convoluted process to manage the permissions, and it defaults to private, so if you do want to deliver to others you have to change permissions.

I can do this pretty easily now, but I do still get tired of the messing around.

So, I built a tool to act as the interface to Amazon S3 that runs on my desktop.

You do still have to do some set up inside the Amazon ecosystem, but you only have to do that once.

Then you use your desktop tool to manage everything as if S3 was a folder on your computer.

I’m not selling this at the moment, and I’m never going to make a desktop app for you.

I think this is better.

You build the app yourself on your computer using Claude.

The prompts might work with other AI tools, I don’t know because I haven’t tested.

Building it yourself though allows you to customise it to suit your needs.

You’ll download the PDF here.

https://link.ckv.to/s3-file-manager

You can have this running in less than an hour.

By the way, that link was built with the desktop tool.

The link is a temporary one and expires.

Wed 23 Sep 2026, 11:30 PM (ACST).

Regards,
Brent.

September 21, 2026September 22, 2026

Amazon S3 is good and bad

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Amazon S3 is good and bad

Sep 22

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I use S3 all the time.

It works great and is super inexpensive.

But, it has a dark side.

It’s a right PITA to set up.

Mostly because of the permissions on the files.

They are good because that’s what stops people sharing your links for free.

They are bad because it’s not simple to turn them on or off easily.

I kept looking for a way to have a simpler interface to the buckets.

Everything I found had issues that I didn’t like.

So, I built one.

Then I built in deadline protection that works.

The link below is to the PDF instructions on how to build your own.

The link is a temporary one and expires.

Wed 23 Sep 2026, 11:30 PM (ACST)

zjmdlhezqewd3tz26d727eauyi0fwqvw.lambda-url.us-east-1.on.aws/

But you will see the expiry time in your timezone.

Yes, that is an ugly raw link because that’s how Amazon creates them, I haven’t had time to check if a shortened link works.

That PDF will also tell you how to create an expiring link that expires at some period after the user clicks the link.

That’s more useful for a lead magnet, but I’m sure you can think up different ways to use this tool.

It’s a direct download until the deadline expires.

Have fun.

Regards,
Brent.

September 20, 2026September 21, 2026

Keep pushing the button

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Keep pushing the button

Sep 21

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You’ve all seen them.

You might do it too.

Pushing the walk button many times.

It doesn’t make the lights change any faster.

It doesn’t even matter how fast or slowly you push the button.

They still do it, every time.

It’s as much a habit as it is compulsive behaviour.

You’ll also see them push that button after they’ve seen someone else push it.

That button won’t change your life, but this one might.

This one is the left button on your mouse that publishes what you just wrote.

This one you do have to push many times.

Just not repeatedly to publish.

Once for that is usually enough.

The many times is for consecutive days.

And it might take many times before you get a green light.

That’s when you cross from being a creator to a paid creator.

It’s not hard.

You just have to keep pressing that left button to publish.

Pick one platform.

Pick one micro-niche.

Find the right keywords.

Write, or get AI to draft it for you, and publish.

Picking the platform is easy, use the one you have.

Do not start a new one.

Picking a micro-niche is easy, you’ve already got one.

Use it.

Writing is easy when you get AI to help with the draft.

Finding the right keywords for your micro-niche is easy when you use this https://link.ckv.to/traffic-x-ray

How many do you think you might need?

All my websites get some traffic.

Most of them I haven’t been near in years.

They still get traffic.

Have you got any like that?

Perhaps 20 good articles with good keywords could turn that trickle into a flood.

Remember, Google ranks pages, not websites.

Yes, a domain with authority does help pages rank, but most pages rank on their own merits.

If you’re getting some traffic the GoogleBot is visiting, so new pages will get noticed fairly fast.

Keep pressing that button.

Regards,
Brent.

September 18, 2026September 19, 2026

Authenticity cannot be faked

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Authenticity cannot be faked

Sep 19

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It certainly is in politics, and some salespeople, but in general, no.

The adage – Be yourself, everyone else has already been taken – is true.

It’s also so much easier to be yourself.

You don’t even have to think about it.

I’ve been using a persona or nom de plume online for years, but using another name doesn’t change who you are.

I still wrote the same way, had the same interests, etc.

These emails are not written in that persona, this is me using my name.

The question on your lips is why?

The answer is simple.

When I first came online the netizens were still attempting to stop anyone making money online.

It was all about “information wants to be free”.

When all the time they were buying books, music, Internet access, computers etc.

So, you could make money from the Internet, but not on it.

I tried to change that attitude, but I got flamed so hard that I couldn’t log in anywhere without getting hit.

I shut down for a few months, then came back with a different name.

That stopped the flaming.

The new name became a habit for a long time.

I gradually began using both names.

The flames have stopped these days.

Now, of course, people are making massive incomes online.

Not always honestly.

Not always authentically.

That’s not my problem other than I am a bit cynical.

So tell me, were you online then?

A simple yes or no will suffice.

Regards,
Brent.

September 17, 2026September 18, 2026

Is the Internet Dead?

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Is the Internet Dead?

Sep 18

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I’ve seen a few emails and videos about this recently.

But people have been claiming that email is dead for years.

If email is dead it must be a zombie because it’s still wandering around.

I suspect that this Dead Internet is another of those unprovable claims.

Sure, there are about 50% bots following links.

And sometimes it does look like it’s on life-support.

It’s definitely harder to find humans amongst the traffic which is the best reason I know to build an email list.

An engaged email list is humans who have put their hands up, or at least volunteered their email address, to read what you write.

Bots can, and will, fill in forms to get your content.

I’m pretty sure that some of the AI bots are doing that, but they don’t buy anything… yet.

The stories about the AI Agents going rogue are interesting, but again, I’m not convinced that they’re anything more than nuisance toddlers.

When they get to be teenagers we might have a problem.

None of that means the internet is dead, or even on permanent life-support.

I expect it to recover to lead a normal, productive life.

Do you think the internet is dead?

Reply with a yes or no.

Regards,
Brent.

P.S. Looping back to the death of emails, all the social media companies email me regularly.

Hmmm…

All the AI platforms want my email address to login, and send me emails regularly.

Hmmm…

If you don’t have an email list that you contact regularly then you might consider this.

https://go.wm-tips.com/sr-list

September 14, 2026September 14, 2026

People misunderstand ‘money loves speed’

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People misunderstand ‘money loves speed’

Sep 15

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You want an instant result

That’s unrealistic.

Good things come slowly.

Things that come fast usually leave the same way.

The often stated phrase ‘money loves speed’ does not mean that you have to do everything fast.

What it means is that you have to get things done without delay.

The phrase is about not procrastinating, or being perfect.

Done and available beats perfecting for years, as I have done.

Once it’s done and available you have to promote it.

This is what takes time, or money.

Sometimes both.

Something else that I’ve not been great at.

That’s changing.

That’s why I keep building tools and automations to help.

Help with procrastination.

Help with creation, and targeting the right keywords.

Especially help with generating traffic.

That’s why I built this tool.

https://link.ckv.to/free-traffic-guide

How fast you create content means nothing if it’s not going to attract the right people.

Use the guide to choose the right platform for your target market.

Then follow the steps to create content for that platform.

It takes 10 minutes.

Then do it again tomorrow.

Regards,
Brent.

September 13, 2026September 13, 2026

Traffic

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Traffic

Brent Milne

Sep 14

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Most online businesses live or die on traffic.

Paid traffic works, if you can afford to lose money while your funnel gets tweaked into something that converts.

And it will need tweaking.

Every funnel does.

Before you spend anything, you need traffic that doesn’t cost you anything but a little time.

Free traffic guides usually open with “the algorithm rewards consistency” and that’s true, but misleading.

And they don’t give you the steps to take.

What works best is tapping into traffic from platforms that already have it.

The other thing is to work with one platform for a couple of weeks before determining if it works for you.

Pick the platform you like best, then follow the guide for that one.

This traffic guide is built as tasks, not theory.

Pinterest first, because it behaves like a search engine, not social media, and one pin can keep turning up in searches for months after you post it.

Then Facebook groups.

Then Quora and Reddit.

Then the basics of YouTube and blog SEO.

Ten minutes each.

No theory.

No “understanding your audience.”

I built a Claude tool to go with it too.

When the guide doesn’t cover your exact situation, you ask it and it hands you the next ten-minute step.

Free traffic is slow.

On purpose.

Anything that promises otherwise is usually selling you something bigger, and possibly less useful than this.

https://link.ckv.to/free-traffic-guide

Regards,
Brent.

September 11, 2026September 12, 2026

100 visitors from one PDF,

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100 visitors from one PDF,

Brent Milne

Sep 12

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or 1 visitor from each of 100 PDFs.

Which is better?

The traffic volume is the same, but the consistency is not.

If that single PDF doesn’t get any click action for a week, you have 0 visits for a week.

If one of your 100 PDFs doesn’t get any click action for a week, you still have 99 visits for that week.

That’s why you diversify.

You create and post 10 PDFs every day for 10 days and you have 100 PDFs to send you visitors.

Most people can do that using this tool.

https://link.ckv.to/pdf-farming-empire

And just like real-world farming, the results take time to appear.

You might jag it and get a trickle of visitors almost immediately, but that’s not guaranteed.

My experience tells me that every page online gets some traffic.

It also tells me that every page usually gets an increasing amount of traffic over months without any changes.

Just checking the traffic across my domains averages approximately 500 visits every day.

That includes sites that have had no activity from me for years.

Think about that.

If the PDFs you post average 5 views daily, and you have 100 PDFs, that’s 500 visits daily.

A reasonable PDF with a call-to-action link could send 10% of the readers to your website.

Could 50 visitors landing on your website make a difference?

You never have to edit the PDFs.

You can create more.

They don’t cost you anything except a little time.

https://link.ckv.to/pdf-farming-empire

Regards,
Brent.

September 10, 2026September 11, 2026

Why PDFs generate unstoppable traffic

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Why PDFs generate unstoppable traffic

Brent Milne

Sep 11

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The entire point of creating and sharing PDFs across the Internet is to generate clicks on the links in the PDF.

But, when you share the PDFs they live on the share sites until they are removed or the site closes.

Essentially, they become permanent sources of traffic.

Unstoppable to all intents.

But, the Internet is huge, who is going to read my PDFs or click on the links.

Fear not Padwan, all will be revealed.

The document sharing sites are visited regularly by strange Internet denizens called bots.

All the search engines have swarms of them.

They follow all the links they find.

They summarise all documents they find.

They scurry back to their home bases and share their gems.

Then they scurry off to find more.

Their home bases tell them to revisit sites because they know that fresh data is always waiting.

The Internet is a massive web of interlinked web sites.

What you’re doing with your PDFs is inserting your links into places that the bots are already visiting.

The more relevant links there are pointing to your web site, the more the bots think your content must be worth sharing with the visitors to their search results pages.

There are three main ways to get onto the first page of the SERPs.

Buy ads, which is paying for position.

Be one of very few pages available for that search.

Have more valid links to your page than anyone else.

Buying ads does not mean you’ll get clicks or sales.

If there are no pages for a search, it probably means that the search volume and intent are extremely low.

Building hundreds of links is extremely time consuming.

Well, it used to be.

But here’s the thing.

Using AI you can automate the bulk of the work.

That cuts down the tedious drudgery that it used to take from hours to minutes.

You can use any AI tool to create dozens of variations of content around a couple of the keywords you find with yesterday’s tool – Traffic X-Ray.

You take that content and drop it into today’s tool which creates good-looking, well formatted PDFs instantly.

That PDF has the links and pages you create.

Download it, upload to any document sharing site and you’re done.

Traffic will not start immediately.

That’s just not how the Internet works, but it will begin as you persist.

Where do you want to send the clicks?

https://link.ckv.to/pdf-farming-empire

Regards,
Brent.

September 9, 2026September 9, 2026

Say what you mean…

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Say what you mean…

Brent Milne

Sep 10

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mean what you say.

Something you’ll rarely get from a politician.

I saw this in my discharge document recently.

The first line read – Go home and rest.

I was being discharged from hospital.

Where did they think I was likely to go first?

A rock concert?

I thought the purpose of being discharged was to go home.

Masters of the bleeding obvious.

However, they did say what they meant and meant what they said.

That’s something that I attempt to do in these emails daily.

I figure that you are all smart people and will know if I attempt to BS you.

So I don’t.

That may mean that sometimes my email can get a bit dry.

But I’m not writing fiction.

I often write how-to-type emails.

Everything is as accurate as I can manage, but I’m sure that some inaccuracies may slip in.

Feel free to let me know when you catch one.

Something I have mentioned before and has been the subject of other people’s emails over the last year is PDF Farming.

The idea is that you create PDFs based on a niche that explore one aspect of that niche.

You share these PDFs as far and as wide as you can.

Everything online gets some traffic.

What you’re doing is building an expanding net that all points back to your main site.

This does work, but it’s slow and slightly tedious.

Unless you automate it.

I’ll share a way to do that tomorrow, but for today you need to know where to start.

You start with your niche, then you find the keywords that people are searching for.

Yes, if no one is searching then how are you going to attract them?

Google does not tell you the truth about keywords.

I have, unfortunately, proved this to myself many times.

Volume does not equal intent.

Trevor shows you how to discover keywords with buyer intent, and he shows how to find them quickly and easily.

The answers are here:- https://link.ckv.to/traffic-x-ray

Regards,
Brent.

Sugar Puff

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