Years ago one of my sites was hacked.

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What a hacker accidentally showed me.

Brent Milne

Feb 16

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person in black long sleeve shirt using macbook pro

Years ago one of my sites was hacked.

Hundreds of thin pages appeared overnight.
Most had almost no content — just a link.

What surprised me wasn’t the hack.

It was the traffic.

Those pages were getting views.

Which meant one thing.

Someone, somewhere, was linking to them.

No one lands on index3.html by accident.

They arrive because a link sends them there.

That’s when something clicked for me.

Content matters once people arrive.

But links are what make a site discoverable.

Search indexing is a link.
Internal structure is linking.
External references are links.

Visibility begins with connection.

And that’s why structure matters more than noise.

Regards,
Brent.

February 15, 2026February 15, 2026

Building a one-person business.

For a long time, building online meant building a team.

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Building a one-person business.

Brent Milne

Feb 15

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For a long time, building online meant building a team.

Outsource the writing.
Outsource the tech.
Outsource the admin.

That works — but it adds coordination, management, and complexity.

I’ve always preferred simpler systems.

Now, with AI tools, something interesting has shifted.

A single person can operate with leverage that previously required staff.

Not by cutting corners.

But by removing friction.

Drafting, outlining, research, restructuring … all of it becomes faster and more consistent.

That makes small, focused projects more viable.

And when small projects become viable, multiples become possible.

And when multiples become possible, traffic can compound.

Not through hustle.

Through structure.

Regards,
Brent.

February 13, 2026February 13, 2026

Nothing is wasted.

I used to think I’d wasted a lot of time on abandoned websites.

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Nothing is wasted.

Brent Milne

Feb 13

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I used to think I’d wasted a lot of time on abandoned websites.

Test projects.
Domains I bought on impulse.
Half-finished ideas.

For a while I considered selling them off and clearing the slate.

Then I changed how I think about assets.

A website isn’t dead just because I stopped paying attention to it.

It’s dormant.

And dormant assets can be reactivated when you apply a system.

What looked like scattered effort now looks like inventory.

Not for chasing traffic.
Not for flipping.
Not for starting over.

But for applying focus.

When you stop bouncing between ideas, even old ones become useful.

I’ve only ever let two domains expire.

The rest will become assets.

Not because they’re exciting.

Because they’re there.

And this time, they’ll be used properly.

Regards,
Brent

February 12, 2026February 12, 2026

Possibility does not mean guaranteed.

Yesterday I talked about the small proof that convinced me of the possibility of making a living online.

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Possibility does not mean guaranteed.

Brent Milne

Feb 12

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a chalkboard with the word possible written on it

Yesterday I talked about the small proof that convinced me of the possibility of making a living online.

I also mentioned that I’ve made many mistakes since then.

Most of that has been because I chased the income, not built the assets.

About two emails ago I also talked about why I stopped chasing the instant result.

Now I’m building assets.

It’s slow, but the growth is steady.

I believe the growth will compound.

Albert Einstein said the compounding was the 8th wonder of the world.

Small actions repeated regularly and consistently compound.

The fascinating thing about compounding is that it looks flat for a long time, and then it accelerates.

The curve is always the same. The time scale changes.

I can’t control how long it takes.

But I can control whether I keep building.

That’s why I’m focused on building small, consistent micro-assets instead of chasing spikes.

Patience and consistency always win.

Most marketers don’t have either.

Regards
Brent.

February 11, 2026February 11, 2026

That sense of surprising achievement.

“I did it!” exclaimed our two-year-old granddaughter.

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That sense of surprising achievement.

Brent Milne

Feb 11

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“I did it!” exclaimed our two-year-old granddaughter.

She’d just managed her first proper somersault.

The look on her face — surprise mixed with pride — was priceless.

She then tried it again.
And again.
Probably fifty times.

Not all of them were successful.

But she’d been trying for six months.

Have you ever experienced that feeling?

Working at something.
Not quite getting it.
Wondering if you ever will.

And then — suddenly — you do.

You never quite forget that first proof, do you?

Whether it’s your first somersault or your first $1 online, the thrill is the same.

I remember my first affiliate cheque.

$1.23 USD.

Completely useless to me — it would have cost more than that to bank it.

But it didn’t matter.

It proved something.

Someone had clicked a link I created and bought something.

Of course, I made many mistakes after that — some of them expensive.

But that first small proof changed everything.

It meant it was possible.

Regards,
Brent

February 10, 2026February 10, 2026

Why I stopped chasing instant money.

I stopped chasing instant results and started focusing on delivering something genuinely useful.

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Why I stopped chasing instant money.

Brent Milne

Feb 10

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I stopped chasing instant results and started focusing on delivering something genuinely useful.

That shift changed how I think about value.

Years ago, when I ran a main street business, I realised the standard way of pricing products was flawed.

Cost + margin + freight + tax.

It works, sort of.

Instead, I started by looking at what similar items actually sold for.
Then I decided whether I could sell at that price and make it worthwhile.

If I couldn’t, I didn’t sell the product.

What surprised me was that sometimes I made far better margins this way.

The lesson stuck.

Price is irrelevant if the customer clearly sees the value in the outcome.

That’s why someone will happily pay $5,000 for something that doubles their business, but won’t pay $7 for something that does nothing for them.

The same rule applies online.

Chasing fast money ignores value.
Building useful things compounds.

Regards,
Brent

February 9, 2026February 9, 2026

“Will it make the boat go faster?”

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“Will it make the boat go faster?”

Brent Milne

Feb 9

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“Will it make the boat go faster?”

That was the question the coach used with the British rowing team.

They’d been poor performers for six years.

For the next two years, every decision was filtered through that one question, from the boat itself to how they spent their spare time.

If it made the boat go faster, they kept it and doubled down.
If it didn’t, they discarded it.

Two years later, they won gold at the Sydney Olympics.

From six years of not even reaching the finals to Olympic champions, simply by focusing relentlessly on what mattered.

That question works far beyond sport.

Fewer moves beat more effort.

Focus only on what helps.
Ignore everything else.

That’s why I’ve simplified everything down to a small core of activities.

Regards,
Brent

February 8, 2026February 8, 2026

Results aren’t exciting. At first.

When I talk to marketers who are quietly successful, one thing is consistent.

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Results aren’t exciting. At first.

Brent Milne

Feb 8

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A woman reads at a long desk in a library.

When I talk to marketers who are quietly successful, one thing is consistent.

It isn’t excitement about activity.

It’s respect for results.

They have systems for getting things done, and they follow those systems even when they’re bored stiff with them.

Because boring systems compound.

The big, visible moments only happen after long periods of unremarkable work.

In marketing, people love to talk about the day a single email “did well”.

They rarely talk about the months spent building a list, writing regularly, and staying consistent when nothing obvious was happening.

The same pattern shows up everywhere.

When the music industry raves about a “new” talent, no one mentions the years spent learning the craft, or the nights playing to indifferent audiences in pubs and clubs.

Sport. Acting. Business.

The story is always the same.

Success comes from repeating the boring parts.

Showing up.
Doing the work.
Continuing when it isn’t exciting.

That’s the real entry fee.

Regards,
Brent

February 6, 2026February 6, 2026

Activity isn’t progress

I used to confuse activity with progress.

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Activity isn’t progress

Brent Milne

Feb 6

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I used to confuse activity with progress.

If those were the same thing, I’d be far further along than I am.

I once heard a story about a man in a timber mill whose boss passed away.
No one replaced him, and no one told the man what to do.

So he walked around the mill every day with a clipboard.

For two years.

No one questioned it — he looked busy.

Eventually someone asked what he’d been doing.

The answer was: nothing that mattered.

Looking busy isn’t the same as being productive.

And it’s definitely not the same as making progress.

I’m reminded of an old phrase:

“The hurrieder I go, the behinder I get.”

There’s a similar line I’ve seen in military and sci-fi writing:

“Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.”

I’ve slowed down.

I’m building smoothly and deliberately.

Smaller things.
Tighter focus.
Less noise.

Small niche sites come together quickly.
Traffic builds slowly.

And that’s exactly how it should be.

Regards,
Brent.

February 5, 2026February 5, 2026

This took way longer than it should have.

This took way longer than it should’ve.

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This took way longer than it should have.

Brent Milne

Feb 5

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a turtle sitting on top of a wooden plank

This took way longer than it should’ve.

Sometimes I thought I was a slow learner.
Other times I wondered if I was just avoiding the work.

The truth is simpler.

I’m stubborn.

I spent over 25 years as a technician, and I was good at it, not because I was the smartest person in the room, but because I didn’t quit until the problem was actually fixed.

Internet marketing had me going in circles for a long time because I kept trying to outwork problems that needed to be understood.

What finally clicked is this:

Consistency doesn’t come from hustling harder.
It comes from doing one thing long enough for momentum to build.

That usually takes less time, not more.

Consistency is boring.
Boring is profitable.

Bouncing around feels productive.
It rarely is.

Regards,
Brent.

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