Some of what I have learned has ended up as an email.
Today isn’t an exception.
The book suggested that the word OK came from World War 1 battlefield communications.
Apparently, every morning there was a morse code transmission to all troop positions with the numbers of soldiers killed in battle the previous day.
0 k meant no one died, which soon became known as an OK day.
It seemed logical to me, but I did some additional research and discovered that the linguists think it came from an editorial joke 175 years ago, well before WW1, and spread from there.
I prefer the first explanation because it makes more sense than some dozy editorial joke with a different meaning going viral.
Without the book, I probably would never have done the research.
The lesson for all of us is that you can never trust what you see, read or hear as being gospel truth.
For an example, see the image of the city on Mars that the A.I. tool created for me at
I used to worry about changing my web pages too often because I thought that the visitors would notice.
It took me a long time to understand that most of my visitors would never come back.
It slowly dawned on me that not only would 99% never return, but most of those who did arrive wouldn’t read even the first page they landed on.
That freed me up to experiment with the pages to get some response from as many visitors as possible.
You can split-test your landing pages and change them during the test if you have sufficient traffic.
You only need around 100 visits per page to identify a trend.
When you’re paying for traffic, there are things you can do to improve your ROI.
Most people think you should be maximising the clicks to your ads.
I think you should be minimising the clicks.
Write your ads to filter out the wrong people.
After all, you are paying for each click.
Make sure the ones who click are interested in your offer, not in getting a freebie.
With free traffic you want as much as possible, but you can still filter them with your content.
Regards,
Brent.
P.S. The free access to the Safe PBNs info is still available, the sales page isn’t finished, and we are moving on tomorrow, so there’s still time for you.
Most of you have never had an account breached or shut down. I have had it happen several times, but I have more web-based properties than you, which makes me more vulnerable to attack. I have realised, though, that those bad eggs are always searching for a back door into every website they come across…
, I wrote about how bad actors are constantly probing websites and devices for openings.
In the last two days I’ve had two websites under concentrated attacks.
My security plugin keeps them out, and I trust it to continue doing that.
But it is a reminder that there is always the risk of attack.
Some misguided people think they don’t need protection because “there’s nothing of interest on my site”, but they don’t understand that it’s not your content they are after.
They’ll use your email address at your site to spam.
They’ll use your website as a ‘drive-by‘ attack site.
They’ll use your site as a PBN.
They’ll use your site as a bot host to attack other sites.
They’ll use your information to build a fake identity.
And there are many other ways they can use what you pay for to advance their petty schemes that will impact you.
Get a good anti-virus program on your devices.
I use Eset because it’s the best and not expensive.
I should have written this email much earlier today, but I didn’t. Now the Internet is a bit wobbly, so Grammarly is flicking on and off as the connection drops out. Isn’t it amazing how quickly we expect things to be the same everywhere? Life and travel aren’t like that, though, are they…
Out home away from home, the caravan is 22 years old.
Southern Right whale and calf at the Head of the Bight.
This is why we don’t travel at night if we can avoid it.
Typical of any secondary road in the outback.
The Sturt Desert Pea. This is the first I’ve seen growing wild.
Old man emu.
Aboriginal rock art. It’s actually sign posts for those that can read it.
This little one was very curious but nervous.
Another curious local.
This is a working sheep station. This is not a drought year.
Their retired sheep dog. He volunteered to be out official guide on our walks.
Typical outback creek. This is not a drought year and this is nearly the end of winter. It did rain twice while we were staying, but there was not enough to get a puddle in the creek.
To see a brilliant example of persuasive techniques in print, look at Marc Antony’s famous “Friends, Romans, Countrymen” speech from Act III, Scene 2 of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.
Marc Antony manipulates the crowd into doing a 180-degree turn on the question of whether or not it was morally right to kill Caesar.
Yet he does so without arguing, disagreeing, or contradicting what the crowd already believes or what Brutus has just said to explain why killing Caesar was necessary.
Marc Antony says, “I have come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.”
So what does he do in the very next line?
He praises him!
“The evil that men do lives on after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.”
In her book “The Confidence Game,” Maria Konnikova correctly points out that this is the classic con artist’s ploy known as bait-and-switch. Often this simply comes down to starting your pitch by saying, “I’m not trying to sell you anything.”
This causes your prospect to let down his defences and makes him more receptive to what you say.
Then, of course, you proceed to sell him something.
This is why so many great sales pitches, junk-mail letters, infomercials, and internet videos begin with lots of interesting, entertaining, free information until, at some point, they make the “turn” toward sales.
Whenever I hear that phrase in an unsolicited telephone conversation, I always ask, “Why did you call me then?”.
That usually has them spluttering and unable to continue, which is the purpose, of course.
Regards, Brent.
P.S. When you decide to commit to making your online business profitable and a full-time income, you’ll need to be able to write persuasively.
When you learn this skill, the Internet will provide you with everything your heart desires.
The best way to learn this skill is to practice, but it helps to get some basics under your belt first.
“Hello, Dad. We called around to pick up the Prius. We had a little trouble getting in the backdoor as the key vault is a bit stiff to operate. Once we were inside, we could see that the front door was open.”
That set my heart racing and my mind heading towards panic.
“Whoops, we didn’t mean to leave it like that.”
“It’s a little annoying. It would have been much easier to come in the front door.”
“Is everything OK? Nothing missing?”
“Nah, it all looks fine. You do have your computer with you, don’t you?”
“Yep, it’s all good then. You can go out the front door, and please remember to lock it behind you.”
Sweaty palms begin to dry out. My heart rate slows to my usual pace.
Needless to say, the kids don’t let us forget that little whoopsie moment.
Every time since then, it’s “Have you locked the front door?”.
Yes, we are super careful about checking all the doors now.
We have a checklist for everything we need to pack and do before we can move off.
Checklists are essential for ensuring you complete all the steps to get your desired result.
Regards, Brent.
P.S. While checklists are essential, they also assume you know how to do everything on the list.
When you haven’t done whatever task it is or are pretty fresh at doing it, the checklist needs a bit of help.
That’s where video and text explanations aid you in following each step.
