Antone is the creator of White Hat Crew, and the owner of Gecko Tribe, LLC. He's an internet marketer, blogger, and programmer.
Unlike some people who know what they want to do by the time they’re out of diapers, my path to internet marketing has taken a few twists and turns.
I don’t recall what I might have wanted to do early on, but by the time I graduated from high school, my interests were mostly in writing and music. I entered college as an English major.
After a year of college, I took two years off, which I spent in Japan. By the time I returned to school, I was thinking more practically (which may or may not be a good thing!), and registered as a math major.
Math is one of my strengths, but it didn’t take long to realize that math majors spend 99% of their time studying mathematical abstractions rather than the interesting real-world math I’d studied up till that point (hey, it was interesting to me!) And they take very few classes that deal with history, philosophy, the arts, etc.
Next, I considered majoring in business. I soon decided that marketing was the only area of business that wouldn’t bore me to tears. But before I could switch majors, I switched schools and ended up as a Japanese major instead.
I considered double majoring in Japanese and marketing, but eventually decided it would be better to graduate in whatever major I could complete most quickly. Japanese beat out marketing by one semester.
After graduation, I worked for a few years in the Japanese department of Claris, a subsidiary of Apple Computer, first as a software test engineer, and then as a programmer.
The 3 1/2 years I spent there were good, but then in 1998, it was time for a change. Aside from a few short stints as a contractor, I’ve been working independently ever since.
Today, I’d describe myself professionally as a programmer, internet marketer, and blogger.
Personally, I’m a husband, married since 2002, and father of three.
by Antone Roundy | Entrepreneurship, Social Media/Networking
Internet marketers can be a compulsive bunch. When profits are down and they're feeling anxious, they're particularly susceptible to an unhealthy addiction. It's called "stat-oholism".
They know they should be working or spending time with their families. But they just can't resist the urge to check their stats. Over and over again.
"How much have...
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Content curation is often promoted as a "lazy" blogging technique. On its surface, it seems that way: instead of writing your own content, you simply republish excerpts from and links to other people's content.
And in fact, it is very easy to fill a blog with curated content.
But filling your subscriber list is a...
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by Antone Roundy | Mailing Lists, Marketing, Social Media/Networking, Traffic Building, Viral
Yesterday, I wrote about how to avoid information overload in a too-fast world. Today, let's talk about how to get your marketing message heard above the noise in a world where your prospects are overloaded.
Be Good Better the Best
Okay, being the best is a tall order. But at the very least, you've absolutely...
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The internet has given us instant access to more information and entertainment than we'd even dreamed would ever exist a few decades ago. On the one hand, we're empowered to accomplished more, faster than ever before.
But there's a downside too. A few days ago, Seth Godin asked, Has the speed shortage been averted?
We...
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A few months ago, I posted an article about whether or not new blogs should display ads. (My conclusion: do it, but don't overdo it, even after you've gotten big.)
The other day over at ProBlogger, Brandon Yanofsky posted a great argument on the topic:
If someone runs up to you and says, "Hey, I...
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When you were a kid playing a game and somebody cheated, you may have repeated the saying you'd been told: "cheaters never prosper." If you were the cheater, you may have been thinking to yourself, "not this time, but what about all the times you didn't catch me!"
In the past two days, I've seen...
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The criticism we're seeing of Google+ Circles is kinda funny to me:
Circles sound like a good idea on paper but in reality they don't work. Why? Two main reasons. One, because people cannot digitally organize their friends by interest. And two, even if you could nobody talks about that same interest constantly and nothing...
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You may have heard of this strategy for getting a tweet to go viral: offer a freebie, but only make it available after a certain number of people have tweeted a link to your offer. Sounds great, but will it work for you? (How can you make it work?)
Over at Mashable today, Brenna Ehrlich...
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You've heard it before: people make purchase decisions emotionally and justify them logically. So, the logic goes that your sales materials should appeal to their emotions, and then back your offer up with logic.
Right?
The other day, Roger Dooley posted some research that suggests a slightly different approach:
... Emsense has created a four-quadrant...
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Everybody's got some sort of marketing plan. It may be a full-blown document that outlines each step you're going to take, a simple diagram on a napkin, or just some ideas and expectations in your head. The bad news is that your plan is broken. Or it soon will be.
Former heavyweight champ Mike Tyson...
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Split Test Content, Exit Intent Popups, Hover Stripes, Seasonal Ad Rotation, and much more.
TriggerNote is an Interaction Engine for your website. Use pre-configured "Recipes" to create exit hover ads, exit interstitial ads, etc. Or mix and match your own combinations of over 20 Triggers and Actions to make your website respond to visitor actions, grabbing attention, and customizing on the fly to speak to each unique visitor.
Hi.
I'm Antone Roundy.
I'm a strong believer in ethics, and have always tried to practice and promote ethical behavior in an industry where many slip over to the dark side.
At White Hat Crew, I'll share insights into internet marketing, with extra emphasis on ethical issues.
Read my Internet Marketing Ethics Manifesto
Join a Blogging Team
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New to this blog? Start Here
Riffs on a Purple Cow is a Kindle eBook containing collection of articles I wrote, inspired by Seth Godin. Download your copy from Amazon.com.
It's also a demonstration of the blogging and business method outlined in my eBook, "How to Build and Operate an SEO Content Factory", which you can download for free in either of these formats:
PDF | Mobipocket (Kindle, etc.)
