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.
The conventional wisdom is that some subjects are dangerous to your business (like touching the electrified "third rail" of the subway): politics, religion, etc. But is that true, or might you use these to carve out a sub-niche that you can dominate?
If you've visited Ray Edwards' blog recently, you know that Christianity isn't just...
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As I've discussed before, Blog Riffing is a way to build content for your blog more easily, get more backlinks, and build relationships with other bloggers at the same time. Since last September, a little over half of the posts on this blog have been Riffs on ideas I found on other blogs.
I recently...
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If you enjoy this blog, I have a small favor to ask -- it'll only take a few clicks.
The other day, I was checking out the blog of one of this blog's frequent commentors, Rick Hendershot, and I learned something new:
When you create a Facebook Business Page it will have an address something...
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In today's episode of Battle of the Marketing Maxims, we'll pit Henry Ford against the elusive Deep Throat to explore the question: is it smarter to innovate, or should you "follow the money" and stick to markets where people are already spending?
Representing Deep Throat, we have a quote from Marketing Coach Terry Dean:
Step...
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Ah, the great dilemmas: cat vs. dog, steak vs. chicken, blonde vs. brunette...and the one I want to talk about today: automatic vs. manual.
Before you start thinking about cars, let me remind you that this is a marketing blog. The question is, should you automate your business, or run it manually?
Several factors come...
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A while back, I got an email from an unhappy subscriber. Among other things, he complained that the last email he'd gotten -- a "blog broadcast" message announcing my latest post -- was all about me, and thus not interesting to him.
I've been at this long enough to have developed a reasonably thick skin,...
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I learned a new word last week: gustnado. It's sort of like a tornado, but doesn't last as long, and doesn't reach up to the cloud base. We had a few blow through Grand Island, knocking down trees and trashing some mobile homes (uninhabited, thankfully) and storage units.
When a friend of mine first heard...
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Which would you rather do: convince someone to buy, or take orders from people who already want to buy? We'd all love to have the world beating a path to our doors to buy our mouse traps. But in the real world, they don't come just because you built it.
Once you've got a product...
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Niche selection is one of the first steps every entrepreneur has to take.
Sometimes you just fall into your niche -- for example, if you created a product, made some sales, and decided to stay where you were. But even then, you'll do better if you spend some time getting to know who you're selling...
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Once again, it's time to publish the list of which headlines got the best open and click-through rates last month.
The rankings are calculated based on the numbers reported by AWeber for my "blog broadcast" for this blog.
Where you see (+), (++) and (+++), that indicates that the headline in question was at the...
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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
Blog & Tweet Easier
Guest Post
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.)
