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.
I'm listening to an interview with Andy Jenkins and fellow Nebraskan Jeremy Shoemaker (a.k.a. Shoemoney) this morning, and just heard something funny I thought you might enjoy.
Jeremy is talking about how he uses controversy to get links. One key, he says, is to take a controversial position on things that other people have a...
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Okay, this isn't really about selling sandwiches to children, but it's a useful metaphor.
It's happened with all three of my kids -- not long after they started eating sandwiches, they stopped eating the crust. One of them would pick the middle of the sandwich out with his fingers if I didn't cut the crust...
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Walmart's customers don't seem to be getting the message.
And Walmart isn't about to complain.
Last month, Roger Dooley at Neuromarketing wrote about some research that suggests that Walmart's slogan "Save money. Live better." may inspire customers to spend more:
The experiment divided subjects into two groups. Half were exposed to brand names associated with...
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Back in 1990, I got a job at a Japanese travel agency to pay my way through college. From the beginning, one of the ladies in the office seemed to think that picking on me was a great way to enhance her life.
Maybe she'd liked the guy I'd replaced, and subconsciously resented me for...
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If you sit down with your child and watch SpongeBob SquarePants, you'll both laugh. But not always at the same time.
Why not?
Because some of the humor is too infantile for you. And some of it flies right over your kid's head. This isn't just true of SpongeBob. Lots of kids shows contain humor...
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One of my most popular posts from last month (as you'll see below) was the one where I shared which of my emails from March had been opened most, and which got the most clicks through to my blog.
Here's the report for April.
Where you see (+), (++) and (+++), that indicates that the...
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All marketers have to learn to think like their prospects in order to sell effectively.
But if ethics are important to you, you face an even bigger challenge than the average marketer: you've got to untangle your own thoughts and figure out which you can set aside and which you can't. Yeah, that's true for...
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If you were buying advertising, where would you want it placed?
Obviously, you'd want it where people in your target market would see it. And you wouldn't want it in a place that'd reflect poorly on your company. For example, if you were promoting a bank, you wouldn't advertise in a crack house, even if...
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Your website's bounce rate is the percentage of people who only stay for a few seconds before leaving. Naturally, when people arrive at your site and realize it's not what they were looking for, they'll leave.
But even if you've got the right content, there are other factors that will cause some people to leave....
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It's been about 7 1/2 months since I started blogging daily. I've only missed a handful of days in that time -- mostly around the holidays.
This morning, I got to wondering how many of the posts I've written have been Blog Riffs, and how many have been "original".
Here are some stats:
Month
Bl...
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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.)
