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.
There's an enemy that you have to face if you want to run your own business -- online or otherwise. It keeps a lot of good business ideas from ever being developed at all. It keeps others on the sidelines or in the shadows.
If you're an entrepreneur who's not thriving (or if you've wanted...
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A few days ago, I mentioned how I inject a message between my checkout button and the PayPal website to reinforce the customer's purchase decision while waiting for the PayPal site to come up (which often takes 5 or 10 seconds). Yesterday, I came across a tip from Glen Allsopp for customizing the next step...
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Blogs are generally considered social media. But not all blogs are social. Last December, I wrote a post about how to connect with other bloggers. Today, let's explore the idea a little more and talk about how we can make our blogs more social.
As I wrote in December, if your blog is floating around...
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Last month, I wrote a post about the need for internet marketing teachers to emphasize ethics in their training. At the end, I said I'd be adding a statement on ethics here.
It's taken a bit of work to get it just the way I want it, but I've finally finished hammering it out. Please...
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You're a pitbull. You wake up every morning running, and push your business forward for eight solid hours, and then live your personal life with just as much passion till the moment you drop off to sleep at night. No obstacle can stop you, or even slow you down.
And you get results.
But are...
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I've had a hankering to do some guest posting. But rather than pitching ideas to the Big Boys' blogs, I thought I'd try something a little outside the box and throw out an offer to post on your blogs.
To make this fun, I'll keep the offer open to a wide variety of topics --...
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What message do your website's visitors see immediately after they subscribe to your mailing list. "Please check your mail box for a confirmation email, and click the link"? Good, but incomplete.
What do they see in the confirmation email? A confirmation link? Good, but incomplete.
What do they see after they click the confirmation link?...
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A few years ago on the show LOST, some guys stranded on an island climbed down a long ladder into an underground hatch where somebody convinced them to push a button every 108 minutes.
And they did. Even though they didn't really know if it did anything.
Somewhere else on the island was station where...
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Every time I post to this blog, an announcement goes out automatically to my mailing list, which tracks how many people opened the email and how many clicked through to read the full article.
I thought I'd start a new monthly feature here, listing the headlines that got the most people to open the email,...
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Five months too late to do me and good, Amazon will start shipping an ad-supported version of their Kindle* eBook reader on May 3 for $114 (you can pre-order now).
They folks over at Ars Technica don't seem to think that cutting $25 off the price will be enough to induce a lot of people...
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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.)
