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.
If you're like me, your morning started an hour too soon today. Actually, I got a double whammy: spring break ended for the kids and daylight saving time started. Ugh.
If I were living the internet lifestyle :-), I would have stayed in bed. But breakfast had to be eaten and lunches had to be...
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Every few days, I see a tweet about the latest edition of somebody or other's Paper.li publication. Occasionally, something I've written shows up in one, and I appreciate that. But do I ever read them? Well, I haven't yet.
Paper.li looks kinda cool -- you mash up all the interesting stuff you've been reading, organize...
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I've got a revelation for you today: we're in a recession. Oh, you'd already noticed?
A lot of people have watched their businesses shrivel over the last few years. No matter how they tweak their marketing, there's just not as much money flowing around for them to dip into.
I've experience it myself. Within months...
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I was scrolling back through a bunch of unread items in my feed reader today and came across a post by Andy Jenkins highlighting a bunch of good and bad landing page designs. On really jumped out at me -- Google's page for the Nexus S.
The design is beautiful, simple, and clean. But there's...
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Yesterday, I wrote about overcoming the fear of being unique in your marketing. This morning, I experienced something that hammered home the power of uniqueness.
I was listening to an old Stevie Nicks song, "Blue Lamp", as I worked. At one point, the music comes to the end of a phrase that's occurred before in...
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Seth Godin says you need to be a "Purple Cow". Chip and Dan Heath teach that "unexpected" ideas stick better. A million other people offer the same advice in a million other ways. If what you're doing is run-of-the-mill, you're headed for run-of-the-mill results.
I'm sure you've heard plenty of times before that to get...
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I don't know how many times I've read advice claiming you need to slash adjectives and adverbs from your copy. The writer will share a few examples of converting boring descriptive sentences into exciting action sentences.
"He was super-duper tall -- even taller than a three-story building," becomes, "he lumbered through the town, stepping over...
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When I read that today is the 20th anniversary of the Rodney King beating, it brought back a flood of images. First, of course, was the video of the beating on the news.
I lived in San Francisco at the time, so I also remember seeing the broken and boarded up windows downtown after the...
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When an original webpage is outranked by a page that copied its content, the author usually cries foul. At first glance, it seems they're right -- the original source should get the credit for the content. But when you look deeper, it's not nearly so clear cut a question as you might think.
Let's talk...
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by Antone Roundy | Blogging, SEO
Google caused another ruckus online a few days ago when they laid down the law against content mills. Some people are complaining, others are wondering what took 'em so long, and still others are getting nervous, wondering whether their favorite content generation method is going to get Slapped next.
While nobody knows for sure where...
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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.)
