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 read recently that parts of the brain respond the same to watching someone else do something as they do when the person does it themself. To those parts of the brain, a vicarious experience is just as real as an actual, first person experience.
For example, a video of a kid unboxing his new...
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Your customers have 3 brains. No, I'm not saying they're mutants or aliens -- I mean 3 parts of their brains are involved in making decisions. If you want them to choose you, you need to know which one to talk to and how to do it.
The "Lizard Brain"
The first is the part...
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Executive Summary: Read it! Don't think you can catch the vision by reading book reviews that list the 6 main concepts. If you do, you'll miss a lot.
I read several good books a few months ago, but haven't yet gotten around to sharing insights I got from them and writing reviews. I'll probably spend...
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I came across a video the other day where David Frey reveals his biggest internet marketing secret. It's about "continuity" -- selling products that customers pay for repeatedly, like a monthly membership -- but there's more to it than that.
One thing you'll often hear when people talk about "membership sites" is that customers tend...
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Back in January 1998, I quit my day job, moved closer to my family, and started an online business.
I had some contract programming work lined up to help pay the bills, but it petered out faster than expected. So a year later, when my old employer called to ask if I'd come back as...
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Internet marketers love their buzzwords. Whenever somebody comes up with a catchy one, they all stand in a circle, sing a song, do a dance, and beat it to death. And then they beat it into dust.
Then they beat the space where it used to be.
About that time, they start looking around nervously...
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Who's to blame if an internet marketing system doesn't work? The seller, for selling a faulty system? Or the buyer for their half-hearted effort at implementing it?
The question has been hashed over ad nauseum, and the answer is obvious enough: there's plenty of blame for both.
On the one hand, some systems would work...
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Last week on Copyblogger, Carol Tice wrote a guest post about 50 Can't-Fail Techniques for Finding Great Blog Topics. For anyone who doesn't enjoy slogging through lists that long, let me boil them down for you into a more manageable list.
1. Subscribe to RSS Feeds
This is my #1 idea source. Carol lists 10...
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Reblogging is building a blog by re-posting content that's appeared elsewhere. It's an easy way to blog, since all you have to do is select content to reblog. But if you leave it at that, you're going to limit your audience, your influence, and the value you get from your blog.
Why?
Because you'll have...
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At Problogger yesterday, Darren Rowse wrote a post about mindsets that hold bloggers back from success. After naming a few, he gives the secret of many bloggers' success:
So what is it that sets some bloggers apart?
It's simple really: they get things done. They don't allow what's going on in their minds to distract...
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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.)
