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.
Question: should you focus on one thing, or diversify?
Answer: no.
You should do both. But in the right way.
Today, Terry Dean posted a collection of 21 habits of successful entrepreneurs. Two that jumped out at me were:
3. Choose one market and focus on it.
It's tough for experienced marketers to manage several...
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I was going to say "introductory premium price", but I think we're a little muddy on the meaning of "premium".
When I hear "premium", I think "better". But in fact, premium means "a sum added to an ordinary price or charge." It's what you pay extra to get something better.
Normally, we expect introductory prices...
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How do you get prospects to buy your products? Not by convincing them to want it, but by showing them that it's what they already want.
A few days ago, Bryan Eisenberg shared a list of 20 reasons why people buy. Here are a few (click the link to see the rest that he lists...and...
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I was browsing the archives of Dr. Mani's blog today and came across this article about pricing (discussing something he learned from Dan Kennedy):
That lesson in pricing remained one of my most profitable in the 15 years I've been creating and selling infoproducts online. It distills down to this simple principle:
"Price lesser than...
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Ever since Amazon launched their "Simple Email Service" (SES), I've been wanting to try it out. Yesterday, I finally got around to sending my first test message. I used a PHP class created by Dan Myers based on one created by Donovan Schonknecht. But I wasn't quite satisfied with it.
The biggest shortcoming is that...
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This morning, Terry Dean asked the question:
What are the qualifications to being a successful internet entrepreneur?
He lists several important ones: good communication skills (written and/or verbal), good time managements skills, personal motivation, etc. I'll add a few -- but first, I'm going to change the question slightly:
What are the qualifications to being...
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Once again, Seth Godin has written something that make me think:
When Google + launched, millions of formerly optimistic people became optimistic again. Maybe this was going to be the one, the social network with just the smart people and none of the lame stuff, none of the spam or the pitches or the people...
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A few days ago, ClickBank posted some welcome news on their blog:
As part of our ongoing commitment to providing high quality products to consumers, ClickBank is adjusting certain fees relating to refund and chargeback rates for ClickBank vendors. These changes will affect a very small number of ClickBank vendors, and will not affect affiliates....
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Last Friday, after publishing the post about Google's quality raters handbook (which I'd found through a post on "Pot Pie Girl's" blog), I spent a little time looking over her older posts and found an interesting one showing the results of an email subject line test she ran back in March.
I thought I'd share...
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I found an interesting post from PotPieGirl this morning that included a link to Google's 2011 Quality Raters Handbook. I'm not going to talk about the same things that she talks about, so I recommend clicking over there and reading her post.
Near the end, she writes:
...if we can each train ourselves to be...
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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
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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.)
