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.
As you've probably heard by now, Amazon has released a new line of Kindles. Last Christmas, my dad gave me what's now called a "Kindle Keyboard", which I love, and use every day.
Why is it called "Kindle Keyboard"? That brings me to my first observation:
The new Kindles don't have physical keyboards.
I don't...
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I'd like to hear your opinion on what I'm going to talk about today. Do you think this technique is ethical?
Over at Persuasion Theory this morning, Matt Fox wrote:
In research, students went door-to-door selling note cards for charity. In the some households they said a packet of 8 cards was "three dollars; it's...
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The other day, two door-to-door salesmen, selling the same thing, knocked my door within about a minute of each other. (I don't think the second guy was paying attention to where the first guy had been.)
I hate door-to-door sales even more than telemarketing. Both are interruption marketing at their worst. At least when an...
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After my first year of college, I took two years off to live in Japan. During the winter, my friends and I would frequently hear the doleful sound of the baked potato trucks in the distance -- a continuous, monotone whistle.
As the truck slowly came closer, we'd hear a voice singing "ishii yaki imo,...
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The other day, at the end of a post by Seth Godin, I read the following:
One of the disrupting forces of the new media is that it makes harder and harder to succeed without wow. Since you have to earn the conversation regularly, phone it in too often and in fact, attention disappears.
My...
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Over at BlogRiffers.com, I just announced the winner of the first Riff-On Blog Riffing contest. This time, the winner got a free copy of SEO Content Factory. Next week, we'll run another contest and give away an affiliate marketing-related prize.
While reading some of the entries in the contest, several things jumped out at me...
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I'm trying to decide whether or not to agree with something Brian Clark wrote over at Copyblogger:
If someone asks you what's for dinner, you can stick with the substance:
Tonight we're having pasta for dinner.
Or you can add a bit of craft and style to make it more tangible:
Tonight we'll enjoy a...
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I just noticed this on Yaro Starak's blog, and thought it important enough to be worth taking a day off from regular blog posts to highlight it:
At the end of this month, September 2011, my course Blog Mastermind will close forever.
Only current members and those who join before the end of the month...
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by Antone Roundy | Marketing, Social Media/Networking, Viral
While looking through my list of flagged items from Seth Godin's blog this morning, I came across this one:
Interesting & Interested
... it helps to be both. These are the two ways you earn attention.
If it's so obvious, why is it so difficult?
It helps to be either. And if you're both, th...
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I had a fun idea last night to start up a friendly Blog Riffing competition.
Here are the basics of how it'll work:
I'll announce an article from someone's blog for everyone to Riff on (starting in marketing, and branching out to other niches as I find out what niches people are interested in).
Anyon...
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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.)
