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 was thinking this morning about blog commenting. Lots of people are sharing lots of opinions on it lately:
Commenting is in decline -- everybody's sharing via social media instead.
Commenting isn't as valuable as it used to be -- all the links are no-followed, and nobody reads the comments anyway.
You may as wel...
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It's my anniversary! Not my wedding anniversary -- that was back in April. My daily blogging anniversary. I used to be a pretty lame blogger, averaging less than three posts per month. So if you've tried to blog regularly before and failed, I've been in your shoes. And I can tell you from experience that...
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Yesterday over at Daily Blog Tips, Daniel Scocco shared a hint about the kinds of email requests he responds to:
...the requests I reply to always create a win-win situation. That is, the other part wants something, but she is also willing to do something for me, so everyone will be happy in the end....
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The AWeber blog this morning carried a little debate over whether you should ask for more than a name and email address in your signup form. Here's an excerpt:
Nick: ... We tend to think of our mailing lists as something we give to our subscribers for free, but that's kind of a flawed assumption....
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I read a great post on productivity over at Entrepreneur's Journey this morning. Aziz Ali posted five simple productivity tips, including:
2. Eat That Frog
...Eat That Frog in a nutshell means to do those tasks first that you do not want to do the most.
That reminded me of something I wrote back i...
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A few days ago, Daniel Scocco shared a few lessons he's learned growing a blog to a million monthly pageviews. Here are the first two:
1. Choose Your Niche Wisely
Most people who read this blog [meaning Daily Blog Tips] probably think it is my largest and most profitable website. Well, it's not... Niches like...
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The video from last month about how to configure SEO Content Factory for blogging workgroups generated a lot of interest, along with some great feature requests. So I knuckled down and went to work. And last week, I released a new workgroup version named SEO Content Factory/WG.
Here's a video that'll show you how you...
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Once again, it's time to report which headlines got the most of my blog broadcast emails opened and click through last month. Where you see (+), (++) and (+++), that indicates that the headline in question was at the top of one of the other lists (with (+++) indicating the #1 position).
This was an...
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Here's something I stumbled across today from the "ain't it the truth" department. If you've never written an eBook, read what Ali Luke wrote:
So what's stopping you? I think I know ...
Maybe you think you don't know how. Sure, you're comfortable with writing blog posts, but an ebook is a totally different animal....
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I read an interesting article this morning about the most common reason why startups fail. It wasn't what I would have guessed...but looking back, I once made the same mistake myself, and it was pretty expensive.
Joanna Glasner wrote:
Researchers found that certain factors "“ such age and gender of founders, location, and previous entrepreneurial...
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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.)
