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The Tribe Has Spoken

Posted by Amateur Blogs

I just finished reading several responses to a Darren Rowse post titled “The Third Tribe” in which he announces a new service he’s providing called, interestingly enough, “The Third Tribe.” His business partners for this venture are Chris Brogan, Brian Clark and Sonia Simone.

To put it simply, Darren says that there are currently two tribes in internet marketing:

Tribe Scummy: these are the guys that sell useless products that promise to make you rich overnight. They know their products won’t do this but that’s not a concern; it’s all about getting you to purchase their product(s).

Tribe Chummy: these are the folks that live for the interact. They’re interested in building online relationships or “communities”. Making money online doesn’t appear to be a primary focus. Or, if it is, they’re failing at it.

So, where does The Third Tribe fit in?

They fall somewhere between Tribe Scummy and Tribe Chummy. They use other words in their sales pitch but the underlying message is that their new program falls between the two aforementioned internet marketing extremes – in other words, their new program is a “best fit.”

I can’t help but think of the fairy tale “Goldilocks And The Three Bears”:

At the table in the kitchen, there were three bowls of porridge. Goldilocks was hungry. She tasted the porridge from the first bowl.

“This porridge is too hot!” she exclaimed.

So, she tasted the porridge from the second bowl.

“This porridge is too cold,” she said.

So, she tasted the last bowl of porridge.

“Ahhh, this porridge is just right,” she said happily and she ate it all up.

According to Rowse The Third Tribe is that third bowl of porridge. Pull up to the table with your credit card and have a bite.

In return you’ll receive:

-A monthly audio class or webinar
-A copy of “The Quick Start Guide to Making Money Online”
-A 3+ hour seminar series on “Building a Business Around a Blog”
-Forum access
-2 monthly live Q&A calls with one of the Tribe experts
-Special deals and members-only discounts on products

I’m guessing most of this will teach you how to make money in a non-Tribe Scummy way and the forum/Q&A calls will let you interact in a non-Tribe Chummy setting with other people just like you who want to know how to make money online by blogging.

And that leads me to the article written by Papa Bear himself titled The Third Tribe More Useless Blogging Nonsense. You see, Griz asserts that the audience for this new program isn’t really internet marketers, it’s bloggers. Griz says “Selling soap to people looking for soap is internet marketing.” He also says (and this is key) “nothing they espouse will teach a soul how to A) Succeed in a non blogger/social traffic niche – ya’ know, that big part of the internet where the visitor has never heard of “Affiliates” or is even remotely interested in learning how to be a Blogger – they just dropped in looking for a George Forman Grill.”

Bingo. That’s what prompted me to write this post. What Griz said really resonates with me. Why? Because I’m making the transition from a blogger to something closer to an internet marketer. This blog is an example of the start of that journey. It’s a blog about blogging. I started out in 2007 with high hopes that this blog would bring in enough money (in a short time) to allow me to purchase a new car. Yup, that’s how much I’d bought in to the Tribe Scummy hype.

I then started listening to Tribe Chummy people and thought that building RSS feed subscribers was the way to go. I didn’t really understand how that was going to translate into a paycheck but the A-listers kept bragging about their subscribers and heck, they were making LOTS of money. Clearly popularity must be the key to making money online.

I floundered like that for over a year before I discovered Griz, Vic and Court in 2008. Because of them I now have niche sites that provide information on specific products; sites that bring in passive income because of the amount of targeted search traffic they receive. But I’ll tell you, I was so entrenched in the “blogger” mentality that I sometimes forgot that my sites no longer catered to bloggers. Here’s a great example of that:

Near the end of 2008 I ran a contest on my site for a free gift. To enter the contest you had to write about my site on your blog and link back to the site. I even provided everyone with the anchor text to use.

The contest was a complete failure.

Why? Because I’d forgotten that my visitors weren’t bloggers, they were people who’d come to the site looking for specific products. As such I never got one properly anchored backlink. Heck, most of my visitors had no clue what I was talking about. You see I had a bunch of people looking for soap and I was treating them like bloggers.

If The Third Tribe wants to help others succeed it will provide a structured program that teaches proven, repeatable internet marketing skills.

Like Griz’s How to Make Money Online for Beginner’s site or Court’s Keyword Academy, which teaches how to select keywords and set up sites that make money online and generate search traffic.

These guys teach you how to sell soap to people who want to buy soap. Not how to sell soap to people selling soap.

In closing, The Tribe Has Spoken. It’s time to leave Blogger Island, enter the world of internet marketing and start making money.