According to Darren Rowse Internet Marketers fit into a couple of generalized categories:
Prelude: Before reading the rest of this post read these posts first;
The Third Tribe by Darren Rowse.
Third Tribe Review (read the comments) and the followup article
Third Tribe Marketing by Lis Sowerbutts.
and then Andy Beard's take "
I Use Aggressive Hype and Obnoxious Tactics to Fool People"
oh and then come back here and read my riveting take on all this.
Finished your homework? Good.
What's this all about? Well the Third Tribe is a new collaboration between Darren Rowse, Chris Brogan, Brian Clark and Sonia Simone. If you read the reviews above then you should know what the Third Tribe is offering for a monthly fee. I want to talk about Darren's notion of "Internet Marketing" and his Tribe generalizations as stated below.
Keep this in mind - he talks about tribes of internet marketers. He is really only describing the groups operating in the Blogging niche - his niche not Internet Marketers.
Tribe 1 "They use aggressive hype and obnoxious tactics to fool people into believing there really is a "get rich quick" magic bullet."
Note to Darren - you mean only in the MMO racket right? Bloggers selling to bloggers. People selling soap to people looking for soap don't use these tactics.
He doesn't specify but one can assume he means the MMO "List" marketers - the John Reeses and Frank Kerns etc who fill your email with a constant onslaught of one "make money online" product after another. Have you ever bought a product from a list marketer? Did it make you money? Probably not. Are you still using the program you bought 6 months ago from one of these Pimps? No, of course not - you bought it on hype - hey maybe this really will work and I'm going to get rich... familiar? Of course it is. The reality - you may or may not have even read the entire program, half way through your inner voice started telling you that you've seen this before, it's too much work, it's just plain bullshit, it can't be implemented given your experience level and resources, it's just a plain old scam. I know of no one who has made a fortune or even a decent living using any program released by the list marketers over the past five years. If it existed we would all know about it. Prove me wrong - please. One single sure fire working model that is still around and pumping out the cash... I can wait.
The truth about List Marketers in the MMO sector is this - they make money selling an endless supply of hyped up crap to noobs who are looking to get rich online. The people doing the selling don't make money using the products they sell - they make money selling the product. Period. That's the business model.
Having said that true "Internet Marketers" use list marketing and blogs/websites to sell a wide variety of real quality products to people who actually want the product. No hype, no scams. No Refunds needed. Happy customers to boot. They aren't selling to bloggers. They are marketing product to targeted audiences across the whole web. Darren's tribe doesn't teach this. Why? Because you can't build a community of Grill lovers or Soap aficionados using social media, guest posts, relationship building or twitter - you can't build a community at all. They just want some soap. Selling soap to people looking for soap is internet marketing. How to do it is worth learning. You don't teach this Darren. You are a Blogging Marketer not an Internet Marketer and the tribes you generalize are not Internet Marketers either - just different sides to the same coin - Social Bloggers/marketers trying to sell stuff to the only market available for you - other social bloggers.
Tribe 2"The other tribe is the Social Media Cool Kids. They reject hype and aggressive sales tactics in favor of relationships, community, and value . . . and yet seem to have taken a vow of poverty along the way."
I love this description because the irony is dripping. Darren seems to feel that this group is different from himself. Really - Social Media and hanging with the "Cool Kids" is Darren's business model. Every thing he does is centered on building relationships, a community (isn't that what you get paying him $6 a month to join his Problogger.com forum?) How many times does he or a guest poster talk about adding value... fuff fluff fluff...
and how often does Darren participate in building his relationship with his readers... his comments? Not a lot of interaction going on there.
The relationship building Darren is doing is with the very limited and narrow band of "Bloggers" that head up the "Cool Kid Blogger Tribe" who think they are Internet Marketers and they are but they only market to a small niche (in the greater scope of things) - Bloggers. Instead of using the term "Internet Marketing" or "Online Marketing" they should be labeled "Blogging Marketers".
My point - 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. Selling Grills and Oil Filters and Vacations is Internet Marketing - selling "How to Be a Better Blogger by getting enough social visitors so That you can sell them an ebook or membership site of your own explaining how to be a better blogger so that they can sell..." Sorry Darren - that's your business model. And it has very little to do with real Internet Marketing.
or B) That even if your readers follow your advice the notion that they will make any money is mostly laughable. Darren you make money because you and a select few made it to the pinnacle of a particular niche - Blogging. Hey well done - I give you total props for the achievement. The thing is nothing you guys espouse to others has anything to do with how you got to the top (You had some talent, got in early, used the social news to spread the word and cuddled up to the other early birds and formed a nice little support and aid group that has carried on to this day. As I said well done.)
The thing is you didn't get to where you are using Twitter, your tribe is not unlike the MMO list marketers - you sell stuff that you don't use or participate in, stuff that had nothing to do with your success yet promoted in such a way as to imply that following your methods others can achieve the same level of success as you, and finally, you imply that others can make money with your business model. I haven't seen the results.
I believe you mentioned a vow of poverty. You've been teaching people how to be a better blogger for years now - why then is Blogging notorious for not making people money? You are the best known Blogger in the Blogger kingdom, the King of Blogging.
Surely all your years of wisdom imparted to the hundreds of thousands of readers that have studiously applied your teaching should have made some dent in the "there is no money in blogging" perception. It hasn't. You mentioned Social Marketers can't make money? Common knowledge. You don't mention that Bloggers are just as stymied at trying to make money from their social blogs. That's common knowledge as well. Yet you continue to sell your advice to people with full knowledge that you are teaching them a business model that has an incredibly poor return on investment and time and a failure rate surely in the 99.9 percentile. The vast majority of people have never and will never make money blogging. The difference between you Bloggers and real internet marketers is that they don't use blogs for blogging - they use blogs to make money.
The Third Tribe"The black and white division of online marketing into two tribes is not real. There's a big (and growing) middle tribe, one that avoids spammy IM approaches while having no problem asking for the sale and making money.
This is the Third Tribe."
or so says Darren. Again you mean within the blogging niche. You mean the sale and making money off of Bloggers? Right?
Darren you don't like criticism - who does. Your defenders are always quick to point out you are a nice, humble guy. I have no doubt that is true. I have never attacked or criticized your character. I have had issues with your method of making money online and the moment you start offering something for a price then you have to accept the criticism that comes with it. It may be constructive.
Your entire business model is directed at selling Cool Aid to the greenest of noobs who might land on your site. You sell a pipe dream known as "Getting Famous". And leave the impression that getting famous automatically leads to making money. It doesn't. You're famous (to bloggers at least) and yet you are just like all the other social marketers - you make a little bit of coin from your readers but not much. You don't talk about it but your traffic doesn't convert worth a dam - for you or your ads. I know just how badly social traffic converts. I have social traffic. I also have search traffic - lots of it - more than you. I know how well it converts. It makes me a lot of money. So much so that I don't have to sit down with my Elite Blogging Friends and devise a way to turn a buck from all the annoying social traffic that just won't spend money or click ads. Things like a paid forum. Things like The Third Tribe. Things like Teaching Sells. Things like selling a fluff ebook. I don't need a membership site or a paid forum or an ebook to make money online in the MMO/Bogging niche or more importantly in any niche. You do it seems. Why is that?
Why can't you and Yaro and John Chow and Chris Brogan and all the other blogger friends of yours just make money producing the sites that you teach others to produce. If your methods work then you should be making a killing from your sites. You shouldn't need to sell anything to your readers. Unless, of course you don't make money producing sites like you teach others to build. You just make money selling information about building sites that don't make money.
And lets talk about your methods. You and your guest posters constantly flog a mantra of continuously regurgitated talking points, theme designs, listen to your readers, build community, interact with your followers, guest posting, build your brand - it's all about branding and it's all presented as what the "experts" do. Quite frankly there are no experts. The stuff you flog is little more than made up as you go. There is no step by step concise easy to follow, guaranteed to work formula for getting famous online. Your 5 things to do lists are just collections of things that sound sensible or seem reasonable but you have no evidence that any of it leads to any discernible and more importantly measurable outcome. It's just nice sounding fluff. At best entertaining - at worst useless.
I would love to read Darren's explanation to his readers how a free Blogger blog can achieve everything his readers are hoping for without ever using social media, without a single guest post, without a pretty theme, without spamming Darren's blog and the other Cool Bloggers with inane comments, without doing a single thing that Darren recommends his readers spend their time pursuing.
In a nutshell Darren - why have I succeeded doing the exact polar opposite to what you and your Third Tribe friends postulate as "expert" advice. I don't do a thing you recommend. And I'm more successful at making money online than any of your readers. Ironically I also have succeeded by your own blogging standards - social status - what you teach your readers to chase. And I got it using my methods without ever having to waste a moment blogging, without using social media, guest posting or networking. My readership came as a byproduct of search engine traffic - not Digg or Twitter - and has never been the focus of what I do. I build targeted traffic that makes me money. I tell people how to do it. They become readers because my methods work. They work for everyone - not just the genetically talented. They are repeatable. And they produce income. A little or a lot - depends on the personal traits of the user but the method works. It worked 5 years ago and it works today. You don't promote anything today that you did 5 years ago - why is that? Doesn't work anymore? Never worked then? You promote a product a week and forget about it faster than it takes to ask for a refund.
Let's talk about what you are selling. A paid forum. What nuggets of wisdom and sure fired measurable advice are you now releasing inside a paid forum that hasn't been said a thousand times before on your blog or the sad collection of followers you have copycatting you? You are selling your good will - join my forum and get to be my friend. Maybe it will make you famous too? Not anymore than all those hapless guest posters you have writing free content for your site. Nice btw - they do the work, get a little blip in their readership for a day, never notice the traffic never comes back and whatever traffic they do manage to wrestle out of your readership doesn't spend a dime. And they come back for more because sooner or later they are going to get "famous" posting on ProBlogger. I'm still waiting for one to emerge. Can't wait till you actually produce one and they casually ask... um, where's the money?
And what nuggets of wisdom will you be sharing on The Third Tribe that doesn't rank getting mentioned in your paid forum? Or on your blog? Or in your ebook? Just how many memberships and ebooks and programs do your readers have to buy before they get to the good stuff Darren. I know - you are a nice guy. People say so all the time. The inference being that a nice guy would only be selling me a membership because he really cares about me succeeding. Selling me two memberships for the same info must mean he really, really cares about me. Right? Oh and right after he got me to buy his ebook. Man Darren must just love me as he never stops finding ways to keep charging me for the same info. And not a one time fee either - he prefers to remind me how much he cares by charging me all over again every month. Gosh.
We all know how Internet Marketing changes daily and what worked yesterday won't work tomorrow so we are sure that each month Darren is going to update us on the latest cutting edge techniques. Thing is - what worked for me last month and last year still works today and will next month. That's why I don't post much. How many times can I tell my readers the same thing? I'm just amazed that all these social media bloggers can keep finding new ways to make money online...
A cynic might ask why you can't provide all the info in one place. A cynic might surmise that the goal is to sell memberships and that you really don't care all that much who succeeds or fails. Oh you care in a general "I hope people don't think I'm a scammer" way but you really don't lose sleep over the fact that your membership sites aren't really going to do anyone a lot of good. Your selling hand holding, untested theories and banal conversation about esoteric nonsense that sounds interesting but has no bearing on a persons ultimate success as an Internet Marketer. You know those expert conversations extolling why you just "have" to have your own domain and Brand if you want to make money online. Sure. Whatever. Wasn't it your expert assistant who made the comment that free hosted blogspot blogs couldn't rank in the search engines? Isn't she moderating your forum and giving out opinions like the one just mentioned. She doesn't even know that two blogspot blogs outrank you (and everyone else) in your own niche. And you don't mind taking money from noobs to listen to her wisdom.
Darren you are spending your Goodwill at a rapid pace lately. You have told me to buy Teachings Sells and join up with some guy named David Risley and learn to make 6 figures blogging... (sure), and spend money joining your forum and buy anything Yaro Starok pimps and now I need to give you more money for yet another membership site. What gives? You guys can't just lay it all down in one place? Shouldn't your ebook take care of everything I need to know? Why doesn't it?
Are you having trouble making money off of your fame - sure seems like it. Seems the only bastion left to try these days is selling memberships. Sad.
Darren you had the gall to peg Internet Marketers into one of your tribes. The thing is you have Blinders on that make you think that you and the rest of your social blogging friends are internet marketers. I'm an Internet Marketer and I don't fit into any of your tribes. I'm not a Blogger selling to Bloggers - you are and that is all you do. Your sales page is a total injustice to all of us that are real Internet Marketers - we have nothing in common with your pathetic tribes, we don't use any of your methods and we don't spend our time selling crap to people who don't need it or it doesn't work. We don't chase social traffic and we don't sit around waiting for the refunds to come pouring in. They don't because we sell stuff that people are searching for, need and use. That's internet Marketing.
Selling memberships to noob bloggers proposing to teach them how to be a better blogger is not a business model. It is a failed attempt to squeeze whatever limited amount of money you can out of a noob without providing them with any concrete or tangible results. They will hang out for a few months and leave once it becomes apparent that nothing new is being talked about and nobody is making money listening to you or your friends. It's one thing to post fluff on your site - its free reading - and won't harm your image. Taking money for the same fluff will catch up with you though. You have crossed a line that will come back to haunt you as you are now walking the same road as the MMO list marketers who sell crap and get remembered for just that.
Blogging about blogging is crap. Trying to insinuate that what you do represents anything but a sad little corner of the internet Marketing landscape is indulgent and leaves me with nothing but contempt. You and your blogging tribes don't represent Internet Marketers. You and your methods have nothing to do with successful internet marketing in the broad sense. The day you teach one of your readers how to sell more Soap than me I'll be glad to apologize. As it stands right now you can't even teach them how to get more RSS readers than me... and I'm just a guy using a free hosted blogspot blog.
If you are a beginner reading this then stay clear of the Blogging Niche and any of the people mentioned as part of that crew. They sell cool aid and will waste your time. Learn the basic building blocks first - search engines, keywords and targeted traffic are what makes you money in every niche including blogging. It also works for and enhances every form of internet marketing. You won't hear about it reading bloggers like those mentioned or even from the A-List SEO crowd either. (A convoluted, self inflated bunch of social media twits in their own right - they are the experts and yet I dominate search engines without doing a damn thing they claim you just "have" to do. Stay away from SEO types - just as bad as listening to a Blogger.)
Before deciding you want to be famous take the time to learn how to build a site that can produce passive income while left on its own and neglected. Just in case the famous thing doesn't work out.
You will learn the basic building blocks for free just by reading this blog or pick one in my sidebar. Those links aren't paid for - they are people I know who practice what I preach. If you want a structured course then join the
Keyword Academy Coaching Program - yes a membership site but unlike Darren and Crew it's run by a group of Professional Marketers, not Bloggers and they teach the basics - step by step. And it gets results - meaning people make money. Don't know if they have made anyone famous yet - we'll leave that to Darren.
Cheers
Griz
