Third Tribe Marketing (‘Inside the Third Tribe’) is the latest membership site offering on the Internet blogging/marketing landscape. ‘Third Tribe’ is the brainchild of Darren Rowse, Brian Clark, Chris Brogran, and Sonia Simone. But will joining this membership site help you become a better, more successful blogger?
Background
The ‘Third Tribe’ creators use that term to describe the type of marketing they do. According to their definition, ‘Tribe One’ consists of Internet Marketers who “…use aggressive hype and obnoxious tactics to fool people into believing there really is a “get rich quick” magic bullet“. ‘Tribe 2′ is made up of the cool social media crowd that “…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“.
The ‘Third Tribe’ marketing approach attempts to find the middle ground in which the marketer attempts to establish relationships with site visitors and give them lots of great free content. In turn, the visitors will trust the marketer and buy products from them directly or buy other people’s products based on the marketer’s recommendation.
My Thoughts
When I look at myself, I tend to be more of a ‘relationship person’ when it comes to the Internet game. I’m definitely not a good sales guy, and I don’t write good salespages, and I don’t have a mailing list so I don’t believe the ‘Tribe One’ guys and gals would allow me entry into their club. Furthermore, I’ve only recently started using some of the social media services (I don’t even have a Facebook account) so I don’t think I qualify for membership in ‘Tribe Two’ either.
That is why I became very interested in the message behind the ‘Third Tribe’. So interested in fact that I joined the ‘Inside the Third Tribe’ membership site. At the time, the fee was $27 per month but it has now risen to $47 per month.
Anytime I join a membership site, I expect to have immediate access to existing material (ebooks, videos, audios, software, etc.). After all, I’ve given you my money – now what are you going to give me in return? But it seems like more and more membership sites are starting to operate on the principle of :
“Join now for a low fee. I don’t really have any content to give you but once I have a lot more money from the membership fees, then I can hire some freelancers to produce content for all of you that joined.”
In other words, the site members are funding the launch of the site itself.
Unfortunately, I got the same impression with the ‘Inside the Third Tribe’ membership site. There was a little content from one “seminar”. Personally, I wouldn’t call it a “seminar” because it consisted of an audio interview with their friend and fellow blogger, Johnny Truant. They also included a PDF version of the interview transcript, a short, not very useful action steps document, and some links to free DIY blogging content located on Truant’s blog. Needless to say, I was not very impressed with the “seminar content”.
It seems the lifeblood of membership sites today is an active forum. A membership site can be profitable for years if you can get a passionate group of people together in a forum who think they are SO lucky to be part of the crowd. It appears ‘Inside the Third Tribe’ is no different. The few times I visited the forum I read post after post from people exclaiming how great it was to be part of this very special community led by these very wonderful all-star Bloggers.
Bottom line: I decided the ‘Inside the Third Tribe’ membership was not right for me. I think the creators have come up with a clever message and a clever way to deliver their message but in the end, it’s all about making money – FOR THEM. In my opinion, this membership site is not going to help you become an all-star, rich and famous Blogger like Darren and gang. It might help you learn how to establish relationships with your blog visitors but you probably don’t need to pay $47 per month to learn it.
And finally, I came across the following post today. He doesn’t hold anything back in his opinions of the ‘Third Tribe’!
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