When Two Tribes Go To War… Which Online Tribe Are You?

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The words of the iconic Frankie Goes To Hollywood song “Two Tribes” just about sum up the storm that’s brewing in the “make money online” world, with one tribe being the Internet Marketers and the other being the professional bloggers….

But before I tell you that story…first a bit of background…

Last weekend I went to Mark Anastasi’s ListBuilding Masterclass which, I have to tell you, was rammed to the rafters and a “who’s who” of internet marketing.  This was amazing in itself because this was a free three days, and usually when you give tickets away for free, you usually get less than 50% of the registrants turn up, while on Day 2, you only get 70% of those who were there on Day 1, with Day 3 being only 50-70% of those on Day 2.

In fact I think there might have been MORE people there on Day 3 than Day 1, as it was a Sunday!  The crowd was definitely a high proportion of self employed and business people with the employed forming perhaps a third?

Contrast  this hungry, up for it crowd at the Thistle Hotel with a much quieter little gig over the other side of town, which had been billed as a Wealth Creation seminar and was, unfortunately the gig I was booked to speak at!

The numbers  expected are usually 50- 100, only 30 odd showed up and when they found out that I was speaking on internet marketing, half left, having already booked themselves onto the stock trading workshop they wanted.

Great!  So I delivered my best material to a crowd of …….about 17.  I think they liked it!

And do you know what was interesting?  Every single person in that room was employed and looking for something to do outside their day job.  You would have thought that Internet Marketing would have been more of a passing interest?

Even more interestingly, I was told that general Wealth Creation was not attracting the numbers it did two years ago, and that, to even remotely fill the room, they had had to mail their stock trading list.  This company have apparently suspended their property investing workshops altogether due to lack of interest in property investment currently (due itself to lack of access to mortgages).

This is exactly the experience we have had at The Money Gym.  Two years ago everyone wanted property, now, according to one of our recent surveys, nobody wants a million pound property portfolio, everyone wants a business, ideally one that they can do from anywhere in the world.

I think the difference between these two seminar promoters is simply their lists.  One has a huge list of internet marketers & biz opp seekers with a great relationship with their list, with the other having a huge list of aspiring stock traders mainly still in their day jobs, some of whom are interested in internet marketing and property, but who doesn’t build a personal relationship with their list at all as far as I can see.

Which totally bears out the whole message of the weekend at Mark’s event actually, Niche list building and building a GREAT relationship with that list is absolutely crucial.  Mark does that very well, sharing video snippets of his life in Cyprus and travelling around the world speaking on IM and List Building via his YouTube channel.

So I trundled back to Mark’s room at the Thistle which was rocking (and very hot!) with 600+ people eager to learn how to build a list, and how to turn that list into an income of $1-$3 per subscriber a month that most internet marketers talk about as the norm.

Biggest learning of the weekend for me?  That there is a ravening hungry horde of people out there who want to learn how to make money online, they are business people and they are willing to invest in their own online startup, with the most money being spent on “Done For You” systems.  Many of the speakers delivered great content (some less so) but all the speakers did very well with their offers at the end of the 90 minutes.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t mind people giving me great content and then making me an offer of helping me further – as long as the product/coaching offered is good quality.  I feel that, had I invested in a system/mentor in the early days, I would have made much more money much more quickly, online.

But that’s not how the professional blogging / social networking community feel – oh no!

They liken Internet Marketers and people who organise big “Sell Fest” seminars like World Internet Summit and Mark’s events to MLM salespeople.

Which was a bit of a shock as I’ve spoke at World Internet Summit twice and would have loved to be speaking for Mark.

While the pro-bloggers (not to be confused with Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net) cum social networkers also want to make money online, they felt that the way they do it is superior to the way most Internet Marketers do it.  However, they also acknowledge that many of their community don’t’ make ANY money……..much like the newbies in the IM world ironically if they choose the wrong guru to follow or programme to invest in.

However, they come to a different conclusion about why they is, to me.  They say it’s because the IM’ers are totally scamming the newbies with phony systems and false promises .

Some of my favourite gurus in the IM world, Frank Kern, Jeff Walker and Rich Schefren are coming in for some heavy attack, and it’s getting downright offensive some of the things being said.

I’ve bought into two of Rich’s programmes, BGS and GPS and and they are EXCELLENT (dare I say life changing?) and I bloomin’ love Frank Kern, especially since seeing the Core Influence DVD.  He inspires me to be even MORE authentic on my blog and to design my business to suit me, so that I’m happy while delivering it, while Rich Schefren is currently writing a series of blog posts about how to really know and understand your customers and how to ethically come up with solutions to their pain and problems and then sell it them effectively.

I know that the reason most newbies in BOTH camps don’t’ make the big money is twofold:

  1. Most of them don’t’ do anything at all and of those who do….
  2. They don’t do NEARLY enough work, even if they realise how much is involved in being successful – a blog post a week and a tweet a day does not floods of traffic make.

Today some of the pro-bloggers have launched a membership club / social networking site for people who don’t want to be among the unsuccessful pro-bloggers OR among the scammed and scamming IM’ers.

It’s called The Third Tribe and I’ve joined of course.  Very elegantly done and a nicely presented, non-salesey offer at an affordable price.

I want to be an ethical internet marketer, who speaks for big crowds and makes a great living selling my internet marketing mentor programme “Hidden Star To Superstar”.

I want to be known as an authentic, prolific blogger who writes well and is not afraid to address the “personal that is general” according to Rich’s blog post today.

I want to sit happily in the middle and not be in between the “Two Tribes That Go To War” because in FGTH’s immortal words “A point is all that you can score (Score no more, score no more)

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