Third Tribe Marketing - Review of Third Tribe Marketing

Third Tribe Marketing hit my inbox a little under a month ago - very soon there will be a lot of gushing "go buy it now" Third Tribe Marketing reviews, I'll explain why in a moment. It seemed like a good topic to write a hub on because I suspect the marketing pitch distinguishing themselves from traditional "obnoxious" Internet marketing would have a great number of hubbers who tend towards the social side of online marketing rather than the hard core "make money online" crowd. The Third Tribe Marketing program pitches to those who consider themselves somewhere in between the "obnoxious sales letter crowd" and the "kumbaya loving social media crowd". That would all be well and good - but they are also promising to teach you "Online Marketing Strategies That Work (Period)" - and I am concerned that they are not delivering value for money - read on to find out why.

If you want the short version - no I am not recommending Third Tribe Marketing and you won't find my affiliate link for it in this review - and here's why.

Third Tribe Marketing Review

Third Tribe Marketing has been launched as an expensive ($47/month) membership site. The people behind this read as the A-list of bloggers: Brian Clark (copyblogger), Darren Rowse (problogger), Chris Brogan (Thesis theme). Some of you will have heard those names. If any of you have actually made money by following their advice I'd love to hear from in the comments. I know that the advice I got from them pretty much made me quit Internet Marketing the first time.

You would have thought that these people who all have well-established blogs - would already have provided all the required information for free. And Darren Rowse already has a paid forum - so what value add are we seeing with the Third Tribe?

Third Tribe Marketing Promises

• An online webinar or audio class each month.
• The Quick Start Guide to Making Money Online.
• Building a Business Around a Blog
• Live Q&A
• Interactive Forums
• Special Deals

So lets go through each of these and see what I have seen already.

Online Audio

This has not really kicked off yet as in the first month the audios have been the ones I describe below - one can, I suppose hope for some structured instruction - but I am not holding my breath.

The Quick Start Guide to Making Money Online.

This one featured a hapless blogger  who discovered he could make more money setting up blogs for other people in exchange for the affiliate company's hosting than earning Adsense income from "funny posts" - yeah like no kidding! As many hubbers have discovered - there is a real skill in writing pages for Adsense - and funny posts won't do it - keyword researched and focused ones will.

Here's my quick start guide to making money online:

• sell the stuff in the back room you never use;
• get some freelance writing work
  
• use craiglist or gumtree to advertise some real services (dog walking, window washing) to your local community.

Yeah I know its not very sexy and will be hard work - but you did want to make some money didn't you?

Building a Business Around a Blog

This is the big item in the first month at Third Tribe Marketing.

1. Brian (Clark) interviews Darren (Rowse)
2. Sonia (Simone) interviews Chris (Brogan)
3. Sonia interviews Brian

So yes you get over three hours on how Darren, Brian and Chris have made their money. That's nice - how does it apply to you the person new to the Internet trying to figure it out - not quite sure to be honest. There are some "work sheets" - but asking someone to identify their customers unmet needs is a bit of an ask when they don't yet have a blog or even a clue about what they are selling. This is very quickly turning into the whole Teaching Sells mantra (also by Brian Clark) Live Q&A

Well there was one last week and I have listen to it (its recorded if you can't make the time) - because there is no real focus on how to develop an online business the questions are all over the place and very general.

Interactive Forums

Oh yes the forums are very active - how long it will last I'm not quite sure. But as quite a number of people are very keen to "network" it may last for a while - whether the networking will be of any use - well yes exactly my point. I am not a huge fan of networking - a lot of it is so artificial as to be laughable - just like over-priced seminars off-line. The seriously scary thing is just how little the owners are active in the forums - I ran the figures on the first 23 days and a whopping 0.02% of the threads had been started by Chris, Darren, Sonia or Brian. One gets the distinct impression that they are reading the forums to see what add-on tool they can offer you next.

Special Deals.

Sounds good doesn't it? Special price for your loyalty for paying out your $47/month for the forum. In practice there has already one new product offered by one of the principals (at additional cost) and I expect to see more coming soon.

Third Tribe Marketing Won't Make You Money

Unless you already have a freelancing/consulting business running - then a bit of subtle forum marketing may well be worth the membership - the forum allows signatures and the readers are hungry for information and do tend to click through on my stats.

If you are new to making money online - then I will once again pimp The Keyword Academy -

• yes it costs $33/month (first month is a $1/trial) - but for that price you get:
• detailed videos (and transcripts) of how to do keyword research and setup WordPress sites;
• weekly Q&A webinar
• monthly content webinar
• link building tools (which they couldn't easily pay $33 for these alone!)
• an active form which stays on topic and is actively moderated and active selling is only allowed in one section; Check out the detailed review on the right!

If you really want to find out how the Third Tribe Marketing founders made their money - then pay out the $47 /month to find out. Me I'd keep my dollars in my pocket. Learn SEO and keyword research and you can dominate most niches and make money without having to have the book deal or the speaking. Oh and the reson for the expected avalanch of gushing Third Tribe reviews - they are paying affiliates 33% for each sign up … how very old-style, first tribe of them!