All marketers tell stories.
Stories are how we convince people to take that leap of faith – to give us their attention, subscribe to our content and, ideally, buy from us at some point.
That may sound a little slimy and manipulative until you consider that not everyone who tells stories is making stuff up.
Third Tribe Marketing* is about telling the true story of the benefits brought on by what you’re selling in a compelling and transparent way. It’s about teaching and providing value first, asking for the sale second.
The truth is that many marketers are charlatans, and online, where there’s still some anonymity, the gloves are off. If you’ve had any naive Utopian notions of the world a few years on the web will clear that up quite nicely.
How many “systems” for making money online have you come across?
How many of them do you think work?
Truly reliable methods for online marketing success are scarce. And there’s a good reason for that.
Scarcity begets value
Alchemy was the study of the transmutation of metals.
Think of it as a cross between blacksmithing, chemistry and witchcraft.
Most alchemists were trying to find the Philosopher’s Stone – a technique that would turn basic metals like lead into pure gold. This went on for some 2,500 years.
Since most guys were working with metal, some alchemists turned their focus to less obvious materials.
Like pee.
Hennig Brand was a German alchemist. And rather than try to create gold from lead or another metal (others had tried), Hennig focused his efforts on urine.
Hennig spent years working with urine. Letting it sit, combining it with other ingredients, heating it – it’s hard to imagine he had much of a social life.
Long story short: sorry kids, you can’t make gold from pee. Put away the measuring cups. (Though it did turn out you can make phosphorous.)
But what if Hennig had succeeded? What if he found a way to turn pee into gold? Wouldn’t he and his benefactors be rich beyond all imagination?
Maybe for a minute.
What the whole idea of turning something cheap and abundant, like pee, into gold misses is the fact that as soon as you take away the scarcity you take away the value.
In other words, you can’t turn piss into gold – but even if you could, you’d really be turning gold into piss at the same time (at least from a value perspective).
We’d all be peeing gold, and as soon as that was common-knowledge it’d be no big deal (and gold would be worthless).
And suddenly silver would be the metal to own.
The marketing parallel: as soon as an effective technique is popularized the market or loophole is flooded and the value evaporates.
Learn to enjoy the work
There’s some bad news: if you’re looking for easy money online you’re going to fail.
That isn’t to say that there isn’t money to be made. On the contrary: the web is the among the greenest of economic pastures. And it isn’t going anywhere.
But you’ve got to do the work – and, more importantly, you’ve got to enjoy the work in the mean time. Because guess what comes after the work?
More of it.
That can be a good thing so long as you’re getting into work that is right for you.
It’s never going to fall in your lap. If you’re doing things right chances are you’ll be facing a hard slog for the first year before you start gaining momentum. That’s reality. Show me a simple/cheap/fast way to overnight success, and I’ll show you a stinking pile of dung.
The real value here, the scarcity you can achieve, is in being one of the few who pushes through the dip.
Get equipped and get going
So the idea is to forget looking for a system and start looking for tools.
Where do you get the tools? It’ll depend on what you’re after. But as a start, here are two blogs that I never miss:
Both will send you in good directions.
These are survival guides. Money systems are treasure maps – which are always either bogus or in your hands too late. Either way, no doubloons. The survival guide, on the other hand, will save your ass.
Chances are you’ll take all of the great advice and tools out there and screw up anyway. Repeatedly. There’s simply no way to tell what’s going to work for you. The only way to move forward is to try something, fail, adjust, try something, fail, adjust…
After a while of that you’ll start to find bits of gold in the pile of coal you started with.
If that all sounds disagreeable to you feel free to seek out the next foolproof system. We’ll still be here* when you’re ready.
* Affiliate Link to the Third Tribe Marketing program.
