When it comes to making business on the Internet or through the Web, there are two major recognized “tribes”. The first and most noisy one is composed of the Internet Marketers: they are aggressive, they have always some system that will make you rich in the blink of an eye, they will only require you to pay a high ticket to get into it. And when you do get in, you find out that it is either hype or that it is very difficult to make it work for you. They are the one making a lot of money while you basically work 90 hours a week trying to build a system that will make money “while you sleep”.

The second tribe is composed of social media cool fellows: they cherish relationships, values and community, they reject hype and aggressive sales tactics, they like to give more than they take, but they are actually not making much money if any at all, and they have little sense on how business should be conducted.

I have exaggerated the description here so to make them stand out, there are of course Internet marketers that actually deliver very valuable content and there are cool social media guys who do make a lot of money with a “regular” business that they promote through social media, but they are very few, on both sides.

So what happens to the rest of us? What happens to the people who do have something to say or share on the Web? To the people who have business models that can take advantage of the huge promotional potential of the Internet, but don’t want to join either side?

Welcome to the third tribe. It is a concept that is taking shape right now and that has gained the attention of some of the top bloggers on the planet as well as of some “enlightened” internet marketer. The third tribe is composed of those people who try to follow the rules, who value good relationships, who provide quality original content, but who also want to make some real money in the process.

I believe that every modern entrepreneur belongs to this tribe by definition and there are already many examples of people that are leveraging very good content and services and some wise Internet marketing techniques to produce good results. Going back to “The Art of Money Getting” by P.T. Barnum we see that rule number 17 says: “Be polite and kind to your customers” which includes, in modern wording, follow the rules of relationship building online, but rule 15 says that you also need to “Advertise your Business” so the third tribe is actually the Web answer to an ever lasting business need.

Roberto Mazzoni

P.S. The Third Tribe is a blogging and Internet Markerting tutoring project launched by Brian Clark and Darren Rowse, to leaders in the blogging industry. It is very innovative and quite inexpensive. Check it out clicking here (it is my affiliate link).