The Blogger Cycle of Stupid

An awful lot of bloggers fall into this trap. Recently, I heard it referred to as “the cycle of stupid”.

See, I have a mission. And simply put, bloggers will keep falling off the grid unless they exit this cycle of stupid. That doesn’t help the world. Nobody gains when you arrive at the almost inevitable end of the cycle of stupid – which is… quitting.

So, the cycle of stupid looks like this…

You start a blog. You follow all that advice about finding your niche based on your passion. So, you have this blog. Then, you spend a LOT of time messing around with themes, widgets, plug-ins – basically immerse yourself in technical things you don’t know anything about.

Months later, your blog is still a bit of a mess. But, you’ve resigned yourself to it and moved on with content. You might even start building a list. All your efforts then go into content creation and growing traffic. You figure you’ll “monetize” it once you get more traffic. Until then, you won’t even try because you won’t make much and you’re afraid to piss off your audience.

Congratulations, you’re on the cycle of stupid.

The cycle of stupid is when you spin your wheels building something which has no cash register. In other words, you’re building something with no way of returning value to you for your work. You’re building your own slave-driver.

Don’t feel bad if you’re on this cycle. Most bloggers are. However, it is time to do something about it.

If you have a blog and you’re not building a list, you’re on the cycle of stupid.

If you are building a blog and a list, but you have nothing to sell them and you never do anything to make money, then you’re on the cycle of stupid.

If you’re trying to build traffic – yet you have nothing to OFFER them, then you just might be…. on the cycle of stupid.

So how do you get off the cycle of stupid?

Create an offer.

Have something to offer people as they come to you. Give your blog a reason to exist other than for the purposes of occupying your time.

If you have a blog and you’re working to grow it, then immediately build two things:

1. A squeeze page to get people onto your email list.
2. An offer – something to SELL them. It can be your own thing or an affiliate product. But, you need an offer.

This is ground zero. From here, things grow and all the pieces start to come together.

But, unless you have these core fundamentals – a blog, a squeeze page, and an offer – you really haven’t yet created the basic building blocks of your empire. You’re on the cycle of stupid.

If you don’t have a blog, follow this tutorial on how to set up your blog.

If you don’t have a squeeze page, check out OptimizePress or Premise. I personally prefer Optimizepress, but both make child’s play out of building squeeze pages.

If you don’t have an offer, then sit and make it. It can be just an ebook. It doesn’t need to be long or involved. Just helpful.

We live in a weird economy right now. Things are happening. This is no time to stay on the cycle of stupid unless you just like the view from there.