“PLR” Does that sound like the name of an airline to you, or maybe an old 70’s rock band?
Well, the PLR we’re dealing with stands for Private Label Rights. But instead of just being another common internet abbreviation, it’s one of the most valuable shortcuts an online business owner will find for creating fantastic content for their audience.
Private label products are actually all around you, but you probably haven’t noticed. Most grocery chains have store branded products on their shelves. They don’t manufacture those themselves. Most of them get these items from the same manufacturer, just the label is different.
Many, many years ago I worked in a small GE plant. We made parts for GE major appliances. Funny thing, some of those parts didn’t say GE on them. They had names like K-Mart, Magic Chef and others. They were made by General Electric, but they were private labeled to other brands.
You’ll also often see PLR material referred to as Done For You Content or White Label Content. A rose by any other name…
You need a lot of content for your websites and info products, right? I mean we’ve all heard that, “Content is King!”
To get that content you really only have two choices – write it yourself, or get someone else to do it for you.
Most of us start out writing our own stuff. It can be kind of fun – at first. Just you and your computer making the world a better place.
It takes a lot of time. Yeah, you’ll get faster as you do more of it. Still over time, as your need for content increases, writing all that stuff can be a pain in the butt.
You can hire ghostwriters.
So what’s it going to cost you to have a blog post written?
“Blog rates per-post vary greatly depending on your needs. You can expect to find a writer in the $25 to $150 range for one article. A lot of this depends on how much time and effort goes into creating the content.” –
https://sproutsocial.com/insights/how-much-pay-bloggers/
Should You Hire a Ghost Writer?
Whether or not you hire a ghostwriter will depend on a few factors… and it has nothing to do with the quality of PLR or being a marketing snob. Let’s look at what really matters.
Are you already making money online?
Almost always, hiring a ghostwriter will cost you much more than purchasing private label rights content.
If you’re trying to build an online business and you’re on a very tight budget, you’re better off using PLR and editing it to make it unique – rather than forking out substantial sums to a freelance writer.
That said, if you’re already a successful marketer making good money online and you prefer to have your own writing team, then by all means you can hire ghostwriters.
Do NOT put yourself in debt to hire a ghostwriter. PLR can do the job just fine, if you use it well.
How much time do you have?
If you’re short on time and you need some content quickly to meet a publishing schedule… or you need some value-driven information for a last-minute email to your list, PLR will work in a pinch.
You’ll get access to the content immediately after purchase.
Hiring a ghostwriter takes time. Not only will you need to find a good one, but you’ll have to wait for them to deliver the content. So, time constraints may determine if you should hire a ghostwriter or not.
Do you need unique content?
This is a very important point. Google and other engines love unique content.
PLR content is usually not unique because several people may have bought the same content and posted it on their blogs. Since Google can’t rank all the similar content, it’ll probably rank the content that was posted by the person who used it first or it may decide based on the authority of the domain.
If you’re building niche sites and unique content is very important to you for search engine optimization (SEO), then you’ll need to hire a ghostwriter. Very often, marketers who mention about hiring freelance writers are doing it for SEO purposes.
However, if you’re driving traffic to your blog from YouTube, Pinterest or other platforms, SEO is only of secondary importance. You won’t really need unique content and will be able to use PLR.
There’s no right or wrong answer here. It all depends on the purpose of the content.
What’s your topic?
PLR sellers sell PLR to make money. Because of this, they often create content in niches that are wide and have a lot of demand. This will ensure that they sell as many copies of their PLR as possible.
This is the main reason why there’s no shortage of PLR content for topics like weight loss, online marketing, yoga, health niches and so on. There’s massive demand in these niches.
However, if you’re in a narrow and very specific niche, it may be almost impossible to get PLR content for your topic. You’re not going to find any PLR sellers creating an entire content package for ‘plastic extrusion moulding’.
It’s not financially prudent for PLR vendors to create content on topics that only have one or two buyers. If you need content for the really long tail keywords, you’ll need to hire a ghostwriter in this case. They’ll have to spend time researching and understanding the topic to do it justice.
You can use both!
The good news is that using PLR and hiring a ghostwriter are not mutually exclusive activities. You can use both.
Get a ghostwriter for unique content on your blog, but use a PLR report as a lead magnet. You’ll save yourself some money.
Use PLR content in your emails, or turn them into videos for your video marketing. PLR can be used for a multitude of purposes. You don’t always need unique content.
As long as your content is informative, engaging and accurate, you’re good to go – and many PLR bundles satisfy these requirements. So, use PLR when you can and hire a ghostwriter when unique content is crucial.
Unlike ghostwritten articles, you’ll pay much less for PLR (approximately one dollar per article), because others are purchasing the same articles to use, too. (I’ll show you how to stand apart from all those other users in a bit.)
What About Free Article Sites?
Many years back it was a common practice for marketers and bloggers to get content on free article reprint sites. There were many of these sites, but EzineArticles.com was probably the biggest and most well known. It is one of the few still around today.
At these sites you can download an article and publish it on your website. You can find some well written articles on the best of these places. You have to use the article as is, and leave the original author’s info, as well as link back to the original in most cases.
For the authors this was like guest blogging on a bigger scale. Every site that used their articles had to link back to them. It was a link building bonanza. Some authors cranked out articles by the thousands.
Marketers got to load up their sites with well written content, often expert level content, for free.
It was win-win. Until Google decided to stop counting those links. And to only index the first publisher of the article. Poof! SEO from free articles was gone.
Unlike free reprint articles, you can edit the PLR content you purchase and you do not have to link to an author.
What is PLR exactly?
Just some of the reasons to use PLR products. (Click to view larger version)
In its simplest version, you can purchase articles or reports that have been written in advance.
The PLR site owner sells these articles or reports (or videos, ebooks, etc.) with special rights that allow you to edit them and use them as if you’d written them yourself (although there may be certain restrictions).
So, the PLR, or Private Label Rights, is the means by which a business owner, like you, can purchase rights to content created by someone else, and then use that content in a variety of ways as your own.
PLR is actually a branch of the larger world of licensed products.
PLR content is available in scores of topic areas, from health and fitness, to internet marketing, to parenting, to pet training, and everything in between. Good PLR is written by professional, native-language speakers.
You, as a business owner, can purchase single pieces of content or packs of articles at a relatively low price, and then use them for your website, blog, newsletter, podcast, etc.
Some Questions About PLR
“Is this legal?”
If the content is created and sold with the express intent of offering it as PLR, then you are legally permitted to adapt, use, and disseminate the information, according to the specific rights you’ve been granted.
“Why would anyone sell PLR? How can they possibly make any money?”
The answer is in volume. They may charge only a dollar or so per article, but by selling multiples of the same article to many different business owners, they make their money in numbers.
“What happens if a bunch of people purchase the same articles and publish it via their websites or newsletters – won’t their customers notice, or get mad that they’re using someone else’s material?”
Well, here’s the real secret about PLR. You need to see it as a starting point for your content. Sure, you could cut and paste it into your blog or ezine as-is, but savvy business owners know they need to put their own spin on PLR to make it really work.
We’ll cover more about how to do that in the following sections, but for now, what you need to know:
- PLR is legal
- PLR is easy
- PLR is effective
- PLR needs to be “massaged” into a format that fits your brand and voice
PLR is a great tool for any business owner, regardless of niche or market.
Will Using PLR Make Google Penalize My Site for Duplicate Content?
If you don’t have time to read the entire article – the correct answer is NO!
Google will NOT penalize your site for duplicate content just because you use private label rights content (PLR).
There’s so much confusion over this issue that it’s not even funny. Thousands of PLR buyers worry about the Google bogeyman penalizing their site before they’ve even used the PLR content yet.
Cast your fears aside. Using PLR is perfectly safe.
You must understand what the duplicate content penalty is. If you take a single PLR blog post and post it on your blog ten times, you have duplicate content.
You’re probably wondering why people would do something so insane. The answer is simple. They’re trying to game the system.
They’ll create 10 different headlines for the same article and post each different headline as a blog post… but the posts’ content will be the SAME. This is duplicate content.
They’re trying to rank in the search engine results and throwing whatever they can at the wall to see what sticks. Most of the time, the only thing that sticks is the duplicate content penalty that Google unceremoniously grants them.
Avoid trying to scam a billion-dollar company. It’s not going to work. Your site just might end up blacklisted.
If you’re using PLR correctly and only posting each article once on your site, you’ll be fine. It’s important to stay organized with your PLR content so that you don’t accidentally post the same content twice.
Using PLR is almost similar to websites which publish syndicated news articles.
You’ll notice that news from popular news organizations such as Reuters or Associated Press are displayed across thousands of sites online.
The content is literally the same. Nothing is altered or changed. Yet, none of these sites are penalized because the SAME CONTENT APPEARING ON DIFFERENT SITES DOES NOT cause a duplicate penalty strike.
Only when the SAME CONTENT APPEARS REPEATEDLY ON THE SAME SITE are you penalized for duplicate content.
Hopefully, the words in bold make the distinction clear. Feel free to use PLR content on your site. It’s one of the best ways to populate your site quickly and easily.
If you’re hoping to rank for certain keywords, it would be best to either write unique content targeting the keyword/s you wish to rank for… or rewrite about 51% to 55% of your PLR article and optimize it well so that Google views it as unique content and ranks it.
The problem with ranking PLR content is that several people who bought the same content will be using it too. While most PLR buyers never use the content they purchase, enough of them do to compete with you.
Very often, most of them will just copy and paste the PLR content as it is without changing anything.
Usually, the first one to post the PLR content will get noticed by Google. Everyone after that will not really matter because Google already took note of the content.
This is why you’ll need to make some changes before you use your content.
Make Your PLR Content Different!
- Come up with a new title for the PLR article (very important)… and rewrite about half the content so it becomes unique.
- Sprinkle related keywords in your content.
- Add in your own opinions.
- Use references.
- Add quotes, etc.
Doing all of this will help to make your content different from the original PLR you’ve purchased. Get a few links pointing to your new article and your chances of ranking in the search results will be much higher.
This is how you should use PLR to add content to your site and also rank in the SERPS.
You’ll be killing two birds with one stone.