My youngest son loves to collect baseball cards. He thinks nothing of plunking down $3.95 of my money for a packet of 12 cards. He’d do it every week if he could.
Ripping open the packet, he flips for an Ichiro Suzuki card. He knows the probability that it’s there is low, but that doesn’t stop him from buying whenever I give him the chance.
Buying private label rights (PLR) articles can have the same effect. You may be sorely tempted to whip out your VISA card the moment you find that great ‘deal’ on X number of articles at just pennies a piece — BUT, something deep inside is telling you that the probability of striking gold is slim to none.
The reasons for that are simple.
Most PLR content is produced by writers who are contracted and don’t speak fluent English. The articles are then re-written several times over by article spinners. THEN they’re all lumped into a package of over 700 articles – all for just $19.97!
At less than 3 cents U.S. an article, you may think you hit the PLR motherload. But, as you meticulously open each zip file and scan article after article, you realize that there isn’t even ONE you can use.
In other words, you just spent $20.00 on garbage that you wouldn’t post on an article directory, much less your own site.
For example, here’s a paragraph I found in an article in a discount Valentine’s Day PLR pack:
Lay out a blanket pm the floor of your living room to make it a special picnic desert for Valentine’s Day. Light candles around your living room to set the mood in the room for your special desert.
UGH!
Three spelling mistakes, superfluous ‘in the room’ phrase and YAWN, also incredibly boring. The rest of the article wasn’t any better.
You could spend countless hours rewriting (fixing) poor PLR like that, but should you… really?
Let’s look at this question from a time perspective. About once a week I serve up a chicken dinner for my family. My choices are to:
- Buy a whole uncooked chicken and invest at least an hour to clean, season and cook the chicken, OR;
- Spend an extra $1.50 to buy a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store which is clean, seasoned, roasted and ready to eat. (Note: There are at least 20 different things I can do with that chicken that requires very little work but produces a high quality delicious meal.)
The choice is simple.
I buy the rotisserie chicken and spend the hour I save not cooking, working on my business and making much more than that $1.50 ‘extra’ that I spent.
Plain and simple, your goal when buying private label rights packages should be to minimize the time you spend writing and use that time attending to the most important aspect of your business… marketing.
So, as with anything else in life, you get what you pay for — so stay away from those 3 cent articles!
Hi Rosalind! Great points.I guess 99% of all marketers have used PLR at some point and you can really do a lot of damage to your reputation by using poor quality PLR. Sometimes when I get the “writers block” I use a PLR, but then I re-write it completely and add my own points to it.
GREAT article on PLR material, this stuff is worthless, you have to write your own content in order to succeed online.
Hey tell your son to stop by my site, I teach people how to find good baseball cards in packs without opening them. That way he can get better cards for his 3.95!
You’re right about the quality affecting your own reputation. If it’s on your site guests look at it as yours
Rick
You know, you do have a choice when it comes to buying PLR. I am a PLR writer and I know a lot of other PLR writers who are like me- well educated, professional writers. I have a degree in journalism and make a living writing Web content and press releases. In no way are all PLR writers people who “don’t speak fluent English.” If you’ve found non-English-speaking PLR writers, simply don’t buy from them. Look elsewhere and find a site that has a professional at the helm. You really don’t have to look far.
yea.. i totally agree with you.
I’ve got some plr products in the past and all of them are crap!
spending more on quality stuff to save time is a mindset most people don’t have.
I had to laugh when I read this as I fell for that “great deal” a few years ago myself. The articles were so badly written that they made absolutely no sense what-so-ever. It was quicker for me to write from scratch than try to edit, let alone read these articles (although some of the gibberish was pretty funny). Lesson learned. I now shy away from all huge “great deal” packages. The same goes for those humongous e-book packages. Who in their right mind wants a harddrive filled with old crappy e-books that wouldn’t even sell on eBay for a penny a few years back? Someone who doesn’t know better.
Great article and pass the chicken please.
Cheap PLR is definitely worthless! I have tried to rework the ones I’ve gotten, and it took more time than it would have just writing a new one.
It is so true about PLR articles. Even if you take the time to re-write the article but stick to the main points, your heart will sink when you stumble across an article with the same main points.
1000 other people bought the same pack of articles and they are doing the same exact thing you are doing. Initially you may spend more time writing content from scratch but in the long run you’ll provide your readers a ton more value.
This line was realy interesting one – “set the mood in the room for your special desert. ”
Thats why I am ready to pay even more instead of going for these PLR ones. Sometime they make so attractive offer that you can’t resist.