Marketing PLR Articles

I'm running out of ideas for marketing some new PLR article sets, and could use some ideas. Here are the basics:

1. They're business-oriented.

2. I'm not selling huge sets like a lot of the simply re-written packs... they're completely original, being sold to a limited number w/o resell rights so they'll stay somewhat exclusive (meant as actual content and not to be used to make money distributing), and unlike a lot of others they're actually written by a professional business writer.

3. They're $20 / set with 10 articles in each set... maybe a bit higher than some, but again, that's because they're limited, completely original, and written by a professional in the niche rather than just based on others' research.

4. The two available packs so far are "starter packs." Basically, the way I'm marketing them is pushing them towards either beginner webmasters wanting to start a website, or experienced webmasters wanting some startup content in the niches of Internet marketing or starting an online business. I'm going to be creating other sets with 5 articles each to cover more specific topics w/o those umbrellas. Essentially, the idea is to try to release packs in a sort of progression, so people buying the starter packs can grow their site naturally with the newer packs as they're released.

I haven't marketed very heavily yet, but I'm really having a tough time figuring out the best method (which is my own fault for jumping into it as an experiment w/o my normal planning). The two biggest groups I'd expect to be hitting are new webmasters (not ones with already-established sites, at least not until I move on to the more specific sets), and work-at-home mom groups, where a lot of people are trying to find ways to earn some money online.

While I can find wahm communities and such, where would be a good place to target those new webmasters? I'm considering adwords, but I'd rather try other things first (I've never advertised a site for sales or traffic, so it's a last resort).

Also, do you think the whole "progressive sets" thing is worth sticking with, or should I just forget that and stick w/ random business topics in each set instead of beginner levels going to more advanced... if you were building your first website or just a new one, what would be preferable from the buyer's perspective?

Thanks for any feedback or ideas.

Jenn

 

Make a sales thread on dp

Dp = Mass sales

 

I think you're product would work well at warriorforum.com/forum. Check the WSO (warrior special offer) section.

 

lol I do have sales threads on DP. I've made a couple of sales, but not much so far.

I did mention it in one or two lists on warriorforum, where they were asking about new PLR sets. The only problem with the WSOs is that I'm not willing to offer any kind of big discount over there. Even if I sold the max, the price is set to equate that to the bare minimum I accept for one custom article (that's why I'm doing the experiment from a writer's perspective in the first place). So lowering it more than it already is ($2 per article where a nonexclusive one from me is $.35 / word) would just make it not worth the time to produce anymore sets. Looking back, I probably should have charged more to begin with so I could do that. I don't know... perhaps I'll offer a package deal for both there or something. We'll see.

Thanks for the ideas.

 

Oops, forgot about that "special offer" part. Thanks for the rep!

 

Good Morning Jenn,

Speaking from experience at the Warrior Forum, the price for a set of PLR articles is directly related to the distribution quantity. The lower the distribution the more you can charge per set and vice-versa. You may want to test a couple of WSO's at different price and distribution points to find the sweet spot that works for you.

As to progressive article packs - this works extremely well. After your WSO sells out, you can direct sell the smaller, progressive sets as PLR to your new customers before paying to run another WSO.

I do this at Niche Mania - we create a website on a given topic and release it with ten PLR articles. We then follow up with additional article and graphics packs to help the customers expand their sites further. It works well and as I said, you need to test this.

One caveat that I feel compelled to mention is marketing these from the standpoint of a professional writer versus a standard PLR product. With absolutely no disrespect intended towards your writing abilities, you have to understand the PLR market in IM and specifically IM forums.

The purpose of PLR is to allow web site owners to obtain decent content at a lower cost by investing some of their time in re-writing the articles to make them as unique as possible from the others who purchased them. Because of this, PLR articles are just never going to command the kind of price point that professional writers could normally set.

PLR articles do not need to be “Publisher Quality” – they need to be accurate, on topic, decently written and of course spell and grammar checked. But remember your audience – you’re not selling to News Week or Cosmo, but rather a bunch of web masters who aren’t going to pay more than the going rate regardless of the skill of the author.

I know from experience that a lot of professional writers struggle with this – but they’re not writing for publishers and they’re sharing their work among multiple customers. If they want to work in IM and succeed at marketing PLR articles, they’ve got to swallow their pride and set aside their artistic abilities somewhat and focus on volume sales. If you can do that, you can literally clean up because there is an enormous market for good quality PLR articles.
Again, I want to really emphasize that this has nothing to do with your own abilities or the normal rate you could charge for custom articles. It is entirely driven by the PLR market itself.

Consider this though as well – by conforming to the lower price point, making the difference up through volume sales and then marketing your custom article writing to your new PLR customers, you can have the best of both worlds!

Good luck to you with your experiment

 

I've definitely already "swallowed my pride" with these pieces by charging $2 per article. I'm not marketing based on a comparison of my normal rates as a random business writer that charges a lot. I'm marketing based on that, because I have a reputation that brings in requests literally daily for me to create Web content, with at least 95% of those potential clients not being able to afford my work. This is simply done to offer an affordable alternative, and a chance at them being able to alter it to make it unique. I'm definitely not trying to market it to the "typical" PLR crowd.

Also, the main point of me even spending time on this is that it's an experiment. I'm heavily networked with professional writers and amateur writers alike. Periodically I try something new to test its potential profitability. If the PLR sets couldn't, over time, earn at least the bare minimum professional rate I'd charge for a nonexclusive piece, then the ROI will never be worth it, and that's what I'll report back when all is said and done. I don't honestly have any expectation that PLR work will ever be a viable alternative to the ways I typically find my writing work, and how I teach others to when I can. I'm just trying to put an honest effort into it to give it a chance before I comment back to that group.

I'm still not interested in going the WSO route right now... maybe at another point. I just offered a weekend special on a combo pack of the first two sets here on DP. I'm already uncomfortable offering a discount at all, which already puts the potential of hitting close to my minimum rate totally out of range. So if I'm going to do it, I'd rather do it here because it's where I'm active, and where people are more likely to know a bit about my background. If I don't get it down to 50 sets w/in a couple of weeks, maybe I'll give a WSO a shot to try to "clean up" the sets a bit.

Thanks for the feedback.