I recently wrote an article about the rise of the private label rights industry - and some of the problems it causes. Hope some find it useful, and I would be interested to know of your own experiences with PLRs Private label rights are going from strength to strength. But, are they all they’re cracked up to be or is the potential driving the PLR boom overhyped and oversold? That’s what we’ll discuss in today’s topic, along with a sobering look into the realities of the PLR disease that continues to threaten the reputation of this potent industry. 1. Why PLR’s Have Taken Off Like A Kung Fu Panda… Unless you’ve been having tea on planet Krypton with supermans dad for 2 years, you’re obviously aware of the PLR boom and the insatiable appetite of the PLR market. Good private label rights are having a bull run that, currently, shows no signs of slowing. In all shapes and sizes of niches, private label rights material is highly sought after. And here’s why: - The BOOM that we’re seeing within the internet business niche has created a number of support industries. The PLR industry is one of them. The fact is, millions of new websites and businesses are coming online everyday – that means millions of new blogs, sites, ebiz reports, articles are being constructed…these all require base content, and PLRs are the fastest and most economical way of doing this. And, because online publishing requires the blog/site owner to create new content regularly, the demand for private label rights content just keeps increasing and increasing. - With a little tinkering, it’s possible to dress up a private label rights product as a completely new and unique product. Hence, PLRs appeal to information product developers who can publish a range of titles that are exclusive to their publishing house, at a greatly reduced outlay. - Cranking it up a notch, source code (or “PLR for software†if you’re not someone who has milk-bottle glasses and several editions of C++ books on their shelf) allows anyone to own their own unique software titles to resell to any given niche. The potential here is endless, because any given software can be modified and applied to any number of individual niches. For example, core software that creates a social network site (like a youtube or myspace clone) can be modified and marketed as a specific software for any number of specific social sites (eg social sites for bankers, accountant’s, marketers, and so on). - PLR’s allow people with zero experience to look like an expert. We all have a different area of expertise, and it’s very difficult to develop or write content in an area for which you have zero experience. So, for example, I have personally developed most of the content within my finance sites myself. That’s because I possess an intrinsic knowledge and experience of the investments and finance field – probably more so than the average Vice President at an investment bank (although, judging by the current state of the banking industry, so does my cat and by quite a distance). But, I know nothing of substance about the medical niche…so were I to develop an ebook on acne (for example), my choices would either be to get a specialist medical writer to do it, or source quality PLR on the subject. And, assuming you can find high quality PLR, it’s a lot easier to use this option than the latter. 2. The Problems With The PLR Industry – Zero Regulation Means Zero Quality Control That’s the trouble with any unregulated industry – and internet marketing & PLR certainly falls into this category – it attracts people who are out for the quick buck and could not care less about what dross they offer, or whoever gets hurt in the process. Let me tell you, regulation is not always the evil that many people believe it to be. Were it not for the shamelessly low levels of regulations in the banking sector we would not have seen a fraction of the toxic debts that the greedy city culture has lumbered the global economy with. We would not today be facing a recession, and the shops and houses around your neighbourhood would not be collapsing like a house of cards. Yet, the word “regulation†immediately makes the conspiracy theorists stand up and organise a march everytime a new CCTV camera goes up in the local high street. They should actually be happy because when done responsibly, regulation in most instances is a good thing. It prevents the lunatics from taking over the assylum, and as we've seen from the banking fallout this is not only desired but downright essential. No surprise then that I would welcome some level of regulation within our internet marketing & PLR industry. Unfortunately, our industry is largely unmonitored, and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. Thus, any halfwit with a copy of Word For Windows and a paypal account can effectively offer unpolished, unchecked private label rights, clearly written by someone to whom English is a hobby (and evidently not one they are particularly good at...no offense meant to those who don't have english as their first language). That irks me because it gives OUR industry a bad name everytime someone pulls on the trigger in good faith. It means that a percentage of the new people that join this newsletter come in not expecting the very best, but the very worst. And I think that’s very sad, for all of us. In case you’re wondering, I don’t think the majority of people provide especially bad stuff – there is in fact a lot of good PLR out there too…it’s just that there is enough BAD stuff for it to be a concern. The point is that ultimately, PLR is not about you or I. It’s about the end user – the PEOPLE who will come to your blog, or read your ebook. If all that they have is a collection of oddly constructed sentences loosely connected to their topic of interest that reads like it may or may not have been written by a loon, I very much doubt they’ll be reaching for the digital bookmark. I doubt you’ll achieve much credibility, and I very much doubt that your recommendations will be met with any real enthusiasm - do you? And therein lies the real tragedy – because that’s exactly what a well constructed private label rights product should set out to do. So be smart, and only ever use high quality private label rights. Anything else amounts to cheating your readers, and ultimately yourself.
Excellent article! This is a concern of many designers who are worried about their products being swallowed up by the half-assed lookalikes. It sucks that any Joe can grab a PLR and hash it out in a day and put a product out there that, realistically, looks like crap --- because it takes away from the people who put a lot of effort into theirs. How can the end-user differentiate between the good and the bad? They can't, it's trial and error basically, unless you have a known name behind you, and even then it's getting rediculous. I've seen these kind of things even on sites like Downloads dot com, obvious half-finished PLR released software. I know that in my experience of being an end-user, the enormous amount of "fluff" out there has turned me off from several niche markets, such as "computer registry cleaners," "speed up your pc software," and other programs that normally would be a good thing. But what we are left wondering, is if this product is legit? Are they going to steal my information? Is it safe to give these people my CC#? When an end-user isn't sure about the safety and security of a website, there is NO WAY they will ever pay for a service, and that's just a fact. With that in mind, it sucks, that lazy ass designers are pumping out millions of BS products, that detract from the hard work others do in making a legitimate and useful application/website.
Admittedly, I might be a little bit bias when it comes to PLR articles because I do content writing on the side to supplement some of my marketing campaigns, etc. But, realistically, I wouldn't trust PLR sites. The idea behind having PLR articles is that you should be getting something almost unique in theory. The problem though is that it isn't unique and other people will have the same content as you. If you are looking for a unique site that people are interested in, you need to have completely unique content. Ultimately, I think content writers are being underpaid right now. People in the BST section are doing it for $0.01 per word and it's hard for myself to justify doing it at that price but I do because i'm looking long-term on some of my other projects. My thinking on it though is that, why pay pennies for PLR articles that aren't actually unique when you can pay pennies for completely unique ones?