Tell Them If It’s Not Private Label Rights
Check out this cool e-mail I received from Sherm Cohen, who was a student in Product University 1.0 and the storyboarder for Spongebob Squarepants...
Subject: Thanks for the info in the footer!
Hey Robert...I just bought your 100 Time saving tips...I just wanted you to know that I would not have bought if I hadn't read THIS in your footer info:
"The report you are about to download is completely and originally created by Robert Plank... It's not a PLR product or resale rights product. There's NOTHING remotely like it available anywhere else, online or offline"
I've gotten burned in the past on buying resell products from people I trust, so that info was very helpful.
Hope you're doing well...--Sherm
Just having that little blurb at the bottom made who knows how many extra sales? I will tell you right now that there is a huge stigma with selling resale rights products. I'm not ashamed to admit that a while ago, one guy from the Warrior Forum bought into a membership site of mine filled with nothing but Private Label Rights content and one guy hated it so much, he canceled within an hour and posted on a bunch of review sites (Traffic Bad Boys).
With another membership site (IM Productivity Secrets) Lance and I hosted a bunch of webinars and made the recordings available within the private blog. In between webinar replays, we posted PLR content we had made into video... and one guy quit, telling us if we had only posted the webinar replays, he would have stayed! But the extra PLR content we threw in there to help members pass the time drove people away.
In these days of Private Label Rights recycling, if you have a product that's 100% original, mention that in the sales letter. Resale rights and private label rights products are better as:
- Advertised bonuses.
- Surprise bonuses.
- Rewritten into "real" products.
- Upsells.
- After-the-sale followup e-mails, if the license allows it.
What's your best tip about differentiating a 100% original product of your versus a resale rights or private label rights product?
Filed in: Copywriting
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Hey Super Robert,
PLR is good when you want to write about a specific issue (for example, asbestosis) and want to lead with an introduction about human health and the lungs.
Using MODIFIED (not dump n’ go) PLR for the intro portions shaves time off putting something together… and still leaves the reader with the red meat they are after in exclusive content.
I have some other good tips, Robert… but maybe I should leave them for a seminar of my own? 😀
as Robert likes to say… “sometimes I write a response to a post that’s SO GOOD that I feel it would be a waste to use as a post….”
Izzy
Hey Robert,
It has been a while since I commented on your blog. Anyway, I like plr articles I have a bunch on my hard drive. Yet, every time I try to make the article my own it still comes out looking like a plr article.
Maybe, it’s just me. Just knowing that it was written by someone else. So, I quit buying plr. I rather do the little bit of time in research then write the article myself.
I like your advice about letting the public know that your articles or product is or isn’t plr. I think I will use it on my blog, since I have seen a lot of blogs in the mlm arena using plr articles as posts. Nothing wrong with that. I rather read fresh content though.
William
Yes Robert,
I agree that original content is by far the best. A lot of what attracts your customers is your personality. PLR content just can’t reflect that.
In my own business, for a short time last year, I attempted using PLR to create some bonus materials quickly, and found it to be very frustrating.
First of all, I simply wasn’t able to find decent quality material that fit my niche. And then attempting to re-write what I did find to bring it up to par was just impossible. I find it much easier now to simply bang out my own content and it’s MUCH faster than working with the half-baked PLR garbage (thanks to your Time Management on Crack techniques!)
I’ve come to the conclusion that if you want to have a true business that provides quality information, you need to create your own content. Period.
Gabrielle
Robert,
Original content is necessary for the long-term value of a business. I’ve bought ebooks that have been rebranded PLR. Not only did I get my bucks back, but I’ve removed myself from their subscriber lists. I have no room for “gurus” who don’t have an original idea of their own.
John
The problem with private label rights (most of the time) is that the people writing the articles can’t get a good price for their work. If they could, they wouldn’t sell them as PLR, instead they’d write fresh articles as a ghostwriter and get paid for it. Or they’d use the articles in their own marketing.
However, there are exceptions. There are people out there who create something good or halfway decent and then sell it as PLR hoping to make some extra money. Or they just don’t know how to profit from their own work. I’ve found a few of these and using Robert and Jason’s techniques you can actually make these products better and profit as well.
Well I won’t bash PLR. In my opinion PLR is a great tool.
But it is just that…one tool in what should be a growing toolbox of any serious business-person. When properly used and renewed it can be a wonderful addition to building income streams.
The only place I bet, no data to prove this theory, you will find people complaining about getting PLR is in the internet marketing niche. But then again this niche is filled with people that complain…because of the “get rich quick, and for free, without doing any work” mentality.
NOW before my email box gets flooded…I am NOT NOT NOT implying that everyone in the internet marketing niche is seeking to get rich quick with no work, and I am not saying all are complainers. Far from it, but I am saying it has more than its share.
I learned something new today, thank you. Yeah, I can’t seem to get my head around PLR products. For some reason or another, I subconsciously think it’s recycled junk. I’d much rather deal with original creative info products that would help me think outside the box both as a buyer and a seller.
I never really thought about this, but it makes sense! I’ve bought a few PLR packages, and after reading through them, could not sell them with a clear conscience. They actually appeared to be spun..probably by a software program – several of the chapters seemed to repeat, albeit ever so slightly, a previous one. GARBAGE! I know Dan Kennedy says “good enough is good enough” but PLR simply ISN’T good enough!
I should add that I’ve bought a few of your things, and always felt you went the extra mile, and they were actually some of the few things that were actually worth the price of admission. As a matter of fact..your blog alone is a thousand times more valuable than any PLR junk out there!
This article hits home because you start off with PROOF about the effectiveness of this…
I don’t see how a statement like that could hurt your sales conversions. It can only help. It may not be a big deal to some but that “extra” sale here and there adds up over a month.
Trying to be the devil’s advocate here…since I don’t see a scenario how this may curtail sales, hopefully someone will leave a comment with an opposite opinion.
Maybe someone can leave a comment about how this may hurt sales and why. I certainly can’t think of anything off the top of my head.
I’m just finishing a book that’s a brain dump of what I’ve learned in 10 years of helping small businesses start using the internet.
A statement of this type is EXACTLY what I was going to put into the sales page.
I haven’t seen anyone else doing it, so was wondering whether it was worthwhile. Thanks for confirming the idea.
(And I wonder why nobody else puts this on their E-Books. Could it be that NOBODY actually writes their material themselves any more ?? )
Cheers, Eric G.
Robert,
I think this is a better example of knowing your market. The IM crowd understand PLR and will feel cheated and deceived with it. I don’t think the average consumer knows there is such thing as PLR.
And no, I don’t use PLR for or with my products and never would have thought of using the disclaimer. This is a tip to keep in the back of my mind if you’re selling to this market.
You are so right about this, Robert!
First, your wholly original content is exactly why I read all your emails (and save most), and it is also why I buy as much as I do from you (funds permitting).
Also, I am increasingly annoyed by the rising tide of poor writing everywhere, especially on the internet, and most particularly in PLR both in the IM niche and intended for resale in other niches by internet marketers playing at being authorities in topic areas they see as lucrative but really have not studied.
Much of this junk is outsourced to people whose first language clearly is not English. But even when it is, blind reliance on spell-checkers never intended to flag correctly spelled words that are wrongly used in context allows frequent confusion of you/your/you’re, there/their, to/too, its/it’s, and reversed roles between plural (with s) and possessive (with ‘s), just to name some of the worst cases.
The problem is that all this poor writing starts to look “normal” eventually, especially to younger people whose education seems to worsen year by year in the U.S. The result is erosion of our heritage in what most people recognize as the richest, most culturally encompassing, and most widely understood language on Earth (which is why it has become standard in commerce, aviation, and navigation).
Spell-checkers are meant only for catching simple typos and do not replace proofreading by an educated eye.
Since PLR content is less likely to have been properly proofread for either proper word usage or even logical sense, the most one can hope to get out of it is a hint on topic aspects to research in writing one’s own text. And that’s good, since most PLR lacks backing by real research and therefore contains much erroneous information (just like too many school textbooks today).
(The principal and quite legitimate exception is older, originally well-written content eventually offered as PLR to squeeze a little extra profit out of it before ceasing one’s own sales of it.)
So, again, thanks for bucking the downward spiral by being original. As I said, that’s why I keep reading what you write.
Leaving aside the IM niche, I can see how the inclusion of this particular phrase MIGHT be counterproductive in other fields where the idea of PLR and resale rights is unfamiliar.
Given the degree of cynicism prevalent amongst so many internet users, the protestation of originality could raise a doubt where previously none existed. The rather excessive “There’s NOTHING remotely like it available anywhere else, online or offline” doesn’t aid credibility – he “doth protest to much, methinks.”
It all really comes down to knowing your market.
Tony
Whoops, and there’s a typo – “too” – proof positive that carelessness is the inevitable concomitant of excessive speed!
Tony
Tony, you have a good point there, though it’s all in the wording as perceived, which you rightly say, by the market you’re in. For those in the IM niche who already know and appreciate Robert, his wording likely is okay. Elsewhere, a milder statement might be more suitable. In markets where PLR may be an unfamiliar term, it would probably better to just say that your content, though based on research of others’ work, is your own words rather than those of a ghost writer or staff member assigned to the task of producing it. That way, you get the credit as the expert as well as the trust which comes from your implied willingness to accept blame personally for any errors later found.
(For those who’ve read my earlier post, others’ is an intentional plural possessive, making the phrase a shortened form of “work of others” — which is too formal in this context.)
Robert and Tony, my earlier post is not about the occasional mistype we all make when hurried, and often don’t catch upon rereading our own work because we tend to skim when the subject is familiar. It’s about consistent error that is increasingly pervasive in text both online and offline, even from authors who presumably are educated enough to know better — or, at least, can afford to hire someone competent to proofread their work (since fresh eyes are more likely to spot mistakes, especially when they cloud the intended meaning).
Robert is right about needing to produce both content and sales letters rapidly for maximum income per unit of time spent. However, if the sales letter has many obvious errors, the prospect is well justified in wondering whether the product will have similar defects.
Consequently, a little extra time spent in careful proofreading could save sales otherwise lost, thus justifying the small, one-time investment. It might even reduce refund requests. While a terrific offer for an apparently excellent product will overcome sales page mediocrity or even blunders, tripping over unnecessary errors in otherwise valuable product content is irritating.
When I read a book or ebook, I want to learn from and enjoy the content, not feel like I need to edit it!
Accordingly, if the salesletter looks too sloppy, I won’t buy a book or ebook from that seller if he or she claims to be the author.
First, if he or she really did write both, the quality of the product can be seen in the salesletter text.
Else, if the author of the product in fact outsourced the salesletter — as is common, since not everyone feels or is competent to write a high-conversion salesletter (at least, not without Robert and Jason’s software), then that product author should have proofread the salesletter before approving its use, to prevent its devaluing the product by association.
And finally, if the seller actually outsourced both (or used PLR content with an unchanged salesletter that came with it), then readers of Robert’s blog today should now have a competitive advantage in that seller’s market.
So, folks, all you need to do is what Tony just did — take a second look at what you just wrote.
The cost of the time will be paid back to you many times over in respect, resultant sales, and fewer refund requests.
When you then say you are the real author of the content you are presenting, your prospects will think, “Great! It’s got to be good stuff then, so I’ll buy it.”
How else did Robert get where he is so quickly?
(Yes, some of his programs do have bugs that might have been caught through more extensive testing. But he gets those gems out to us fast, lets us in all our diversity of usages test them for him, then fixes any flaws found — and even adds more features — rapidly enough to more than compensate. And none of the content was ever PLR. Of course, if you are here reading this, you already know that.)
To me PLR is dishonest and unethical and a serious problem in internet marketting and the sooner the American FTC deals with it the better!
I won’t have anything to do with PLR either as a buyer or seller!
I lose all respect for marketters who sell or use or promote PLR!
It is unfortunate that it is neccessary to include such a disclaimer about PLR in one’s footer or signature but I agree with Robert that is is a very good idea to tell people so that those who feel about PLR as I do will understand that the product is not recycled rubbish (Or not-even-recycled rubbish!)
Wayne
(NOTE: my spellings are NOT typos – I am a native ENGLISH speaker and speller not American.)
it is good web site for every one.