4 Precautions to Take When Using PLR

About a year into my blogging journey I was almost at a stand still. I could not find the time to write quality content due to working another job and having young children. You can read my full story here. I was so overwhelmed, and was almost to the point of giving up on blogging altogether until I discovered the amazing thing they call PLR. PLR content completely saved my blogging business and has allowed me to continue growing my business! Keep reading to learn what PLR really is and the 4 Precautions to take when using PLR.

What is PLR

You’re about to learn about something so crucial to your business that you’re going to wonder why you haven’t been doing this all along. As a business owner who understands the power of content marketing to help boost traffic, engage with your audience and make more money (and so much more), then you also realize that one person can’t generate that much content on their own. 

To engage in effective content marketing, you need to publish relevant content consistently directed toward your ideal customer. To accomplish this, you’ll need content for social media, your website, and more. Content like blog posts, articles, downloadable PDF content, whitepapers, guides, checklists, and more – all published consistently 365 days a year – and promoted in a way that attracts your ideal customers and helps search engines send your audience to you.

PLR stands for Private Label Rights. Some people also call this type of content, white-label content. Others may call it “done for you” content. Whatever it’s called, the creator develops the content for their audience to use as their own or per their licensing agreement in a way that is beneficial for both. Good PLR typically allows you to edit the content, use the content as is, and even assign your own name as the author. However, you can’t fight for copyright from someone else who also uses it because the copyright still belongs to the creator. 

This type of content might seem strange to someone, not in the publishing business. But it’s not something new. PLR content has been around for a long time. In the days before the ease of online downloads and purchases, if you run a city magazine, newspaper, newsletter, or another type of publication for your community, you could order done for you articles that you could cut out and paste into your publication. Some of these outlets allowed you to edit the work and use it as your own. Some required that you used the work as-is. 

It’s a lot like that now, but in most cases, good PLR companies will allow you to edit and change the work as well as put your name on it and use as is if that’s what you want to do, as long as you don’t try to assign copyright to yourself for the work. Contrary to what people may think about this fact, it’s not plagiarism to use the content as intended by the creator. Because this makes your life so much easier, using PLR is a no-brainer if you want to use content marketing to build your business. Rest assured that this has been done for ages, and not only is it ethical and legal, but it also works.

4 Precautions to Take When Using PLR

Private label rights (PLR) content can be a lifesaver when you are short on time or you hate writing with a passion. Done-for-you content can be used on your blogs or you can bundle them and sell them as your own products.

If you’re a beginner to online marketing, PLR can shortcut your journey and have you establishing a web presence and making sales in record time.

While PLR is a means to an end, it’s not an end in itself and has its downsides and limitations. The 4 pointers below will help you steer clear of the pitfalls of PLR.

Fact checking

Here’s a brutal truth – not all PLR is made equal… and NOT all PLR vendors are reputable. There are two types of PLR vendors.

The first type, are not just marketers, but are writers at heart. These PLR vendors do their own research and write almost all of their PLR. So, you can expect consistent quality and a uniform ‘voice’ throughout their content. 

They tend to take a lot of pride in their work and it’s usually safe to purchase PLR from these vendors.

At the other end of the spectrum are PLR vendors who are ONLY in the business for money. They outsource the writing to cheap writers on freelance sites. The content is then cobbled together, given a pretty sales page and sold as the next best thing since sliced bread.

Here’s what you need to know: Freelancers are on the clock. The more they write and the more gigs they accept, the more money they make.

This immediately puts a constraint on their time. Guess where they cut corners on?

If you said research, you’re absolutely right. When a cheap freelance writer is tasked to write content, most of the time they just get online and pull facts from different websites and create a Frankenarticle.

The problem here is that you never really know if the facts are accurate. There’s so much misinformation online that ‘fake news’ has become the norm.

You may wonder, “Why doesn’t the PLR seller hire better writers?” 

The answer is simple. Better writers cost more and this eats into the profit margins. So, they go for the cheap ones.

If you’re in the health niche and you’re using PLR content, it’s especially important to cross-check all facts and stats you find in your PLR articles/eBooks. You don’t want to be dishing out inaccurate information. 

The goal is to be an authority in your niche, and not a disseminator of wrong information. Always fact check your content. Period.

Plagiarism

Another common practice by third-rate freelancers is to just rip off content from different sites and squash them together to form their own article. Once again, the writers are either hard-pressed for time or they’re just lazy and looking for shortcuts.

Run your content through a site like Copyscape.com to see if your PLR content is plagiarized. Do note that since others may have used the same PLR as you, several results may show up.

This is not plagiarism – you’ll notice that their content is almost the same as your PLR content because they’ve used the same PLR. 

What you should be looking for are sentences and paragraphs that show up oddly on sites where the rest of the content is totally different.

When you see such results, almost always, the writer has either plagiarized the content or is using a content scraping software to create the content.

Duplicate content penalty

A duplicate content penalty occurs when you’re not organized with your PLR content. There are so many misconceptions about this penalty.

Let’s keep things simple – using private label rights content will NOT get you penalized by Google. It doesn’t work that way. If it did, all syndicated news sites, etc. would get penalized for using the same content.

You ONLY get penalized by Google for duplicate content when several of your blog posts contain the exact same content. Google thinks you’re trying to game the system and rank your site higher.

For example, if you take a specific PLR article that you have, come up with 3 catchy titles for the article and post the same article 3 times on your blog, now you have duplicate content.

You’re only changing the title of the article but the rest of the content is the same. Some marketers do this intentionally thinking they’ll get away with it (they won’t) … and others accidentally make a mistake because they’re disorganized and don’t know which PLR content they’ve already used and which they haven’t.

So, keep a separate folder for content that you’ve already used on your sites. This will prevent you from being hit with the duplicate content penalty.

Adhering to the PLR license 

So many PLR buyers just can’t seem to understand the license terms that come with the PLR packages they purchase.

While the terms state that you can sell the content as your own, you can’t actually sell it as your own PLR. It’s easy to get confused here.

What the terms really mean is that you’ll need to convert the PLR into a final product, personalize it and sell it as a unique product to end consumers.

You can’t sell it as your own PLR content because that’s the original vendor’s job. Be clear about the license terms when using your PLR so that you don’t step on anyone’s toes.

If in doubt, always seek clarification from the vendor.

Keep these 4 points in mind whenever you purchase or use PLR. It’s best to err on the side of caution.

PLR Companies that I recommend & use daily

Piggy Makes Bank: Piggy makes bank offers awesome free, and monthly membership packages for every niche! You can purchase done for you email challenges consisting of blog posts, emails, along with workbooks and eBooks! I’ve been purchasing from this company for the last 2 years and have loved all of their content! They have been extremely helpful with providing me content that my readers love! Check them out HERE.

Coach Glue: Coach Glue is another amazing company that offers a ton of done for you products as well. They have done for you planners, blog posts, emails, journals, and even courses! You are able to purchase one product at a time, a bundle of products, or join their monthly membership program. I have been purchasing from them for the past year, and I could not be any happier with their content! Their content is amazing quality for a great price. Check them out HERE.