Weekend Discussion: PLR How Much is Too Much?
July 20, 2007 by Deb
Filed under Freelance Writing
First of all, I’d like to thank everyone who participates in my discussions in a mature, intelligent manner without resorting to personal attacks or insulting the members of this community. One of the things I love about this blog is that I can throw a topic out for discussion and I know most of you will be helpful and thoughtful in your response. Indeed you may even disagree, but you do so respectfully. I believe the main reason my blog is so popular is because of this community.
I’m holding off on guest bloggers for a while because I’d rather pay Jodee to give you leads every day. We’ll still have the occasional guest blogger, but in the meantime, I’ll just throw out a few questions and see where they land.
A few days ago, I threw out a question about PLR articles, web content and whether or not we owe it to our readers to provide well-written, original content. Some of the comments were rather…spirited, to say the least. They left me with more questions though. Mainly, how much is too much. As writers, how many times do you feel a single article should appear online, sent through a spinner, or reworded?
We learned this week that the same PLR articles are sold to dozens of people. These people, I’m assuming web masters and content purveyors, then rewrite the articles, or not if they’d rather just post the original piece. So I ask you, how many times would you sell the same article? Spun or not spun, how important is original content. Is it still original content if it’s re-written 60 times?
For some subjects, there’s only so much to say. For example, say I was writing an article about car maintenance. I would feel justified writing about how to change a tire, how to check your oil, etc…even though that material is covered elsewhere as well. As long as my article was well-researched and not plagiarized, I would feel confident in my writing skills and happy to post that article online.
I understand that this isn’t *exactly* what you’re saying, but as writers, I feel like we CAN be justified in rewriting content. The draw is how we write it. Is it easy to read? Is it fun to read? Do we cover the all main points in an organized manner? Two websites might publish the exact same content–one in an article and one in a bulleted list. Even though it is the same content, different readers prefer seeing the information in different ways.
I don’t believe that it is the writer’s job to draw the line. It is the webmaster’s job to post the articles that best cater to his/her readers’ needs. If this means posting the rewritten version of an article already available (or even posting the same version), I believe that website is justified in doing so.
Just my two (three…four…) cents!
Great response and insight, Allison. Though I might feel frustrated at seeing the same info over and over, presentation could indeed make a difference.
I don’t believe it’s the writer’s job to draw the line either, just to be responsible in what we put out there.
“As writers, how many times do you feel a single article should appear online, sent through a spinner, or reworded?”
As much as I’d like to say that we have control over these things, we actually do not. For example I could say “ten times is enough”. I could sell my PLR packages ten times and pull them down. However, the ones who bought them could have them spinned again and again and sell them again and again and again. Not exactly what you were asking, just throwing in what’s currently in my head.
As for me, I never sell the same article twice. Of course I’d never know what my clients would do to my articles. Perhaps one of my articles has already been spun 60,000 times and been sold a gazillion times over and over. Perhaps not.
“As writers, how many times do you feel a single article should appear online, sent through a spinner, or reworded?”
I would say it all depends on the type of article you are writing. I specialize in medical and scientific content and when asked to write something, say on lung cancer, I do rewrite what I’ve already written on the subject but customized to the needs of the audience. A lung cancer article for healthcare professionals will differ from one written for patients. The content may be the same but the words (dyspnea vs shortness of breath) and the formatting (bulleted lists vs full statements) would be different. In addition, I always try to inject something novel into each article, such as a new medical innovation or the latest research results. There is no need to reinvent the wheel but it can still be improve upon.
Unfortunately, when writing web content, we do not have any control where and how our works end up. No matter how we try to be responsible, once the piece is submitted, its fate is out of our hands.
I write and sell niche article packs with PLR rights. Although there are other sites that sell the same type of article packs up to 200-300 times, I only sell them 25 times at most. Really, I think it is up to the webmaster to decide. I just provide the content and they can rewrite it as they like.
Personally, this type of writing isn’t for me. I can see why others would be attracted by the lure of money. Thanks to weekly payments by paypal this type of thing is going to become more common. Fortunately we can all find our callings whether it’s spinning articles, writing for magazines or blogging.
I can see why it doesn’t appeal to some people. If I was a webmaster I don’t think I’d want the same content as 20 other websites whether it’s in a bullet point or paragraph or has flashing lights around it. I also don’t understand buying content from one person only to hire another person to rewrite it. Why not just hire one person to write something original? To answer your question though, I don’t believe spun articles are original content.
Contrary to popular belief, I do feel writers are 50% responsible for what’s online. There are some days I have to wade through pages of crap before I find useful information. That’s what happens when quick and easy money takes a front seat though.
I also want to say I’m a bit insulted by what that woman said in your other discussion. Anyone who reads the comments knows that everyone who comes to your blog has different opinions. We’re not your sheep even if we appreciate what you do.
I don’t do PLR writing, but I do sell reprints to regional parenting magazines. The most I have ever sold an article was 23 times over a 3 year period. The difference was that these sales were print and were geographically limited. The same people were not seeing the article over and over. In fact, I guarantee it by selling “one time rights exclusive to your circulation area for a period of one year.”
Writers control the distribution of their stories through the rights they sell. If you sell all rights, you have no reason to complain if the stories show up eveywhere, if they are edited or altered, or if they are never printed at all.
If it’s factual, accurate, and well-written, I don’t think it matters how many times you sell it.
I sell my PLR articles 50 times each. I’d sell them more if they would still be attractive to buyers.
There are more than 100 million sites on the internet and if an article appears on even 1 million sites, it’s still on less than 1% of sites. And we’re talking about websites not webpages, for which the number is much higher.
What’s the harm if a reader does read the same article more than once on different websites? Worst case scenario, the reader stops visiting the website because it had the content as another wesbite. I’m sure the reader will consider other factors, like the authority of the website, before concluding the website isn’t a worthy source of information.
I see the same articles on MSN, Bankrate, and Yahoo! Finance all the time, but that doesn’t discredit any of those as a source in my opinion. Why is that different for us as content providers?
But, let’s say a reader does write off a website for duplicating content, is that the writer’s fault for selling the article more than once? Or is it the webmaster’s fault for knowingly purchasing an article that already appeared somewhere else? Is it anybody’s fault at all?
We’re writers. We have a responsibility to write – to deliver accurate, factual, and sometimes entertaining information to our readers. It’s not our responsibility to limit the number of times a reader sees certain information nor can we be blamed for everything that could possibly go wrong as it relates to content.
I’ll re-sell an article I own the rights to as many times as I can. If I can re-write it for a new or slightly different audience and put a new spin on it, great. If I can re-sell the exact same article to a new publication, that’s even better.
And even though it’s not for pay, when I write articles to submit to article directories to build back-links for my websites, I’ll sometimes submit them to 300 or more directories.
I don’t write or sell private label rights articles, but if I did, I’d sell the articles as many times as people would buy them.
I have to agree with LaToya — I don’t see any harm (for writers) in an article appearing on more than one website or even on a thousand websites.
If website owners wants original content, they have the responsibility to hire a writer and pay for exclusive rights. Just my opinion.
Interesting comments. Bloggers look at things differently, I think. The focus for us is on original content and saying something new. The last thing we want is for our content to appear on lots of different blogs. Just about every week I’m reading another blog post about the importance of original content, which isn’t really original when you think about it. Heh.
There are times when I’m researching for information and come across the same piece several times over. I’m not to keen on it because I want to know if anything else on that topic is out there. If one author’s article comes up a dozen times, I get a bit frustrated. I do see the other point of view, however.
With that said, I have sold reprints of some of my print articles, but only once or twice. I’m not sure if I’d sell it more than that.
Oh well. My Harry Potter book just arrived and it’s calling me. Have a good night.
I liken PLR somewhat to a column. A person that writes a column for a newspaper might sell the exact same column to 2000 newspapers across the country. Let’s use Ann Landers as an example. The exact same piece would appear in loads of newspapers. She was paid for each one it appeared in. While obviously what she did wasn’t PLR, the same principle applies. Would a person no longer read another newspaper just because her column appeared in more than one paper? Quite the contrary.. she was highly popular, and yet she had the one column that appeared with the same piece in all of those newspapers for so many years.
There will always be bad writing on the web, that’s a given. I buy PLR articles and have no problem with the fact that the same articles are on other websites across the big wide web. I’m also getting into writing PLR articles, simply because it pays well for the effort put into the work. I write what I know and I research what I don’t know.
Everyone has different view points, and that’s an okay thing!
I don’t think the Ann Landers example above is the same at all. Syndicated columns like Ann Landers generally appear only in one paper in a circulation area. It’s not often that two papers in the same city carry the same columns. One carries Ann Landers and the other Margo Howard, Carolyn Hax, Miss Manners, etc. Print outlets prize exclusivity for their readership, although a paper in Minneapolis won’t care if a paper in Philadelphia carries the same story, because it is highly unlikely that a reader will see the same column both places. On the Web, the same people are seeing the same material over and over. I understand the writers’ POV that they will sell an article they own over and over, but I think Webmasters need to realize that if the article appears dozens of places it dilutes the value of visiting their Web site.