I do understand how web masters buy and use content. I’m on both sides of the equation; I’m a freelance writer, but I am also a direct and online marketing expert with an MS in Direct and Online Marketing from NYU, and I used to guest lecture at NYU on these topics. I work with clients from both a writing and marketing perspective.

Here’s the problem: while webmasters do say they want unique content, and they know it will serve them better in the long run – that’s assuming that you are dealing with a webmaster who knows what he’s doing.

There are many so-called content experts who promote a different model. What they suggest doing is making your fortune by finding keywords and building out a niche. This includes a website or free site like a Wet Paint or Squidoo lense populated with cheap and free articles. Packages of PLR articles fit into that category.

People in this niche trying to make a quick buck will NOT change PLR articles, or if they do they are done so badly as to make it worthless.

They are not the sophisticated web masters who understand the importance of unique content, and they aren’t looking to build high quality websites that Joe 3rd grader will use as a source for his school project. They are looking to make quick money or residual income through affiliate links and are hoping all that cheap content drives traffic.

It’s never a model I recommend, and when my marketing clients ask about PLR I tell them to steer clear. If they want quality content, I find them a writer or I write it myself, but I do not believe that PLR packages are a good way to get content.

I’ve seen sites selling packages of 10 articles sold for $1 each, 100 or 150 times. That’s what I’m talking about.

I’ve worked for a lesser-quality web content company, Ma’m, so as someone who’s been there and had people try to drag me in further, I do have some idea of what I’m talking about.

I think I also want to state for the record that I I didn’t just decide to come here and spout off on something I know nothing about. I asked writers in several different forums about PLR and I also asked several webmaster friends. Some of them purchase PLR articles and some don’t because they didn’t have good experiences. I also visited at least a half dozen of the PLR sites and read sample articles.

I appreciate you explaining it to me, to us, in a clear, pleasant manner.

Deb says “Now, if writers want to sell themselves short and pump out a bundle of articles for a buck or two a pop, that’s their prerogative” That’s where you’re wrong. I write and sell PLR articles on finance topics. A set of 10 articles is sold for $10-15 to 50 buyers. When I sell out of a pack of articles, I make 300% return on those articles. I don’t know about you, but I hardly consider tripling my investment selling myself short.

There’s a market of webmasters that want cheap content. It may be for Adsense, for article marketing, or for some other reason. I don’t see anything wrong with offering a product to a market with a need. It’s how business works. My prospective customers want cheap content. I want to make money from my writing. PLR solves both of our problems.
Someone earlier in the discussion talked about how there publications, Associated Press for example, that sell reprint rights to their articles. Deb argued that the same people aren’t exposed to each of these reprints because they’ve been reprinted in local publications. That’s only partly true. I’ve personally seen the same AP article on several different websites. Those websites might have different audiences, but it’s still the same article. This is how I see PLR articles.

I use what I call “residual” research to write my PLR articles. I write on a lot on finance topics and use the research from other assignments to write PLR articles. No, it doesn’t take a great deal of time to write these articles, because I’ve already done the research for another project. I call it “working smarter not harder.”

Deb says: “Say 60 web owners purchase the same poorly researched content. What then? The Internet is flooded with poor content.” The internet is filled with billions of pages. I’d hardly call 60, or even 1,000 pages of poor content “flooding the internet with poor content”. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating poor content writers, but merely pointing out that in the grand scheme of things, it’s not that significant.
Buyers are encouraged to rewrite their content, but what’re the chances that readers are going to see that content twice? Considering the number of pages on the internet, I’d say about 1 in a billion.

Deb says: “Let’s also say that Joe is trying to find more information on the Internet, but because the same bundle of optimized information is sold over and over again, all he can find are the same ten or twenty articles, or the same rewritten content”. This is based on the assumption that 1) all PLR is SEOd and 2) that all SEOd content ranks high on the search engines. Luckily, search engines are becoming more and more sophisticated in their ranking system by considering things like backlinks, content indexing, and content duplicity. Even so, it’s not our responsibility as writers to make sure that only unique content shows up in the search engines. One final point on this argument, someone should be teaching Joe Middle School Student how to conduct research both online and offline. If the top 10/20/50 results are the same, then go to the 75th or 100th result.

My final point…buyers CANNOT do whatever they want with PLR articles. All my buyers can do is change the content, put it on their website, and use it in a newsletter or ebook. That’s far less than they can get with ghostwritten content with more money for me.

Charisse, you could have made your case and we could have had a great discussion. You could have respectfully disagreed and educated us all on why PLR is such a great way to go. Instead you came here with an angry tirade, some of which has nothing to do with the discussion at all, and insulted thousands of great people. If you took the time to get to know us rather than judge us, you’d learn that we represent all sides of the coin and plenty of us even disagree with Deb on many issues. Did you even read the discussion? It didn’t look to me like everyone was blindy agreeing with “our leader” (eyeroll). No, you only came here to spew hate.

Deb’s “followers” as you put it have been very helpful in dispensing advice to others. Some of them even do PLR and write content like you. I’ll even go as far as to say I don’t know of another blog that is so helpful to writers. I guess that makes me “elite” right?