Know Your Rights When it Comes to PLR Products
August 22, 2008 by Jodee
Filed under Freelance Writing
by Jodee Redmond
Writing articles that will be sold as a PLR package is something that many freelancers are asked to do, but do you know what happens to them after you have turned in your assignment? Your articles may be put together to make up a special report, an ebook, or for web content. Here’s a look at the kinds of permissions (or rights) the product owner can give to those people who buy the package you have helped to prepare:
- Give Away Rights: This means the recipient is not able to charge for the information product, but they can use it as a free gift to customers or people who have signed up for a newsletter. In most cases, the buyer is not allowed to change the content.
- Resell Rights (RR): With resell rights, the buyer can resell the product as is. A minimum or maximum selling price may be included in the agreement, and you are not able to sell the resell rights to anyone else.
- Master Resell Rights (MRR): With a MRR license, you can resell the product as is, but you can also sell the Resell Rights to other people.
- Private Label Rights (PLR): This type of license is considered the best one to get when buying information products online. This gives the buyer to the right to make changes and to put his or her own name on it as the author.
When someone buys PLR products, they are advised not to use them as is (“straight out of the box”), but to change the content so that they don’t get penalized for having duplicate content online. This is where the idea of article spinning comes in. As a freelance writer, you may be asked to take a PLR product and change or add content to make it different from the original version.
Hi,
To say, I’m a potential PLR writer and would like to know what you would recommend charging for writing a 500-word article (12-pt Times New Roman) or a PLR package?
Thank you.
Bobbi
E-Content Magazine might also have some articles on this, though only a limited amount of content is free.
@ Bobbi C: I have seen ads looking for writers for this kind of material averaging $0.01 per word. A pack of 10 articles might sell for $10, but it is sold to multiple buyers. I hope that helps.
Eek–thanks for the info. Obviously, it pays to be the owner who sells the PLR content, not just the writer!
Bobbi
Ah! Thanks so much for posting this!
@ Bobbi C: I agree; there is more money to be made in developing and marketing your own products.
@ AndreaS: You are most welcome.
Hi Jodee,
Great post, I had never even heard of PLR packs before this. I have to say now that I do know what they are I don’t really approve. Not only does it make for stale reading, but these types of schemes take food off all of our tables.
Cheers,
April
Freelance Editor, Copyeditor, Journalist and Designer
http://aduffy.wordpress.com/
Thanks Jodee for another great article. The information you gave was very helpful to me (I had NO IDEA what a PLR Package was). WOW! I just love this site! Also, when I read the infomation for a job and it says “telecommunting”…what does it mean? That I can work from home as opposed to going to an office? Thanks again.
t.
@ April: I appreciate your comment and thank you for the kind words.
@ Tee: Thank you. Telecommute does mean that you work from home.
Not all employers tell you you are writing PLR packages either. The one time I did this, the woman told me I’d be writing 10 articles each for 5 different topics ranging from breastfeeding to cloth diapers for both her parenting Web site and parenting newsletter that was sent out bi-weekly, she had the site being set up, but it wasn’t complete, so I never stopped to question it. My own ignorance, I guess. I learned after the fact that the 50 parenting articles I did were PLR, I found the Web site selling my articles as PLR later after she’d paid me and then come back two months later claiming that the batch on cloth diapering didn’t match her opinion and that she wanted them rewritten or she’d go after Paypal to get the money back from me.
She’d paid me 5 cents per word on each of my articles (a good rate for topics I know by heart) she sold each package for $500. Her Web site selling the articles is now gone, so I assume she sold them all and moved on, but I am upset that she wasn’t honest up front.
Tee,
You’re right–”telecommuting” means “work from home.”
Bobbi
Thanks everyone!
I really appreciate reading everyone’s comments…it’s really helping me to know how to market my writing. Have a great and restful Sunday morning!
t.
Funny how I managed to find some of my own writing, which was sold as unique content, being copied and PLR’d by a writer (and not the client I did the work for).
I still am interested in writing and distributing my own PLR bundles. From the many PLR distribution sites I have looked at over this past week-end, I can’t see me wanting to associate with many of them, as all have a seemingly large amount of plagiarism and copying going on with some (lame) contributors — no not all, but enough to keep me off the sites and from using the services.
So, I would love to see advice on how to market and distribute your own self-written PLR bundles, and I would also love to hear from other freelancers who have successfully written, marketed and distributed their PLR own without using PLR services.
@Aurora et al, I contacted a PLR writer I respect and asked her if she’d be willing to do a guest post or Q&A. Hopefully we can get your questions answered by someone experienced in the biz. I only know the small bits and pieces I know…and that’s not much.
I’m just researching and learning myself… every tid-bit of info helps at this stage.