Introduction
If you’re looking at all of the profitable business models you have to choose from for your online entrepreneurial career, you may have seen mention of people making money selling private label rights (PLR) products.
Private label rights are products that one vendor creates and sells to multiple buyers. When a customer hires a ghostwriter, the deliverables they get are for them alone, and they have the right to edit it and stake claim to it.
When they buy PLR, it’s similar to ghostwriting in that they can edit it and put their name on it, but others will be buying the same content, so they can’t claim copyright to it and they have to abide by the seller’s rules, such as not reselling the content to others for them to use as their content, too.
There’s one reason PLR is such a lucrative business and that’s because it provides a much-needed shortcut to busy marketers who have a lot of content demands, and limited time to complete all of their other business tasks.
Profiting Off of Others' Lack of Time or Talent to Create Content
One question that continually pops up is, “Do people still buy PLR?” The answer is a resounding, “Yes!” PLR has been a mainstay in the world of online marketing for at least two decades, and there’s no sign of it slowing down.
In fact, sales are growing more than ever as more and more people transition their career from the world of corporate 9-5 gigs to solo online entrepreneurship. Because PLR provides readymade content for marketers, it’s likely to always be in demand.
There are many reasons why people want to buy PLR, and if you know those, it makes it easier for you to cater to their needs and create a business that has in-demand content.
The first is their lack of talent in writing or creating the content. PLR content is sold in many formats – including text-based reports, articles, product reviews, lead magnets, and more as well as video, infographics or other graphics, slide presentations and even audiobooks!
Some people have no idea how to brainstorm the ideas, conduct research on these topics, write without plagiarizing, and churn out enough content to keep their audience happy.
They may have poor writing skills or not have the tools they need to make videos. Because ghostwriting is so expensive, PLR is a blessing to their business because it allows them to stay competitive with other marketers who can afford ghostwriters for excellent content.
The other reason PLR is in demand is because creating enough content to cater to an online audience is a massive demand on their time. They need content for their blog posts, email autoresponders, social media posts, products, lead magnets, YouTube videos and more.
There are some PLR writers who can create five pages’ worth of content each hour, and many marketers might need two days to create that many pages. So to them, it’s very helpful to ease the demands on their time and allow them to address other marketing tasks like the building of their product pages, networking, and more.
PLR Launches That Bring in Big Earnings
One of the biggest problems that many new PLR sellers encounter is not knowing what makes a good PLR launch. They’re so nervous about getting involved in any new business and putting themselves out there to be judged, that they barely make any effort in case it flops.
They worry about putting in a lot of time and effort creating a larger launch, because it may not earn anything. So what happens is, they create a tiny bundle of content and when it fails, it serves as confirmation that they were right not to put in much effort.
Here’s the problem. A PLR launch is successful based on one or both of these criteria: you have a good-sized list who buys routinely from you or, you’re able to recruit affiliates with lists to promote for you.
There are many marketers who will promote private label rights launches. Not only do marketers who have lists of subscribers in this niche promote it, but your fellow PLR sellers will promote it if the quality and other factors are right, too.
The recruitment of affiliates is easy – and it’s where you’ll likely get most of your sales, since you probably don’t have a list of your own when you’re just getting started with an online business.
So when affiliates are considering whose PLR launches to promote, you can bet it won’t be a tiny bundle of content of 10 articles that’s priced super low, like $7 with a 50% commission. They have other options.
It’s important that you develop a launch right out of the gate that has a chance to succeed. That means having a front end and one time offer upgrade that’s priced at a point where they can make some decent commissions.
Instead of them earning $3.50 per sale on a $7 front end only launch, you can make it so that they earn $8.50 on a front end $17 product, and then another $18.50 on a $37 one time offer upgrade.
If you want to go all in, you can have an additional upgrade offer, too – something priced anywhere from $47-67, depending on how much content you can create. It might even be a service that you offer, such as queueing up the content for them on their blog to publish on a schedule.
Make sure you see how your launches do with different types of content. There are many sellers who do text or video only. Then there are those who have combination launches, with articles, reviews, videos, infographics and even audiobooks.
A good launch would have something like 35 articles on the front end for $17, a first OTO (one time offer) for $27 that had a 5-page lead magnet, 10-part email series, 10 more articles, 10 product reviews, and a 20-page eBook with 5-page sales copy.
If you can add a second OTO into the funnel – for something like $37 for a slide presentation, blog header graphics for each article, an audiobook version of the eBook, and maybe a set of 10 screen-capture videos, that’d be perfect!
Yes, it’s a lot of initial work. But once you get it done, you’ll have a list of customers and you can create one launch every month or smaller ones more often and build a thriving income that only grows over time.
Starting a PLR Store That Provides Increased Profits
Launches aren’t the only way to profit from a PLR business. Many of the same people conducting launches also have their own private label rights store. In fact, once the launch is over, the content is often placed at full price on the store so it can sell multiple licenses over the coming years.
There are different ways to create a store, but basically, you’ll want to have some sort of tool that allows you to sell digital downloads and process payments. Because of the extra income potential, you also want to make sure it has the ability to bring affiliates onboard.
The same affiliates who promote your individual launches will be interested in promoting your store. Launches usually give customers discount pricing, such as $0.50 per page instead of $1.
Then, once the launch period of anywhere from 72 hours to 7 days is over, the content is bumped up to its full $1 per page price. So the affiliate can continue earning from the content by promoting your site.
And if the customer lands on your store and wants to buy multiple items that you sell, it can result in an even bigger commission for them. So try using a tool like Thrive Themes together with WooCommerce for example, that lets you build a PLR store that’s affiliate-friendly.
You’ll be able to create coupons for your customers – or for your affiliates to give to their subscribers when they send them to a specific PLR pack or to the main store link that they can use on their entire cart.
You can have categories on your store for the different media formats of PLR that you have such as text, audio, and video – or you can have categories for the niche topic, such as survival, gardening, marketing, etc.
You may want to categorize it by the type of content that you’ve created. So you’d have categories for blog posts, lead magnets, full eBooks, product reviews, email autoresponders and so on.
Profiting as a PLR Affiliate with Your Own PLR
One of the great things about selling content as PLR is that you can use it for other things after your own launch. Not only can you reserve a license to use it on your own niche sites for yourself, but you can use the content as a bonus for products you promote as an affiliate.
Since you’ll have a list of PLR buyers over time, it stands to reason that you’ll want to promote other PLR sellers and earn from their launches. You don’t have to do any of the work – just make the recommendations.
Some other PLR vendors will also be promoting as affiliates, and many of them will create special bonuses for the launch. Or, they’ll take existing content from their PLR store and package it up as a bonus for the other vendor’s launch.
For example, if a vendor announces a launch for a new survival PLR bundle and you have five packs of survival PLR on your store, you could take 1-5 of those and package it up as a bonus for whoever buys the new survival PLR through your link.
Your work has already been done in the past, so aside from packaging it into a zip file, you won’t have to do anything else – and you’ll have a competitive offer to help you earn commissions and possibly get on the leaderboard if there happens to be a contest involved.
You can do this for any type of launch, not just other PLR launches. You might see a traffic or SEO course you want to promote, and you can gift your buyers a bundle of PLR if they buy through your link.
Even though they may not have been a PLR buyer before, to have the opportunity to get readymade content might be an enticing bonus offer for them to consider. And of course, if you promote niche products, you can use the PLR for that, too.
Let’s say you get involved in the gardening niche on the side. You have a gardening blog and you plan on promoting a course for beginning gardeners. There’s nothing in the rules that says you can’t take a PLR product from your PLR store, such as a full eBook on How to Grow a Container Garden, turn it into a PDF and attach it as a bonus for your gardening promo.
5 Mistakes PLR Providers Make That Tank Their Business
There are many times when you think you’re doing everything right, only to find out you’ve accidentally sabotaged yourself. Some of the most common mistakes made by new PLR sellers can be avoided just by being aware of how things work.
The first mistake is in not taking time to create a listing for your launch and networking with affiliates. When you decide on a launch date, go to Muncheye and create a PLR launch listing – and then network with prospective affiliates to bring them onboard.
The second mistake is in scraping content off the Internet to sell as PLR and being shocked that no one wants to promote plagiarized content. There are easy ways to see if the content is unique, so don’t take any unethical shortcuts or you’ll be seen as a scammer.
The third mistake is pricing your PLR too low or too high so that it’s disappointing to affiliates or customers. If it’s priced too low, not only will customers worry that it’s no good, but affiliates won’t have any interest in promoting for peanuts.
If you price it too high, affiliates will have a hard time seeing good conversions, and customers will feel like it’s too expensive compared to other PLR that’s out there, which is priced lower but still good quality.
The fourth mistake is selling PLR on your own and later trying to bring affiliates onboard for the same content launch without telling them it’s not new. There are some vendors who quietly launch to their own list one month, then bring affiliates onboard the following month without telling them it’s not new content for a subsequent launch.
You want to always give the advantage to your affiliates. If they promote your launch as something brand new, and their customers find out it’s already been published online, you could be sabotaging both you and your affiliate’s reputations simultaneously.
The fifth mistake is personalizing the content with your own story. While personalization is great (and encouraged) on a blog post or email autoresponder, it has no place in PLR content, where each buy will be using it as their own, so leave it out and write it from a generic point of view.
English