We use the internet to find and learn just about anything these days. The web, in turn, thrives on content.
It’s this interesting intersection of content and consumer we are going to explore in this series.
More specifically, we’re going to look at how pre-written content can help you grow your reach and your customer base.
- Content is how people initially find you.
- Well-crafted content is how they get to know you.
- Quality content that addresses their wants and needs is how they start to trust you.
This is the secret to a successful content marketing strategy… and you can accomplish all that without having to write your content from scratch or spend a lot of time getting it together.
It doesn’t matter what kind of business you have.
It could be a blog, it could be an ecommerce site, it could be a local small business … if you can’t be easily found online by your ideal customers then you’re missing out. You need to have a strong web presence. You need to be on the right social media platforms. And you need to have a robust email list of existing and potential customers that you stay in touch with regularly.
Pre-written content can help in all these areas as you’ll see in the posts to come in this series.
The good thing about content marketing is that it’s easy to get it out there. Technology and things like blogging and publishing platforms make it possible for anyone to publish great content and to do so often. The great thing about content marketing is that the more articles, blog posts, videos, podcast episodes, and social media posts you get out there, the better your chances of growing your reach and ultimately your online business success.
Are you getting excited about content marketing? Great! You should be. The only problem is that crafting all this content takes time. And it takes time on a regular basis. Time that takes away from everything else it takes to run a successful business. Sure, you could outsource it by hiring writers and content creators, but that’s expensive.
Frankly, having content custom written by a ghostwriter is out of the price range for many online entrepreneurs and small business owners. Thankfully there’s a more affordable option that’s actually a better fit for most of us – Pre Written content or PLR.
We look forward to sharing our best tips and ideas on using pre-written content with you. Our hope is that you find this helpful and most importantly that you give incorporating PLR into what you do online.
Long before we became PLR sellers, we were avid PLR customers and more importantly, we used the pre-written content to build out our sites, our email funnels, and even used it to help us quickly create high-quality products to sell.
It's our hope that this blog post series will show you how you can do the same.
PLR stands for Private Label Rights.
It’s a broad term for products that are created that you can claim as your own. In our context, we’re talking about PLR content. It’s articles, reports, eBooks and the likes that are created by PLR providers like Piggy Makes Bank that you can purchase and claim as your own content.
You can edit and change it around as you see fit. You can put your name on it and do just about anything with it that you would do with something you've written from scratch.
We’ll go into a lot more detail on everything you can do with PLR content throughout the remainder of this series. Hopefully it will give you some great ideas and inspirations for what you can do to help you grow your own business and give your content marketing a major boost. The most important thing to keep in mind is that you are free to get creative. We’ll only cover some of the basic options within the guide, but don’t feel limited by those options.
Here’s an example for creative and out of the box thinking when it comes to PLR content.
We took an article that was written as 20 interesting facts about a topic and turned it into an interactive quiz with multiple choice questions for each of the “facts” from the original article. The quiz created quite a bit of buzz on social media and drove a lot of traffic to one of our niche sites. Of course you don’t have to go that far… there was quite a bit of work involved in creating an interactive quiz, but the point is this. Let your imagination take over when it comes to changing and tweaking pre-written (or PLR) content.
This little side story also illustrates another important point. Don’t feel like you’re limited to the format the PLR is sold in. We’ll go over ideas for changing it in a future chapter. For now, let’s briefly run through some of the common formats you’ll find pre-written content in. We’re mostly focusing on written content here since it’s the most common type of PLR (by far) and what we’re most familiar with.
Common PLR Formats
PLR is usually sold in bundles or packages. Every once in a while, you can buy individual articles, but that’s rare. Instead, you receive your content in bundles. Let’s take a look at some of the more common PLR bundle formats. Keep in mind that it’s up to the discretion of each PLR seller how they want to bundle their content and what they want to provide in their specific bundles.
Before we dive in, it’s also important for you to know that the format a bundle comes in doesn’t matter all that much at the end of the day. We’ll dive into this in more detail in a different chapter. For now, know that you can easily change the format, combine packs, and make it work, no matter your specific content needs.
Article Bundles
The most common format you’ll find PLR content in is a collection of articles or blog posts. This is also usually the format most pre-written content buyers start with. Common bundles include five, ten, or twenty-five articles. You can also find larger bundles with 30 or 52 articles. The idea here is to give you enough blog content for daily posts for a month, or weekly posts for the year.
Of course, this isn’t a hard and fast rule. PLR sellers can and will put together article bundles in just about any number. In the end, the actual number doesn’t matter much. If possible, start with smaller, less expensive packs and see how you like the content itself, and how easy it is to work with.
That’s one of the reasons small article bundles are a great starting place when you’re new to buying pre-written content. It isn’t a huge investment, and it gives you something to play with.
These article bundles are usually provided in MS word and/or txt format. Our preferred version to work from is .txt files since all formatting is stripped out. This makes it easy to copy and paste into your blogging software or your favorite word editor.
⇒ TIP: If you find PLR that isn’t offered as a .txt file, copy and paste it into notepad and save it that way for future use.
A lot of PLR sellers even offer free article bundles so you can “try before you buy”. You can find quite a few different free offers from us here at Piggy Makes Bank here
Start with a small free or inexpensive pack of pre-written articles. Use them as blog posts or articles on your site. Take a few articles and compile them into a short report to create a new opt-in freebie. There is a lot you can do with the content. We’ll dive further into how to use them in later. For now, let’s explore other formats you’ll often find PLR offered in.
Short Reports
Another common format for PLR content is short reports. These are often perfect as new lead magnets, or bonuses for other paid products. The content is on the same topic and already laid out in an easy report format for you.
Some PLR bundles like this come fully formatted with a beautiful layout and cover graphic. All you need to do is add your name, website, and any other pertinent information. Other bundles will provide you with a clean basic format for the report, giving you the option to add your own formatting and graphics.
There are advantages and disadvantages to both. Above all, it’s about the content. It’s easy to add a cover graphic and formatting should be done to reflect your style, website, and branding in either case.
Remember that you can also easily turn an article bundle into a short report. Keep that in mind as you start to look for content bundles for your latest opt-in freebie.
Looking for an example for this type of PLR content? Here’s one of our bundles that includes a great short report: Automate Success With the Power of Daily Habits – Piggy Makes Bank
Ebook Bundles
Ebook bundles are another popular option. These are typically based around a full ebook. The word and page count for these PLR ebooks varies greatly from 3,000 to 30,000 words and beyond. The length of the book is usually reflected in the price.
Good PLR sellers will provide you with an outline of the ebook on their order page and will be happy to send you a sample page of the ebook upon request. As with short reports, the actual look and feel of these pre-written information products can vary greatly. Formatting can vary from minimal black and white text with basic headlines to beautifully illustrated books with plenty of graphics and photos included.
You’ll find some bundles that also include various ecovers as well as pre-written sales pages. Make sure you receive editable versions of both if they are included so you can customize them as needed.
Here’s are a few examples of our eBook bundles here at Piggy Makes Bank: https://piggymakesbank.com/tag/plr-ebook/
Biz In A Box
Some of the biggest (and thus often priciest) PLR bundles are “Business in a Box” type bundles.
As with everything else, there is no set format for these, but at the very least they usually contain an info product (like an ebook), that you can sell along with graphics, a sales page, and a download page.
From this basic format, the sky is the limit. Some bundles include plenty of content for a website, and/or a series of emails. You will find a variety of different products in these bundles, along with lead magnets, and sometimes even entire funnels ready to go. The products can also range in format from ebooks to video courses and multi-media presentations.
While we’re not personally fans of these types of PLR bundles (they feel a little too cookie cutter to us), they are out there and may provide you with what you need to get your information product business off the ground.
Mixed Media Bundles
We’re using this as a catch-all for any sort of other bundles. Often you will find combinations of the bundles above, or article bundles that also include pre-written emails and social media posts in addition to articles for example.
A good example of a bundle like that is our 30 Day “Challenge” bundles which include 30 articles, 30 emails, 30 social media posts, a compilation document of all articles, a 6,000+ word ebook on a related topic with a bonus workbook or journal.
Of course this isn’t the only option and frankly, this type of bundle would also work as a “biz in a box” type thing, particularly with the implementation guide we include in our PLR packs.
You can also find pre-recorded audio and video bundles as well as various graphic and info-graphic PLR bundles. In short, there’s a lot of content out there that’s ready for you to edit, tweak, and make your own. Take advantage of it!
Let’s Talk About PLR Quality
As part of this series we feel it is important to talk about PLR quality. Not all pre-written content packs are created equal. There’s some amazing stuff out there, not just from us, but from other PLR sellers who pride themselves in creating high-quality content for you to work with. We share a few of our favorites on our Recommended Resources page.
Unfortunately, there’s also a lot of crap out there and it gives PLR a bad rep. At first glance these pre-written content packs look like a great deal. You can get hundreds of pages of content for a few bucks on just about any topic imaginable.
There are plenty of PLR shops out there that sell you entire “biz in a box” bundles in popular niches for next to nothing. Unfortunately, you get what you pay for.
The content is mass-produced, written in bad English, possibly spun for “uniqueness” that makes it almost unreadable, and most importantly sold all over the place. The same packs can be sold by hundreds of other sellers and has been on the market for years.
With badly written and formatted PLR it often takes a lot more work to turn it into something you’re comfortable publishing than it would to create it yourself from scratch. That definitely defeats the purpose of using pre-written content. At the same time, you don’t want to put anything out there that doesn’t represent you well. Your potential customers will read those blog posts, download those free reports, and possibly by those ebooks as a first product from you. You need to make sure you leave a good first impression so they will continue to come back for more.
In short, when you invest in pre-written content, you want to make sure it comes from a reputable source and is easy to work with. But how do you make sure you get it in the right place? You can start with our PLR here at Piggy Makes Bank, and the recommended sellers we share with you on our site and through our emails.
Aside from that, we have a few other tips for you to help you determine if you’re dealing with a good PLR seller. Recommendations from people you trust is always a great first step. But sometimes the only way to find the content you need is through a google search. Take a look at the store itself. You can tell a lot by the look and feel of a site. If they have a free pack to download, start there and take a look at the content. If they don’t buy a small, inexpensive pack to check them out. It’s also helpful to look for a guarantee. Is this PLR seller willing to stand by their work and offer a refund if you’re not satisfied? If they don’t, it can be a warning flag.
At the end of the day, give it your best shot and if you do end up buying something that’s not the quality you’re looking for, delete it and move on. There’s plenty of great pre-written content out there for you to work with and at the very least, you now know better and won’t buy from them again.
Pay Attention To The License You Get With Your PLR
When you buy a PLR product, one of the first things you want to check is the license you receive with your per-written content bundle. Most sellers will tell you upfront what kind of license you get and many of them are similar, but it’s always good to double check since there is no universal set of rights.
Let’s run through a few common licenses you will encounter as you purchase PLR from various places. Some sellers keep it super simple and tell you that you can do whatever you like with the content. Some will only tell you that you can’t put their name on it. Personally, we prefer a little more direction.
Our own license here at Piggy Makes Bank allows you to do pretty much anything aside from reselling as PLR. We also include a note that you can’t submit the content to article directories or publish it as Kindle books. This is added to protect you, the buyer because neither of these platforms allow PLR content and are likely to ban you for publishing PLR as your own original content.
Here’s what our PLR license looks like:
PLR Rights License Rights Granted:
What you CAN DO with it.
[YES] Can be edited completely and your name put on it.
[YES] Can be used as web content.
[YES] Can be broken down into smaller articles.
[YES] Can be added to an eCourse or autoresponder as content.
[YES] Can be added to an eBook/PDF as content.
[YES] Can be given away.
[YES] Can be packaged.
[YES] Can be offered as a bonus.
[YES] Can be added to free membership sites.
[YES] Can be added to paid membership sites
[YES] Claim full authorship.
[YES] Added to paid membership sites.
[YES] Added to free membership sites.
[YES] Can be broken down into articles.
[YES] Can be packaged with other products.
[YES] Offered as free bonus.
[YES] Given away for free.
What you CAN'T DO with it
[NO] Can be submitted to article directories.
[NO] Can be use in Kindle books
[NO] Can sell with PLR Rights
[NO] Can offer Master Resell Rights
[NO] Can be offered through auction sites
As you can see, it’s pretty straight forward. And there are actually some pretty good suggestions for what you may want to do with these articles, eBooks, reports etc. Feel free to use it to inspire you to use and reuse the content in the most effective ways possible.
If a PLR pack doesn’t contain a license at all, check with the seller. This could be a warning flag, or it could simply be that that creator forgot to add it to your download pack. You may also want to check the FAQ or help section of their shop for a universal license that applies to all packs.
Since we’re talking about red flags, here are a few things you want to watch out for.
Don’t buy PLR that gives you a master resell rights license. This means that the content can be resold as PLR. While that in itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing, chances are that the same piece of content has been sold hundreds, if not thousands of time. Be prepared to do some major editing to make it look and feel unique. From experience we can also tell you that most Master Resell Rights PLR is poorly written and produced. At the very least, give it a good read before you start to share it with your audience.
Last but not least, be careful with long and difficult PLR licenses that take a lawyer to decipher. PLR rights should be simple and straight forward. Again, use ours as an example for what you want to look for with a reputable PLR seller.
We'll be sharing more about What is PLR and How in the heck do I use it over the coming weeks.
Don't want to wait? Grab your copy of our What is PLR and How in the heck do I Use It? Guide Now.
In this quick read we talk about:
- Stop spinning your wheels in constant content creation and start leveraging pre-written content (a.k.a PLR content)
- What PLR is and where to find high-quality content from sources you can trust (no more wasting time or money on bad writing)
- How to grow your audience and show off your expertise, all with done-for-you content (no long hours at the keyboard)!
- How to actually take time off work thanks to the magic combination of pre-written content and passive income.
- How a few fast tweaks can turn done-for-you content into the perfect blog post, email, or even a complete training course.
- How to maximize your ROI by leveraging the power of repurposing (and your readers will never even know)
We think you'll be excited to start playing with PLR when you finish the guide and wanted to make that easy for you…
- A list of reputable PLR providers with high-quality content you'll be proud to share with your audience.
- A special discount for our PLR shop here at Piggy Makes Bank.
We look forward to sharing our love for high-quality pre-written content with you in the weeks to come.