The question is, how do you choose a good PLR content provider? If you type “private label rights” into Google, you will get over 30 million results! Some providers charge mere pennies. Others require upwards of $50 a month! Some sell PLR on individual products. Others are monthly memberships. How does a well-meaning infoproduct entrepreneur separate the good from the bad?

Following are questions you should ask before committing your precious dollars to a PLR provider:

1. Is the PLR content relevant to my niche?

A common problem for many Internet marketers is to leave PLR content unused. This is more likely if the PLR you have is not relevant to your niche or target market. Sure, some content can be so generic that it can fit a lot of niches. But there are niches that are very targeted and specific, that not all PLR would work for them. So before you buy any PLR, look at the topic and make sure you can repurpose it to suit your target market.

2. Can I get a free sample of the PLR content?

A PLR provider who is confident about the quality of their products will allow you to sample their content for free. Otherwise, this could be a red flag that the quality may not be up to par.

3.   Is the PLR content original, well-researched and well-written?

Most PLR providers offer free samples or a free trial so you can look at the quality of their PLR content. Make sure the material is well written, with few or now grammatical and typographical errors. Ask the provider if the materials are original, that is, they have never been sold anywhere else before. You don’t want to pay for something that has been circulating the Internet for many months and has been rehashed and recycled to death.

4. Can I buy only what I want/need, or do I get a package regularly, whether I can use it or not?

Some PLR providers force you to purchase bundles of PLR content. This is fine, as long as you’re confident that you can actually use most, if not everything, in the bundle. Otherwise, it’s wiser to go with PLR providers that allow you to buy only what you want and need. Paying for PLR that you will not or cannot use is like flushing money down the toilet.

5. Is there a limit to the number of people who can buy the PLR content?

Although I emphasize the importance of transforming PLR and making it your own, you still want to look for PLR that is offered to a limited number of people only. Find out if the PLR provider has a cap on the number of “copies” of the PLR material they sell. If it’s a PLR membership, is there a limit to the number of members they accept? If not, you may end up with an infoproduct that will soon be mass distributed on the Internet. This leads to price wars wherein people selling the same stuff try to outdo each other by bringing their selling price lower and lower. However, if you are committed to giving your PLR content the “extreme makeover”, then this may not be an issue to you.

6. Does the PLR provider also give training and other resources to help me make the most out of the PLR?

A good PLR provider is committed to your success as an infoproduct entrepreneur. Therefore, a good provider will also give you training and guidance on how to make the most of the PLR you are purchasing. This is a sign of good customer service and a genuine concern for their clients.

7. Does the PLR provider have a good track record?

Here you’ll have to do some sleuthing to get an idea of the reputation and previous performance of the PLR provider you’re considering. Ask other Internet marketers you know where they get their PLR. Or pose the question in an Internet marketing forum. You’re bound to get recommendations for PLR providers in various niches.

8. Am I getting extras along with the PLR content?

Some PLR providers don’t just give you an Ebook or special report. They throw in a sales letter, Ecover graphic and even a matching website header! These can be useful, but remember that you can’t - or shouldn’t - use these as is. You can easily revise a sales letter to make it unique to your product and niche, similar to how you convert the PLR material itself. However, once you change the product’s title, you can no longer use the Ecover and website graphic. Keep this in mind when you’re considering if the price of the PLR is worthwhile.

9. What exactly am I getting?

As I have mentioned in other blog posts, not all PLR is the same. Make sure to read the license carefully and make note of what you can and cannot do with the PLR content. You might be looking for PLR to use as a giveaway to your opt-in list… only to find out that the license does not allow you to do that. Avoid disappointment. Know exactly what you’re getting before you buy.

10. Can I afford the PLR?

The cost of PLR content also varies widely. All other things being equal (upon considering questions 1 to 9), of course you’ll go with the PLR that’s within your budget. Single-purchase PLR may seem to be less expensive than PLR memberships, but it really depends on how you use the PLR. If you can take your monthly PLRs and use them to sell infoproducts, or to get sales from your lists or Ezines, then by all means, go for it.

You are looking for high quality PLR from a reliable provider, that will be highly useful to your target market and the particular business models you use. As you may have realized by now, there are no easy answers when it comes to choosing a PLR provider. It can take some trial and error to find exactly the provider that gives you that “perfect fit”.

Everytime you go through a process of converting PLR material to make it your own unique product, think of how you can give it an “extreme makeover”. Do this after you have rewritten the actual content of the PLR. Some minor changes can make it more attractive and enticing. More extreme measures will make it a whole new product.

Here are some ideas for how to give PLR content a makeover, from the most superficial to the most extreme:

A New Face

Some PLR content comes with its own Ecover. Most of the time, you won’t want to use this. You’ll want a whole new, unique Ecover. After all, you’ve given the product a new title so you won’t be able to use the original cover, either.

A New Outfit

If you’re working with text, make it easy to read and navigate through. Use different font settings to set titles and headings apart from the rest of the text. Make sure there’s plenty of white space, and that the fonts are big enough to read comfortably on a computer screen. Take parts you want to emphasize and put them in a box or sidebar. Add graphics and pictures. You may want to hire a professional to arrange the content in a nice layout.

Cosmetic Surgery

Now we’re getting more extreme and going beyond superficial changes. Take your PLR content and chop it up into smaller pieces, to use for blog posts, E-mails and E-courses.  Or do the opposite: take several PLR articles and bundle them together into a special report or Ebook. Pick out the most action-oriented parts of the material and put together a “how to” list, checklist or step-by-step guide.

Total Transformation

Your PLR is about to become a completely new product altogether. Change its format. If it’s text, read it and create an audio recording. Use the recording as a teleseminar. Or, create a slideshow or screen capture and publish it as a how-to video. You could also use the video as a webinar.

Why not go beyond digital products altogether? Turn that Ebook into a physical book, the audio recording into an actual CD, and the video into a DVD. Now here’s a super cool idea: put several audio products into a preloaded MP3 player. Now you’ve got physical products that I’ll bet your competitors don’t have, and you can charge more for them!

You see, it’s easy to transform your PLR content. You can make simple, superficial changes. Middle-of-the-road changes involving either cutting up or combining together. Or you could take the most extreme step of cutting across media and formats. Do what it takes to set you apart from the competition. Only your imagination is the limit.

Well, what the heck is PLR anyway?

PLR is a right or permission that you acquire, usually by paying for it, to use a piece of content and sell it for 100% of the profit. When you say “PLR” people usually think of E-books, but PLR can be granted for any - mostly digital - products such as software, audio and video. Other text forms that can come with PLR are articles, blog posts and autoresponder messages or newsletters. These PLR products can also come with sales letters, E-covers and even matching website headers.

When you buy a piece of content with PLR, in general, that means you can:

* edit the content: rewrite, remove, add content
* reformat the content: transform it from text to audio, for example
* repurpose the content: such as cutting up an E-book into an E-course
* put your name as the author
* sell the content and keep all of the profits

A key thing to remember is that not all PLRs are the same. Some PLR providers will allow you to give away the content, say, as a bonus for a paid product. Others will only allow you to sell it. Some will allow you to claim the copyright for the product. Others will allow this only if you have changed the content so much that the original writer would not even be able to recognize it anymore.

Confusing? It can be. The key thing is to read the license in every PLR product that you buy, to make sure that it meets your needs and purposes.

One good way to better understand PLR is to compare it to other kinds of rights, such as “Standard Resell Rights” and “Master Resell Rights”:

I hope this table has helped explain PLR to you. But the bottom line is: read the license. That will tell you exactly what you can and cannot do with the content you have acquired. If it’s unclear, ask the provider.

The first thing to do is rewrite the content. Think of how you can make the content unique and valuable to your audience. How can you make it stand apart from others who have the same PLR content? How can you make it even more useful for your audience?

Here’s a step-by-step guide you can follow the next time you rewrite PLR.

1. Change the title.

Rewrite the title to reflect your particular target audience. PLRs tend to be generic. Make yours specific. If you will be publishing the content online, add your target keywords into the title.

2. Write an introduction.

Thinking about what will spark your audience’s interests, write an introduction for the material. If you’re targeting some keywords, make sure to include them in the introduction as well. Keep in mind that the introduction should entice the reader, listener or viewer of the content to consume the rest of the content. Stuck? Simply tell your audience what you’re about to tell them - and why they should listen.

3. Write or rewrite chapter titles, headings and sub-headings.

If the PLR content has existing chapter titles, headings and sub-headings, rewrite them to make them more appealing to your audience. Otherwise, write new ones. Chapter titles, headings and sub-headings make the content easier to consume, scan and navigate. Make it easy for your audience to find the information they want and need.

4. Add personality.

Inject a little of yourself into the material. Add your favorite phrases. Make the words sound the way they would if you had written them yourself, or if you were speaking. The best way to do this is to read the text aloud. Rewrite parts that don’t sound natural, to make them sound more like you. If your target audience uses jargons, then go ahead and insert these throughout the text. If you have personal knowledge about the topic, add what you can to the material.

5. Prune away the undesirables.

Look for parts of the content that are not useful for your reader. Some PLR might also contain some fluff, or content that your audience would regard as fluff. Simply delete those. Weed out anything that isn’t helpful or necessary.

6. Give more.

Put together a list of resources your audience can refer to if they want to learn more about the topic. This not only gives tremendous additional value to your audience, but it’s also a great place for links to affiliate products and, of course, your own products.

7. Write a conclusion.

Tell your audience what you have just told them. This is the place to summarize the key points in the material. The chapter titles and headings you wrote or rewrote earlier will come in handy now. Also conclude by giving the audience an idea of what next steps they need to take, or how they can use their newfound knowledge.

By now, the PLR content should vastly different from what you started with. You’ve added unique content, made it more targeted to your audience, put in your personality and knowledge, and removed the unnecessary. If you’re working with text, you’ll want the document to LOOK different as well. But that’s a topic for another blog post. Watch out for it.

Oh, how disappointing. I wasn’t familiar with one of them, but the other was an Internet marketer with some reputation and whom I had respected. Well, now I’m not so sure anymore.

Seeing those identical blog posts has gotten me thinking about all the different ways that people MIS-use PLR content. Now I am an authority on this subject because I have committed almost every single one of these PLR sins.

1. Not Using The PLR They Own.

You need to pay money to get Private Label Rights (PLR) content. Unfortunately, a lot of us pay for PLR content, save them on our hard drives… and then let them collect cyberdust. This happens when we buy PLR without a clear plan for how we’re going to use them. Or when we simply don’t know what to do with PLR - a common dilemma for beginners. What a waste of precious dollars! Some PLR memberships cost almost $50 a month. And if you consider the amount of money you could have made with the PLR, you’ll realize how much $$$$ you’ve been flushing down the toilet. If you have it, use it!

2. Using The PLR As Is.

The bloggers I mentioned above have committed one of the worst sins in using PLR content: they left the PLR intact in its original form. That’s a no-no. Instead, you’re supposed to treat the PLR content as raw material, out of which you will shape and fashion your finished product. Blogs are particularly sticky because they’re supposed to be personal. If you use PLR content, unchanged, then you’re not being honest to your blog readers, are you?

3. Letting PLR Address General Audiences.

This is related to sin #2. Most PLR are addressed to general audiences, so that they can easily be customized to specific target markets or niches. The problem is, some marketers, either because they are lazy or just don’t know any better, don’t adapt the PLR to better suit their target audience. This is another big mistake.

4. Keeping The PLR In Its Original Format.

This is similar to sins #2 and 3. Just because your PLR content is in print form doesn’t mean you have to keep it that way. You can use that PLR to create your own audio recording or podcast. Create a slideshow presentation from it then turn that into a movie for YouTube. Cut an E-book into articles or blog posts. Combine articles into an E-book. Combine related E-books into a home study course. The possibilities are endless.

5. Violating The Terms of The PLR.

Not all PLR are created equal. Each PLR provider has their own version of which rights they are granting to you. Usually, PLR includes the right to edit the material, claim authorship, and sell the content to keep all of the profits. Often, PLR does NOT include the right to sell the material with PLR as well. Some PLR providers allow you to give away the material as a bonus; others don’t! It can be confusing, especially if you get PLR from various providers. To be safe, ALWAYS read the terms of use and keep them for future reference. Review the terms before using the material.

So there you have it, the 5 ways that PLR owners are not profiting from the hidden gold nuggets in their hard drive.

Have I missed any?

Maybe the idea of making and marketing an infoproduct is too overwhelming for you right now, even if all the research and most of the writing have been done for you. After all, actually selling the infoproduct is a lot of hard work. I totally understand. I’ve been there, done that.

Well, guess what? There are way more things you can do to cash in on your PLR content right now, other than creating an infoproduct to sell!

After just sitting on my bum for a few minutes, I came up with 10 different ways you can make money from your PLR.

1. Make an E-book, special report or E-course to give away as a bonus for signing up to your mailing list. Remember, the money is in the list, so grow that list!

2. Create a product for a special giveaway with a joint venture partner, designed to get more people to sign up for your opt-in list.

3. Use the information from an Ebook to write unique articles and submit them to article directories. In the author’s resource box, add links to your website or to an affiliate product.

4. Write a completely unique article out of a PLR Ebook or multimedia product, and submit it to a profit-sharing article directory, such as Associated Content.

5. Create an infoproduct as a bonus for the sale of a product or service that you’re already marketing.

6. Get material for a $1 teleseminar or webinar. This is great for building a quality list, and promoting a higher-priced product or service.

7. Extract blog posts from the PLR and plug them into a monetized blog to publish for the next 6 months. Voila, your blog runs on autopilot!

8. Select the most actionable points from a PLR Ebook and make an autoresponder course - with a subtle promotion of your products and services, of course.

9. Produce short videos with useful tips for your target market, and blast them on YouTube and the rest of the Internet using TubeMogul. Make sure the videos have the URL to your website.

10. Use PLR content to make OFFLINE marketing materials for your biz, such as post cards, magazine advertorials and fliers.

I’m sure you can find at least one thing on this list that you can do today. Think of it: in a couple of hours, you could be growing your list, driving traffic to your site, selling more of your own or affiliate products, or set your blog on autopilot. The possibilities really are only limited by our imagination.

I’d like to make this list much longer. Got anything to add? Please post them in the comments section. Thanks!

I even downloaded a free report about how to use - and make money from - PLR content By the way, if you’d like a copy of that free report yourself, sign up here. (It’s on the bottom of the page.) I actually read that report. But still, I turned up my nose on PLR! I was convinced I could write everything myself.

As I learned more and got deeper into Internet marketing, I kept hearing about PLR. At first, I was in utter shock. Internet marketing gurus and people I looked up to as mentors admitted to using PLR. Gasp! No, it couldn’t be! But there you have it. It seems like everybody who’s making money on the Internet is using PLR.

I like to keep an open mind, so I did try PLR. I signed up for a free PLR offer once. I took one look at the articles and then I junked them. They were crap! I could not put my name on that stuff! I was better off just writing all the content I ever needed by myself. As I said, I am a writer. I get paid to write.

So I continued to write all my own stuff.

Fast forward to eight months from the time I began Internet marketing: I have 5 blogs, dozens of article directories to submit to, guest blog posts to write, electronic newsletters to send to 3 different lists in 3 different niches, and an infoproduct empire to build.

All these Internet assets I have carefully built to generate passive income for me are sadly getting neglected. I am now busy servicing my clients, getting into joint ventures, creating more websites to sell products .. let’s just say I am beginning to not enjoy writing so much anymore. Ok, ok, I am starting to dread it!

I consider myself a pretty fast writer, but somehow, I was falling behind on my article marketing. Somehow I have a handful of half-written special reports that I had meant to give away for free but abandoned in frustration. I still don’t have freebies to give away on my opt-in forms.

And then it struck me: unless I get help with all the writing I need to get done, I will keep leaving money on the table!

Yes, I am a writer, but I simply cannot do all the writing myself. At least, not from scratch. I’ve thought about hiring a writer, but then the good ones charge more than I do , which means I’ll end up spending more than I earn. And the cheaper ghostwriters will produce stuff that I’ll have to rewrite anyway.

Being the open-minded entrepreneur that I am (and somebody at the end of her rope), I gave PLR a second look. This time, I actually paid for it. This time, I asked around and went with the PLR provider used by a successful Internet marketer whom I greatly admire. And you know what? My mind was blown away!

I now have all the content I need for my blog posts, article marketing, Email autoresponders, and all the infoproducts I had planned to make heaps of money with - and in fact, I have fresh ideas for many more!

Sure, it’s an “additional” expense, but it costs much less than hiring a ghostwriter for all the written stuff I need. Plus, if I consider all the profits I am NOT making because I don’t have all day to write… not only is PLR worth it - the cost forces me to make it worthwhile!

Wait, don’t think I don’t do any writing anymore. I do. But this time, I’m not starting with a blank page. I’m not spending 30 minutes researching the topic. I have the raw materials in front of me. I change the title to include my keywords. I rephrase the content to make it relevant to my target market. I pull things apart, rearrange stuff, combine different pieces of content, add what I already know, and I end up with content that is truly, uniquely my own.

Moral of the story: If you want to provide quality content without spending 8 hours a day writing, or paying $$$ for content, then you need PLR. The key is to get the best PLR out there and to recycle and repurpose it to make it truly your own.