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You may have heard online businesses singing the praises of PLR articles. But before you commit to purchasing any PLR articles, you ought to know a little more about what PLR articles are, how they work, how they can help or harm your business, and what to watch out for.
What are PLR articles?
PLR articles are bundles of articles (usually 10, 20 or 25) around 400 words long, written around a series of keywords. When you buy PLR content, you can edit it, add to it, mash it up, and use it in whatever way you choose. You’ve paid for the right to use the CONTENT in these articles.
Why would I use PLR?
Say you run a website selling Skull-themed decor accessories – skull cushion covers and lampshades and soaps and such (sorry, I’ve got skulls on the brain at the moment). You’ve put up a few articles about skulls – interesting anatomical facts, the history of the ‘Jolly Roger’ and some famous artists who used skulls in their work. All these articles have been written by you, using your distinct style.
You’ve just introduced a new collection of skull wedding accessories – skull guestbooks, garters, favor boxes, etc. You want to add some articles about wedding planning to attract visitors to your site, but you don’t know ANYTHING about planning a wedding, and you don’t have the time or inclination to research the subject in-depth.
So, you buy 25 ‘Wedding Planning’ PLR articles, and rewrite and tweak them using your own style. Now you have 25 articles to add to your website, for a fraction of the time it took you to write the others.
Businesses can buy PLR to use on their websites, blogs and newsletters. You can also use it to compile ebooks, which you can sell to customers for a profit.
What NOT to do with PLR Articles
While PLR can be useful, it can also harm your business. Remember that five, ten, or even a hundred other people might have brought the same PLR articles. You MUST significantly rewrite the content and make it your own, otherwise, you’re just rehashing content browsers can find on hundreds of other websites. You’re not offering anything or value. You might as well not have any articles at all.
NEVER, and I repeat, NEVER use PLR articles without rewriting it first, because if ONE other person buys the same article and posts it online as is, you could be penalized by the search engines for having duplicate content. Your website could be banned from Google, Yahoo or MSN search.
That would be BAD.
The other thing to be wary of is free or very cheap PLR articles. You pay nothing for a reason – cheap PLR articles are churned out in 10 minutes, often by writers with a poor grasp of english. They’re low quality, and sometimes give false information.
PLR articles could be really useful for your business if you use them correctly, but if your not careful, cheap PLR articles could harm your online presence in ways you probably can’t imagine. If you don’t want to rewrite the PLR articles yourself, you could send them to a professional copywriter (like me!), but by that stage you’ve paid for the articles AND my time, so you might as well have gone for professional, original content in the first place.
In the world of online content, unique, original, professionally written content wins the day. If you think you can give browsers this content with PLR articles, but all means use them. If not, stay away!
I’ll be talking about PLR articles again tomorrow. I’m writing a special feature post for Freelance Writers: Should I Write PLR Articles?
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