PLR articles are attractive.

Pre-written content that you can use straight away on your website or in your autoresponder messages.

But that’s not the best way to use them.

It’s lazy – there’s nothing inherently wrong with that – but it’s also over-done. So you’re automatically diluting your chance of success.

Instead, it’s worth spending a bit of time tweaking the articles. You’ll get much more out of them and they’ll work better for you.

1. Choose your PLR carefully

Sites like this one offer PLR on almost every subject imaginable and in all sorts of different formats – articles, PDF ebooks, audios and videos.

On that particular site, some of them is excellent, some is so-so in quality and some of it makes you wonder where they found the “writer” it’s so dire.

You can sometimes do research beforehand – if the articles pack you’re thinking of includes the subjects or titles then you can often search for that string in Google. Put quote marks around it and you’ll often get the pages where the articles have been published by other people who’ve bought the same pack.

For instance (and for no particular reason as it’s not a subject area I’m interested in), I found a pack on Supercross and put one title “The Benefits of Participating In Supercross Motorcycle Racing” into Google.

11,400 results came up.

So I narrowed it down by using the allintitle: modifier before the string. That gave 8 results.

I clicked on one of those results and started reading:

“Have you been looking for something to keep you occupied during your free time?
What about a hobby, we all need hobbies? If you have been looking to try
something new, you may want to consider giving supercross motorcycle racing a
shot.”

OK. That’s mostly filler. So it wouldn’t be a pack I’d buy.

Quick research but effective.

And because of the nature of PLR and the generally lazy nature of people it’s easy to do for a lot of products.

Sometimes you’ll find a hidden gem.

Other times you’ll find something that’s a decent base and you can then work with that.

If you’re buying a complete product it’s different.

For instance, I recently bought a pack of PLR video products for $27.

I knew in advance that they wouldn’t all be fantastic.

But I’d searched for a few of the titles and seen some sample videos, so I knew that at least some would be OK.

I also did a search on Master Resale Rights and found some for sale at around $12 each. So I figured that even if I only found 3 or 4 worthwhile courses to sell, I’d be saving money.

That worked – I’ve found maybe 4 or 5 so far and still have quite a lot to check.

Result.

Incidentally, there are quite a few sites that offer PLR on a regular basis for either a one-off fee or a monthly subscription. I’m a long-standing member of this site and they keep adding new products but they’re nowhere as cheap or as prolific at adding new content as this site (if the offer is still up – in theory it’s a limited time offer although I have my suspicions that isn’t the case in practice).

2. Check your PLR rights before buying

PLR comes with an often confusing set of rules as to what you can and can’t do with it.

There’s no consistency in these rules – it is up to each product creator to let you know what (if any) restrictions there are on their product.

One area that’s often less clear cut than you’d like is whether or not you can edit or modify a product you’ve bought.

Some PLR terms don’t mention that at all – articles often don’t.

Others offer confusing terms. You may be allowed to modify parts of the package and not others.

And some allow you to modify the product but their branding is embedded in it so you’d have to re-record it completely. Which actually isn’t a bad idea – I’ll come on to that a bit more later.

If you’re not sure about some of the terms and conditions, you could maybe ask the product creator but it’s unlikely you’ll be able to find them easily.

The site selling you the PLR will simply refer you to the terms and conditions as listed.

So you have to use your judgement.

Whilst I wouldn’t encourage you to break the terms and conditions of an offer, ultimately it’s down to you and your conscience. The chance of getting “caught” if you break terms and conditions is low and the enforceability is probably lower, especially at the cheaper end of the market. But that’s completely down to you. I’d suggest staying safe and keeping to the terms and conditions – there’s more than enough products out there.

3. Modify your PLR

This is the scary bit for a lot of people.

The lure of PLR is that it’s instantly usable.

And, yes, that’s true.

But if you go down that route and publish the PLR on the web, you’re competing with tens or hundreds or thousands of other people doing the exact same thing.

Google doesn’t like showing identical or near-identical results which means that if you go down the lazy route of not editing it, you’re competing with the sites with the strongest SEO profile and that’s an uphill struggle.

So changing your PLR is worth doing.

Even if you’re just adding it to an autoresponder series.

Let’s start with the easiest way of changing PLR:

Modify it for your voice

That’s relatively easy.

Just read through the article and change the bits that “jar” and that you wouldn’t personally say in those particular words.

I go into more depth about how to do that here.

Personally, I find it takes me maybe 2 or 3 minutes to change an article that way – I regularly do it with non-PLR articles that I get from iWriter.

Then they’re ready to be put into an autoresponder series – autoresponders are good for this technique because they’re not subject to the same duplicate content rules as regular web pages.

If you don’t change the articles into your own voice then, over time, it will seem to your readers as though you’ve got a split personality as your writing style changes. Not good for building a long term relationship with them,

Re-write the sales letter

If you’ve chosen a product to sell then re-writing the sales letter (and reworking the associated graphics) is essential.

One product I looked at recently in the competitive forex market doesn’t allow you to edit the main product but does allow you to edit the sales letter and the autoresponder series & articles that come with it.

Re-writing the sales letter is, in my view, essential.

Copywriting is a skill but writing basic copy isn’t as bad as you first thought (honest).

Use the existing sales page as a model, create some new headlines with a free tool like this one and re-work the bullets and other sales points.

Write a first draft in one sitting.

Don’t edit as you go.

Just write.

Then leave it overnight before coming back to read your draft out loud.

Edit wherever you stumble – that’s where the wording isn’t quite right.

And edit wherever it doesn’t quite make sense.

Will you get it totally right?

No.

Will it sell some copies?

Probably.

And if you and your affiliates get your pre-sell done correctly then the sales letter doesn’t have to be 100% perfect.

In fact, perfectionism is something you need to banish from yourself as much as you possibly can.

There’s a phrase “good enough is good enough” and you need to keep it in mind.

Things will never be perfect.

Large companies like Apple and Microsoft can’t make perfect items but it doesn’t stop them making money. You need to adopt the same attitude!

4. Start testing

Ultimately, you don’t know whether or not something will sell in the real world until you launch it.

I like to test small and cheap – I’m happy with slow but steady – so I will send some traffic from a blog and from videos and other places.

Most likely it will be a trickle of traffic but personally I’m happy with that.

Other people will test with Facebook ads, solo ads if they’re in the internet marketing niche, maybe pay per click ads and will then scale faster if they get results.

It’s up to you – you’ll know your personal preferences and your comfort zone (which almost certainly needs stretching!) so work with those rather than trying to push string uphill.

But whatever happens, you need to start testing.

And you need to keep at it – some things are slow burn, especially if you go down the free traffic route, other things happen quicker.

Your first attempt may not work but that doesn’t mean the system doesn’t work. It could just be that you didn’t stike gold the first time.

PLR gives you a lot of flexibility.

It’s not quite as flexible as promoting other people’s products as an affiliate but it gives you more control.

Apart from anything else, it almost forces you to create a list as that’s the done thing for product owners.

And it gets over the worry of creating your own product.

In certain markets, I’m going to be selling PLR products with the sales letter re-written, the product renamed and the graphics re-worked.

It’s too early to tell how well that will work but my best guess is that it will work nicely and will allow me to be more productive.

Which is part of the bonus of using PLR effectively.

If you’d like to know more, check out this offer.