Private label rights content: when should you not use it?

Here on the Totally PLR blog I want to give you some seriously useful, easily actionable ways you can use private label rights content. Because I know how precious time is and I’d love to help you save some that you can use on other activities in your business.

To keep me accountable, I joined Sarah Arrow’s 30 Day blogging challenge and I have to say that it’s giving me some great practice at creating good content, fast.  It’s also been great to get feedback on my posts, especially from people who previous had no idea what PLR was, because they were able to show me all the places where I was assuming readers already knew what I was talking about!

One of the questions that came up was “do you have a post on when not to use PLR, Helen?” I didn’t, but I immediately set about writing one and here it is…

Hmm….when should you not use PLR? Actually I struggled to come up with a definitive list, and that’s not just because I sell PLR. I really do feel you can use it in most situations, because the quality and relevance of the end result that matters, not where it came from.

(Assuming you’ve respected copyright laws and haven’t stolen the content, of course.)

Possibly on your own blog

I’ve read a few articles now stating that you should never use private label rights content on a blog, but I don’t think it’s that clear-cut. It depends on the blog, the PLR and what you do with it. If you have a blog which has a very personal style where you mainly share your thoughts and opinions, then posting a ‘5 ways to…’ – style PLR article, unedited, on your blog is going to be really jarring. So I agree that’s a bad idea.

But if you have a blog with more of a ‘how to’ style, which may also include a lot of opinion, you could easily fit PLR into it seamlessly. Just put your opinion and personal experience at the top and bottom of the post and use the lightly edited PLR for the step-by-step part in the middle, for example. This way, you’re simply using the PLR to speed up the writing process.

You could also use PLR just now and then, for a series of posts on a particular subject or to help you schedule some posts a few weeks ahead if you have a busy period coming up. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.

If it’s a guest blog post

Don’t use PLR for guest posts on other people’s blogs. This is considered bad etiquette because the blogger has given you a spot on their own blog and in return you’ll be expected to give a valuable, original post that you have written yourself.

If you’re faking it

One use of PLR that does make me uneasy is when people use it to pretend they have experience that they don’t really have.

This isn’t too much of a problem in my own area, for example, someone who owns a coaching program on starting a home business could buy my WordPress PLR videos to go in their module on setting up a website even if they weren’t a WordPress expert themselves. I doubt anyone would feel that was being dishonest. In fact, I’ve even been part of a membership myself when the owner has stated “Here are some tutorial videos on setting up a website. They aren’t by me, obviously.” And it was no big deal because the videos were helpful and accurate. It didn’t really matter who had recorded them.

But where it would make me uneasy is if someone bought some health PLR and used it to suggest they had expertise in an area they actually didn’t. To me, that’s very different to an expert in that subject buying PLR to speed up content creation.

If you’re building a writing portfolio

If you’re promoting yourself as a writer or copywriter, I think you’d be on shaky ground if you passed off even an edited PLR article as your own. The private label rights license may well allow this, but if your future clients found out they may not be happy about it.

There are a few exceptions, though. I believe there’s a difference between explicitly stating that you wrote an article and posting an article on a blog that could have been written by anyone. The  line between the two becomes hazier if you set up a blog specifically as a writer’s portfolio, I guess.

But a writer could certainly set up a blog of tips and tutorials for other aspiring writers using private label rights content. Being a writer doesn’t necessarily mean you can never use PLR.

Being able to re-write PLR well is a skill in itself (it took me a bit of practice to do this!) so a writer may even be able to offer this a service?

If it’s bad private label rights content

There’s no doubt that bad PLR is harder to work with. It might even take longer to knock it into shape than it would to write it from scratch, so you need to decide on a case by case basis whether to bother using it.

But even then you can sometimes use a bad pack to prompt new ideas. In a ‘5 ways to…’ article, the grammar might be dodgy and the content boring, but you could use it as list of bullet points and write around those. You just wouldn’t want to pay much – or anything at all – for it.

Bad video PLR would be much harder to knock into shape and I doubt it would be worth the bother.

If it’s against the rules of the platform

If you’re planning to upload PLR to a third party platform always check the terms first. It’s not allowed in Kindle books and at Udemy, for example. In fact, using it could get your account closed for good with no chance of opening another one so it’s just not worth the risk.

Any other reasons not to use PLR?

I honestly can’t think of any others. If you can, please do drop me a comment!

If you’d like me to recommend you some good PLR, join my mailing list – just add your email address on this page to join.