I love PLR. I hate PLR. For every single piece of PLR I have bought or received I have felt the need to rewrite it. Every single one. The grammar is atrocious. The lack of research is astoundingly bad. The fluff and filler is enough to gag on. The only thing that I can say positive about PLR is that it gives me a place to start for building my sites. Even if it was no big deal to publish PLR articles straight up without rewrites without fear of duplicate content concerns, I simply wouldn’t do it. I couldn’t do it.
When I look at a batch of PLR I think, “OK, I will simply rewrite the title, the first paragraph, the last and sprinkle in my keywords I want to spam Google with.” It freakin’ never works out like that. The middle portions are typically so void of sense that I end up rewriting the whole damn thing. Even if I try to convince myself not to care about retarded niche topics like “candle wax puppets” or “concrete tires”, I still find myself rewriting the crap. I wish I could simply post what was provided.
Check out this intro to a fitness article. It’s a beauty:
Making the decision of where you will go to exercise s a very important step in reaching your goals of fitness. A lot of factors will go into this decision, and each one should be evaluated well before you start exercising. Once you have made a decision on where you will go to exercise, you can move on to deciding how you plan to work out.
Holy shit there are a lot of decisions to be made from reading that paragraph. Around and around we go, no? And it ends just as poorly:
Once you have given it some thought and weighed out the pros and cons, you’ll have no problem making the choice. Always keep in mind that once you’ve made your choice, you can always switch if you aren’t happy with the choice you made.
Good grief. I feel dizzy just reading that shit. Filler and fluff. We all know where this utter shit is produced. And no offense, but it’s time to get PLR content generation back in the hands of native speakers of English. I’m from an English-speaking country. I’m providing content to English speakers. It serves to reason that the writers of this junk have a fabulous grasp of English as well.
I promote PLRPro and All Private Label Content heavily. I find them to be the best option. Article Underground is pretty good too. And there are some niche content providers that do a good job like Kim Standerline, among others. It seems that things are getting better as whiners like me are demanding better from their memberships, but they still have a long way to go.
Admittedly this post is self-serving as I have a website, PLR Advice, that I have set up to summarize and/or review all these PLR sites. I’ve been a member of far more PLR sites than I can count. I’ve purchased good and bad content. If you are looking for PLR maybe this site will be a good place to start.
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
Why don’t you do a case study (if not for this blog, then for yourself) where you start a new blogger blog and only post the PLR exactly as you receive it. No changes, not even inserting keywords. Remember, the point of your sites is to get people to move on by clicking on the ads, not to hang around and read your brilliant prose all day long.
I couldn’t help but laugh when I read “niche topics like candle wax puppets or concrete tires.” I was a member of a certain web site that will remain nameless and the topics were just this silly. That was the main reason that I canceled my membership.
Yeah, we all know that most PLR content is terrible and, as you said, we all know that it is outsourced. I really believe that it will never be written by native English speakers. The problem is that site builders want the content for peanuts, but don’t stop to realize that you get what you pay for. There is simply no way that native English speakers are going to toil away writing content for the paltry sum that most webmasters are willing to pay.
Hey Walt. Honest to your god I’ve tried. But PLR is not written typically with keywords in mind and even if they are I still feel like I have to go in and do some substitution to get them found in the first page of Google (ala Keyword Sniping, it’s working). So I have to rewrite the title. And substitute. But for whatever effing reason I start looking at the content and start tweaking it here or there. Anal is a good word to describe that behavior. And it’s not about me wanting them to read this stuff. I simply try to give it a bit of substance. Not enough that they will be enthralled with the content, but enough to at least make the readers think that a human might have been behind the words. I may try what you suggest though, but I’m still going to have to deal with the keywords.
I agree Heather. Outsourcing is simply they way the Western world does its business. We consumers are cheap, so we get what we pay for.
Most of the PLR, and most sales pitches, for that matter, remind me of the stuff we used to write in school to get to the page requirement for the paper. Lots of fluff, huge margins, lots of repetition, etc.
I don’t think the problem is with the people not being native speakers but that they have to deliver a certian volume of work and there is no quality checking on them when they are done.
Barry
Talking of strange topics, when doing a bit of research on ezinearticles I came across an article about “tie dye underwear”. Scary thing is that it’s been viewed 606 times!
You mean you don’t have a pair?
Just kidding, that is pretty crazy.
I haven’t ever used PLR so I may be missing out. The whole reason I haven’t used it is because I despise re-writing. I would be happy with just getting a list of the article titles each plr site provides, in order to do my own keyword research and content creation.
Splork,
I have to ask what script you used to make PLR automatically hyper linked in the comments. That is a brilliant idea.
Hey Chris. I use Wordpress Affiliate Pro
I don’t think you should consider your self ‘anal’ for not wanting to throw crap out on the internet in the interest of generating a few dollars of Adsense. I was thinking that you simply have enough self-respect to expect some level of quality on websites or blogs that you own.
As for rewriting PLR, at the risk of you slamming me for self-promotion, can I recommend my ereport, How to Turn Chicken Shit (PLR) into Chicken Salad (Something People Would Want to Consume).
I wrote it, because like you, I was spending a lot of time rewriting really bad PLR and I wanted to try and clarify what I thought was the best and fastest way to do so.
There will always be people who think that the point of the internet is to send money to their bank account, but frankly I still believe it should be, and often is, a valuable communication tool.
This is the first time i comment to this blog, and i want to give you my congratulations for your aproach, superb!
Regarding this post, i agree, i’m not an english native speaker, and write in english it’s not easy for me. But in my own language i can create content in just 5 minutes, a complete article. When english is the native language it’s better to write your own article, it’s not difficult and can be made quickly.
Hi Splork, I commented on here before, and your response was extremely helpful, thank you! Here’s my question on PLR – because, as I mentioned, I’m a reporter, and I’ve thought about writing my own PLR stuff and marketing it. It seems to me that it SHOULD be possible to make a profit creating quality PLR, but it also seems so easy I must be missing something. If you’re a good, fast, writer, you should be able to write maybe 15-20 500-word articles in a day. Let’s say 3 days to create 50 articles. You make sure that you do your keyword research first and also provide a list of long-tail keyword phrases and a free e-book on how to tweak the content to make it unique. You’ve got a PLR package there that you sell for $29.95 each to 200 people and once you’ve sold that many packages, you sell no more of that package – you have a bunch more that you’ve created. That’s $5990. Or say you sell it for $19.95. That’s $3990. Am I missing something here? Why is it so hard to find English As A First Language writers to produce good articles? (That example Splork gave – that writing SUCKED!) Is it just super hard to promote PLR packages as a new person?
You can always promote it on the Warrior Forum . 50 articles for $20 would be a good deal. You just have to figure out the niche that will sell and that you can write really good keyword rich articles on.
Mike Robinson does a good job of that sort of thing with his dog and golf PLR sites. For $97/yr you get a whopper initial package of like 100 articles and 100 blog posts, then every month you get another 10 articles and 10 blog posts for a year.
You just have to find that sweet spot of content and price it so all the cheap bastards will want to buy.
As ever, Splork, thank you! Your advice is great. I am one of your 11 regular readers! Keep blogging!
Seriously though, I learn a lot by coming here.
I may give the PLR thing a whirl. And I will read your PLR site for pointers. I may even buy a package or two of the people you recommend, just to check out the competition.
Good points, but you might want to proofread your new site a bit harder….
“imperitive”
“Good grammer”
….etc.
Cheers!
Furthermore… on this page
(removed)
You left out the paragraph that you refer to at the very top.
Thanks Freddy. It was rather sloppy.
hi Splork, I saw your little blurb on Mike Robinson’s Golf articles… now, beware of this guy, I subscribed to his plr, paid a year’s fee, and the last lot of articles that I received was January 2008. Perhaps, an advice to all, is — never pay in advance.
Yea, I’m a little disappointed with that James. There is still a lot of content provided and I think he’ll come through with what is owed. It’s a bummer because the content is some of the best PLR I’ve purchased.