Why I HATE PLR!
I was fulfilling one of my New Year’s resolutions the other day. I actually took a couple of hours to organize my electronic life. I went through everything on my hard drive and filed it.
Of course I was amazed at how much junk I had accumulated over the years and was even more amazed at how much PLR material I had. Most of which I had forgotten that I even had.
During a brief time ,when I lost focus on finishing my goal, I spent some time reading over some of the PLR articles that had been collecting virtual dust. The time I spent doing this has helped me to come to grips with something.
I have bought tons of PLR. I’ve had lots of PLR written for me, and I’ve belonged to many PLR memberships over the years. My conclusion?
I hate PLR.
This is not meant to be an insult to those that write PLR or to those that swear by it. I fully understand how PLR material can be useful. But I have always had a dim view of PLR and never really knew why.
In reading the 50 or so PLR articles that I did, I finally realized what it is that I hate about PLR….
It lacks PASSION!
This may sound silly, but when I read PLR I am BORED TO TEARS, even if it is on a subject that I normally enjoy reading about.
There are a few exceptions, of course. I own PLR to many products that individuals have sold under their own name and then later offered private label rights. These are usually outstanding resources because the author had an emotional investment in the product at the start. In other words, it had PASSION!
When you have a product that were written BY the author FOR the author and then later offered as PLR and compare it to those items that were written for the sole purpose of PLR, the difference is night and day.
Artwork as compared to garbage.
I think marketers are often more concerned about what the search engines think about their site and their sites content rather than being interested in what “real live” people think of their site.
For this reason, many PLR authors many not care too much about passion and are mostly concerned that it is original content.
I am going to go out on a limb here and say that “Original content isn’t always quality content.” And that “Quality content is almost always original” .
In using PLR I understand it is important to rewrite the material to make it “your own.” But in my experience I have found that if you rewrite something that has no passion, you wind up with a document in your own words that also lacks passion.
One of the strategies I have started using is finding reviews of products that I promote on my niche sites and rewriting them for content. These reviews can be found on Amazon and many other sites around the net. Talk about passion! Reviews are very passionate! Even though you could never recognize that my rewrite came from a particular review, it is full of this passion even though I may know nothing about the product.
People are attracted to passion, boredom makes them hit the back button.
In the future, when creating content for your site, start thinking about the reader and not just the search engines. If you take care of the reader, you will take care of the search engines. It rarely works in reverse.
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Comments
I have to agree also, Michael. A bit of passion and personality goes a long way.
I find it more difficult to faff around with keywords and stuff than to just write and get my point across.
It also helps if you have used the product you are writing the piece to promote
Best wishes
Paula Brett
http://www.PaulaBrettBlog.com
I agree 100% with what you said. I’ve tried to use plr and found I don’t have the patience to go through it all, so I found another purpose for it!!
I just use it as a point of reference to research keywords, and find articles on the topic I want to write about. I take notes and LOOK for points of interest that I can add the ‘passion’ to. Then I can sit down and write original, and I hope interesting material.
So . . .there IS a use for plr. I just don’t think signing putting my name to it, (them) is it; at least not without a LOT of changes and I think it’s easier to write new content. 
I discovered what you reveal about PLR ages ago. I could never bring myself to plagiarize someone else - even with their permission! That’s why I’ll never avail myself of the services of a ghost writer either. If it doesn’t come from my mind, it’s not MY writing and I’ll make no claim to it.
I’ve always used PLR material as niche reference material only - to study and learn from. Once I have my mind wrapped around the concepts involved in the product, and understand its overall value to the audience, the copy just starts to flow.
It’s really sort of a zen type of thing - you must “become one with your audience,” to understand what they want, and most importantly WHY they want it. If you have it, all you have to do is tell them in your own words, from your own heart and mind.
(Although I do confess that it takes time to learn this process, as does anything worthwhile. But it’s sure worth it!)
Google me sometime…
Excellent post Michael I totally agree. My eyes start to glaze over at the mention of it, particularly IM related stuff.
Thanks for expressing so clearly the conclusion that I have come to in the past. I would love to see one of your rewrites from a review.
This is the very first time I’ve seen this expressed. Bravo! I agree with your conclusions 100%. Though I haven’t reworked any PLR yet, I liked the comments about just using it as a reference. I got a real chuckle out of William’s allusion to the elusive “Passion Spinner” SW. And Paula taught me a new word, “faff.” Hmmmm, now how can I incorporate it into a newsletter?
Now I know why I’ve always dreaded going through all the PLR I’ve acquired…I hate reading them because they’re mostly dead and all but buried.
You’ve just made my life much simpler. Thanks! Now I can feel free to discard the majority of them after a quick glance. Now to clean out my hard drive…
Sandi
Bravo! That’s exactly it. One of the secrets to great copy writing is to gear yourself into an excited and passionate state about the product or subject. Hard to do with PLR materials.
In my experience, PLR is often harder to rewrite than other material, because it is so lifeless. And I don’t think we can expect any PLR Passion Spinner software to solve this problem.
Rewriting reviews is a great idea. Anything that evokes your opinion and personality, and relates to your audience instead of the engines, is going in the right direction.