May 20, 2007 20:17
Category: Writing
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Man's innovation knows no bounds. If there's a necessity, there's also the need to fulfill it. Some take the pain of slogging it out, some by circumventing it to reach the goal double quick. The rise of private label articles is a classic example.
Content, and lots of it, drives traffic. How? It's because search engines tend to prefer content-heavy pages in search results. So the name of the game is to churn out massive quantity of content each day, everyday. Private label articles serve the purpose, though not the only recourse for the same result.
What Are Private Label Articles?
It's a fair guess how the term came to be so known, but what private label articles (some say private label rights articles or PLR articles for short) mean is that these are limited-edition articles that can be bought till the virtual stocks last. Sounds confusing? Okay, here's another go.
PLR sites are those that sell ghost articles only to limited people. When you become a member of such a site and purchase these articles, you're assured that the articles are not freely available or widely circulated, so the chance of their appearing in thousands of other sites is limited. Hence the term private label articles or private label rights articles.
Are Private Label Articles Really Private?
Unfortunately, the answer is an unequivocal 'No'. Remember, the same article is appearing in perhaps a few hundred sites, if not thousands of them. True, private label articles are circulated among few buyers. Still, that few numbers do not make the articles unique.
What's The Choice Then?
The trick is to give private label articles your own twist. What you do is to modify the articles the way you want so as to avoid the tag of duplicity. Good enough, but what's the real advantage, you may ask.
The real advantage is that once you do some modification, you can call a private label article your own creation. Even if you do not modify you can call it your own. But the danger is so can others who have bought the same article as you've.
The other advantage of private label articles is that as against articles sourced from article directories, you can avoid mentioning the resource box of article authors that gives away the fact that the article is not your own creation.
The Disadvantages
For all the supposed advantages of private label rights articles, are there no disadvantages? There are. As someone who is writing contents for a long time I know that writing styles vary a great deal from author to author.
And this, according to me, is the biggest disadvantage of private label articles. Since you're buying articles from various writers, there is bound to be variance among them.
Mind you, you're saying all these are yours. But since inevitably the style of writing varies, discerning viewers will easily notice that, and I feel this doesn't speak well over the long term.
The second disadvantage is rather quite plain. If you're going to put your labor to modify and rewrite a private label article, why not do that to the ones that can be freely sourced from article directories like Ezine Articles?
Stand In Good Stead
The moot point is if you want to be seen as a credible writer yet able to multiply contents everyday, there's no harm in sourcing contents from directories and acknowledging them as someone else's creations. For example, I've 2 articles in this site that have articles by Deanne Mascle, namely The 5 Writing Myths and Better Writer: What It Takes To Become One?.
If you notice closely, both articles have my longish narration followed by Deanne's articles. This is the same way I write nearly all articles barring a few in my other blog on many facets of search marketing.
This way, my readers know that I'm open to acknowledge others' creations, which I think is good for me in the long run. While doing so, I'm also able to avoid search engines' treating my contents as duplicates, thus getting viewers as well.
Sourcing Contents
There's no denying that no one person can go on producing gallons of contents everyday. That is simply impossible. Which means you've to take outside help to produce contents for your site.
You can of course hire writers, but again the problem of variation in styles comes up. If this lacuna doesn't trouble you much and you've less cash and more time to spare, then perhaps rewriting private label articles is a better choice than hiring articles.
But suppose as a would-be writer you want to make a mark of your own, be assured that a vast treasure of free content article resources is awaiting you to be tapped.
There are indeed many ways to source your contents and catch hold of that elusive idea you want to explore in your writing. Certainly, private label articles or private label rights articles or PLR articles are not the only choice.
