One massive growth area on the internet in recent years has been in the production, use and transfer of digital products. Whilst many of these products are simply intended for traditional direct sales to an end user, there is also a growing trend in low-cost or even free digital products with various types of private label rights which are designed and distributed with further distribution in mind. So what exactly are these products? What are they used for and how are they used? Moreover, what do all of the different, often confusing, types of licenses actually mean? And, most importantly, how are people making money online using these types of products?
First of all, let’s look at the forms these ‘Private Label Rights’ (or PLR as they are sometimes known) products take and the more common uses they are put to. Many ‘e-books’, business reports, articles, videos and even software programs are being distributed with resale rights and rebranding rights. Typically, text-based products such as articles, e-books and reports are used as inducements in the form of free gifts or bonuses. The goal of the marketer in offering these inducements is to add value to a high-end digital product for sale or to encourage an individual to share his or her e-mail address and thus become part of the seller’s mailing list. Recent anti-spam laws have placed restrictions on e-mail marketing but if an individual ‘opts in’ to a marketer’s list by entering details to receive a free product, then they have effectively agreed to receive e-mails on future products from the marketer. As everyone loves to receive a free gift, especially when it has some perceived value, it makes this kind of marketing and the use of resell rights or private label rights products extremely attractive.
Other marketers will obtain private label rights products to sell on to end consumers perhaps because they lack a product of their own in a specific niche market that they wish to exploit. When someone acquires or is given the private label rights to a product there are varying forms of restrictions of usage which can apply however. Exactly what a marketer can and can not do with a PLR digital product depends on the type of ‘resell rights licence’ or ‘resale rights licence’ (as they are sometimes referred to) that is attached to the product.
The most basic resell rights license is know as ‘Normal Resell Rights’ but is commonly referred to as ‘Resale Rights’. This, in its most basic form, is essentially giving the marketer the chance to earn 100% profit by reselling the product on. Often there are limitations such as an agreed minimum price and that the sale is for the customers’ personal use only so they would not have the resale rights to sell the product on themselves. This type of license is ideal for marketers who do not have products of their own to sell but still want to sell in a certain market. Frequently included with this license is the right to rebrand the product. ‘Rebranding Rights’, as they are known, allow the marketer to edit any of the author’s affiliate links found within the product with there own.
Next, there are products with ‘Master Resell Rights’, which are frequently referred to as ‘Master Resale’. This grants the marketer’s customers the resale rights to the product and they can then go about selling the product on to end users. Sometimes master resell rights are transferrable which in turn means that the customer can also sell the master resell rights with the product. Now the marketer is acting both as a retailer of the product and a wholesaler too. This is attractive as the ability to sell the product to others, if it is a high quality product, adds a great deal of value to the customer.
‘Private Label Resale Rights’ give the marketer almost carte blanche to change the product in any way. In addition to the master resell rights’, the marketer can edit the content how they see fit, break the content up for use as website content copy, article content copy and blog article copy as well as breaking it up for use as reports and mini e-books or marketing e-mail content. The marketer can even claim the product as his or her own work and actually assume the role of ‘author’. Each supplier or provider of private label rights products will have their own limitations which they will impose on the marketer under the terms and conditions which will be with the product. This type of license offers, by far, the greatest degree of versatility for anyone looking for this type of product.
Any of the ‘free bonus’ or ‘free gift’ e-books and reports you may be offered by marketers will most likely be extracts from larger works previously obtained with private label resale rights. That is not to say that they do not carry some value with them for the reader. In fact, the more value they carry the greater chance that the recipients of the free products will decide to buy from that marketer when the inevitable auto-responder e-mails start to offer products for sale over the next few days and weeks.
For the would-be internet marketer these products hold an obvious attraction. Rather than struggling to produce a professional product themselves, they can just pick one off the shelf and start to develop their own online brand. In addition, using affordable rebranded reports and e-books, it provides the additional resource of being able to attract potential customers to an ‘opt-in’ mailing list which, as discussed earlier, maximises the potential for future sales of any products the marketer decides to promote. These benefits, combined with the versatility of these types of digital products, will mean that the internet will continue to see massive growths in the quantity, variety and quality of private label rights products in the coming months and years.