I decided to order, the package looked good, this web site must spend a lot of money on Google PPC advertising so presumably it’s a good deal, right? Having paid my $97 eventually I got to the download page. Before I started downloading the individual files I noticed the terms of the licenses were below the download link for each individual product; I also realised the terms for almost all the products were the same. Here they are:

[NO] Includes Sales Page
[NO] Can be given away
[NO] Can be packaged
[NO] Can be offered as a bonus
[YES] Can Be Edited Completely and Your Name Put on it
[YES] Can be used as web content
[NO] Can be broken down into articles
[NO] Can be added to paid membership sites
[NO] Can sell this product
[NO] Can be offered through auction sites
[NO] Can sell Resale Rights
[NO] Can sell Master Resale Rights
[NO] Can sell Private Label Rights

What is going on???!!!

There isn’t a heck of a lot I can do with these so called “Private Label Rights” products according to the license above. I can “edit them completely and put my name to it” but I am not allowed to sell them. Neither am I allowed to give them away! Nor can I use them as a bonus, which was actually my intention. And I cannot pass on resale rights to others! What we have here is in fact not a series of “Private Label Rights” products but “Personal Use Only” products. I have NEVER come across such a restrictive so-called “PLR license”.

Having got in touch with the web site owner, there was apparently an error in the license terms and I was allowed to sell them. But I couldn’t pass on resale rights to my customers, neither could I use them as a bonus. If you read through the license terms again you will note that NOT ONE of these products came with a sales page. So if I wanted to sell these items I would need to pay someone to write me a sales letter for each one, no doubt at a minimum rate of $1000 per sales page!!!

Fortunately I was able to get a refund; the guy behind the site is probably a respected marketer with little understanding of what is generally understood by “with Private Label Rights”. Lessons to be learned:

1. Just because it says “with Private Label Rights” doesn’t mean that that is the case with some web sites (this one is on Page 1 of Google by the way, that’s how I found it)
2. Be VERY VERY careful where you buy from - I was lucky enough to get a refund, many sites will not refund
3. For most of us PLR means that in most cases I have the right to sell the product and resale rights on to the next person – others take a different view
4. Most of us assume that most high quality PLR products (and these were seemingly very high quality products) will come complete with a sales page and graphics to help us sell them. Sure there are individual products without sales pages but this was a whole series of related good quality products with NO sales page, no graphics.

So what can you do? Well, I make no apology at all for directing you to my main web site stocked with high quality PLR and MRR products:

www.bestmultimediaguides.com

Every product has as a MINIMUM:

• Either MRR or PLR – you can resell ANY and ALL of them and keep 100% of the profits for yourself
• A sales letter – no need to get a copywriter to write you one at several thousand dollars a time
• Graphics – no need to have graphics created unless you WANT to
• CD Ready – physical information products are becoming more and more popular, all products on the site are “ready to burn” to CD and come with a fully interactive user menu for that professional look

Many products come with much, much more – articles, ecourses, ready made content sites, etc. Just read the product descriptions. Of course you can also buy them one at a time, as and when you need them rather than having to buy bundles of ebooks to get just the 1 or 2 you really need. Go and check it out now!

Firstly, let me make something crystal clear. NEVER EVER be tempted to just copy and paste someone else’s content. You are in breach of their copyright, and sooner or later you will get caught. Apart from anything else, why would you want to do that? The person who wrote the MRR ebook you are working on may very well become a valuable joint venture partner for you. Also imagine how you would feel if you had taken the time and trouble to write a high quality ebook and someone else just copied it, AND passed it off as their own work? Right.

So, having got that out of the way let’s take a look at how you can create your own unique ebook from someone else’s MRR ebook. Let’s pick a subject, for example “how to train your puppy”. Now, first of all it’s very likely that you aren’t going to find just 1 MRR ebook on this subject but several. If you can find preferably 3 different ebooks on your chosen niche, in this case puppy training, then you have enough.

Read through them carefully, making a particular note of chapter headings. These are the key subcategories of puppy training that you will need to write about. Look at which subcategories appear in all 3 ebooks. Make sure you include all of those. Ideally you would aim for about 10 chapter headings which at 4-5 pages per chapter will give you a 40-50 page ebook – a good length. If you want to go for more than that – great, but get your ideas from the 3 existing MRR ebooks.

Should you be short of ideas, there’s plenty of places you can go to get more than you’ll ever need. Article Directory sites such as Ezinearticles are pretty good, have a search on forums and see what questions people are asking about “puppy training”, even a simple search on Google can yield excellent results. Having got your chapter headings (or niche subcategories) all you need to do is rewrite the content you have.

OK, I can hear you groaning “but it’s not that easy!”. True enough, but it’s not that hard either. Trust me on this, I have written a lot of content from blog posts to articles to whole ebooks simply by rewriting exisiting content. Go through the content one page at a time and rewrite it in your own words. Give your ebook a new title, and make sure your chapter headings are not the same as the original content.

With practise, and assuming you at least have a basic knowledge of the subject, you can get that done in less than 3 hours. All you need do then is create graphic of your ebook (an ecover) and congratulations, you have created your own unique product.

If all of that sounds like a lot of hard work, then for less than the cost of a takeaway pizza I have the answer for you from my resale rights site. I suggest you check these 2 great products out – both with resale rights so you start selling them right away:

How to create your own ebook without writing one word:

www.bestmultimediaguides.com/page.php?id=create_own_ebook.html

Create your own instant ebook covers software:

www.bestmultimediaguides.com/page.php?id=instant_ecover_generator.html

Let me know how you get on.

It just depends how you look at it. The main argument against using products that can’t be edited is that it is impossible to make them unique to you, therefore the only way to differentiate your version of that product from everyone else’s is the price. Follow that reasoning through to it’s logical conclusion and you’ll be selling it for cents, therefore not making a profit, therefore you’re not going to bother with MRR products.

At a quick glance it’s difficult to fault the logic above. However, what if I told you that there is another way to look at this, in fact there are other ways - plural. This means that instead of following the rest of the herd who say “there’s no money or point in selling MRR products” you consider these points….

The main question to keep in mind, and to constantly ask yourself, is “How do I make my product look different from all the others?” This is actually a relatively simple thing to do, but it requires a little bit of effort – not much but a little. With MRR products, while you cannot change the product itself, you can change other elements. Here are 3 ideas to get you started:

1. Change The Sales Copy

If your product has come with a ready made sales letter then change it. Either rewrite it slightly so it doesn’t look the same as everyone else’s or write a brand new one. This is not as difficult as you might think. Change the headline, change the font, add a few more bullet points and you have a unique sales letter.

2. Change The Graphics

Often your MRR product will have come with a “ready made” web site, including graphics of the product (usually an ebook cover), a header graphic and a footer graphic. Change them. Either do it yourself if you are comfortable using a graphics editor such as Photo Shop, or pay a designer to do it for you.

Should you change the name of the product in your sales copy and graphic? That is up to you, but I have done it myself on occasion. There is a very popular ebook titled “Recipes from South of the Border” – I sell that regularly on eBay using a different title in my sales copy – “246 Mexican Recipes”.

3. Add Relevant Free Bonuses To Your Product

To make your MRR product stand out from all the others, offer related free bonuses in that same niche. For example, do you suppose someone buying an ebook about Mexican Recipes would also be interested in other recipe ebooks? Of course they would. So you could offer 2 or 3 other recipe ebooks as free of charge bonuses (always check that the license allows you to do that though). Or, just to expand on that thinking you could offer something Mexico related – how to learn Spanish, how to get cheap holidays in Mexico, etc. You get the picture.

So those are just 3 quick and easy things you can do with a MRR product to make yours appear different to all the others out there. Don’t make the same mistake that almost all newbies make by thinking if you can’t edit the contents of the ebook, it’s not worth selling. That attitude will cost you a lot of money in the long run.

Tomorrow we’ll have a look at something even more exciting – using MRR products that you are not allowed to edit to create your own, 100% unique product!

There are at least four very good reasons to use MRR instead of, or rather in addition to, PLR products.

1.    Far More Resale Rights Products Are Sold In MRR Format Than PLR.

I would estimate that out of the literally thousands of Resale Rights products on the market, no more than 10% are Private Label. Therefore if you decide NOT to use MRR products you are excluding yourself from the vast majority of products you could potentially sell. Furthermore if far more products are available in MRR format than PLR, then naturally it follows that…

2. Many More Product Niches Are Available In MRR Format

A good example that comes to mind is the Pet niche, generally a very profitable one. PLR products within the pet niche are readily available for cats and dogs, but it is not as easy to find PLR ebooks on the subject of other animals. This is common sense of course, after all the 2 most popular types of animal to keep as a pet are cats and dogs.

However, what happens if you want to offer ebooks on other animals – rabbits, mice, fish or something exotic such as iguanas? You will struggle to find anything in any format other than MRR; even if you are fortunate enough to find a PLR product then it won’t be cheap.

3. Add Credibility To Your Web Site, Product Range Or Product

Some ebooks with MRR are quite well known in the online world. One of my best selling products in my eBay shop is “597 Ready Made Business Letters”, which is one of the best ever selling products on the internet. This product was created well over 10 years ago by one of the great pioneers of information marketing (both online and offline) – Mr Bill Myers.

Bill (or maybe I should call him Mr Myers?!) put this product together in the 1990’s and sold hundreds of thousands of copies of it, at prices up to $100. Today I have the right to sell arguably the best known digital product for what I want, where I want without having to pay any royalties or commissions to Bill Myers. If I’m honest I find that quite humbling. It certainly adds credibility to my site that I am allowed to sell products of such calibre.

Suppose this product were available with PLR – would I sell more copies with my name on the front as the author, or am I better off leaving Bill Myers’ name there? Not a difficult question to answer….

MRR products are also great to include in your free bonuses (check that the license allows you to do that though). They ADD to the credibility and value of your own product. So what if you can’t edit it – don’t worry about that, don’t get hung up on being able to insert your links into every product you’re selling.

4. Help you become an authority within your niche

For many niches, there are just not enough PLR products to go round. I’ll give you an example. Within weeks of starting my eBay business, I actually became quite an authority on recipe ebooks on eBay. At one time I had almost 50 listed, and I was even getting hits to my eBay listing from Google searches!

That’s right – many of my eBay recipe listings were on the first page of Google! Out of those 50 ebooks no more than 5 had PLR – the vast majority came in a format that I wasn’t allowed to edit. Now, if I had only sold PLR recipe ebooks do you think I would have done as well as I did?

But….but….I hear you say.

•    But won’t I be competing against lots of other sellers with EXACTLY the same product?
•    But isn’t it impossible to differentiate myself from other sellers except on price if I can’t edit the ebook and title?

Make sure you read my next post on this subject which will have you looking at MRR products in a totally different light.

This craze of making ebooks into a standalone executable program started a few years ago. Anyone who has downloaded the big ebook packs “200 Free Ebooks” etc will know what I mean. Here are my 5 main reasons why I hate them and will have nothing to do with them:

Reason # 1 – Many Will Only Work If You Are Connected To The Internet

They don’t tell you that do they? Well, not until after you’ve bought. Then you open the program and there is a small note on the opening page “Note – This Ebook Requires An Internet Connection”. Why is this?

Simple – a lot of the “executable ebooks” link to a page on the author’s web site. If the author decides that internet marketing isn’t for him or her, or if they take the page down your nice little “executable ebook” is also gone. So instead of buying a product you thought was “for life” you only bought a product that is only available to you for as long as the author can be bothered to maintain his or her site. Nice.

What happens if you don’t have an internet connection where you currently are? What if you’re on the move – on a train, ferry, car, plane? What if your home or office connection is down? You have NO access to the product you have paid for!

Reason # 2 – Many Are Just Disguised Google Adsense Sites

This is another reason why so many will only allow you access if you have an internet connection. I have seen so many that are basically just a “copy and paste” job from a “made for” Google Adsense advertising site. You get a little bit of content in the middle of the page surrounded by a sea of ads. Is that really something you want to sell to your customers?

Reason # 3 – Most Cannot Be Printed

This is a bigger thing than you might think. A lot of buyers like to be able to print out their ebooks. If you have a PDF it’s as easy as clicking “File” and then “Print”. Can’t do that with most of the executable ebooks….

Reason # 4 – Cannot Be Used On A Portable Device

The world is getting more mobile. We want to carry our information with us. Many people have Iphones, Smartphones or PDAs. Mobile versions of Adobe Acrobat run on all of them, Windows Mobile (Microsoft’s operating system for mobile devices) includes it as standard. So whilst you can read your PDFs on a mobile device, unfortunately that doesn’t hold true for “executable ebooks”.

Reason # 5 – Cannot Be Read By Portable Book Readers

Staying with the mobile theme, these kind of devices are becoming more popular. The most well-known is Kindle, distributed by Amazon. Yet again, PDFs present no problem to Portable Book Readers. In contrasts don’t even think of trying to open an “executable ebook” with one.

I took the decision to ONLY sell ebooks in PDF format, both on my web site

www.bestmultimediaguides.com

and my eBay shop

stores.ebay.co.uk/bestmultimediaguides

I strongly suggest you do the same.

Auction Sites

Many marketers begin their career selling digital information products on eBay. That’s where I started and it makes a lot of sense. It’s very easy to set up, you don’t need to be a web site design genius because eBay supply you with some reasonable templates, and you don’t need to worry about traffic – eBay supply that for you.

However, you are NEVER going to get the optimum price for your information product on eBay. That’s just a fact of life; buyers go onto eBay in search of a bargain. What does this have to do with Resale Rights licenses?

In my experience, when the creator of a MRR and PLR product does put restrictions in the license, the most often used restriction states “not to be sold on auction sites”. Whilst there are lots of other very minor auction sites, the biggest is eBay of course. The reason this restriction is included is to maintain a sensible price; the product creator does not want to see his or her work appear on eBay at some ridiculously low price.

Be aware that Ebay have lately become very quick at spotting listings that have this restriction in the license. If you are very lucky they may only pull your listing, in most cases you will be suspended. So if you are using eBay (and you should) always check that the license allows you to sell it there. If in doubt – leave it out.

Minimum Price

This can include terms such as “not to be given away for free”. You might do this to encourage people to sign up to your newsletter or membership site. Make sure that this is NOT forbidden in the license. Sometimes, especially with software, you may find a sentence with words to the effect “NOT to be sold for LESS than $19.95″. If it says that, then DON’T sell it for less than twenty bucks – you came into internet marketing to make some real money didn’t you?

Do Not Include In Bonuses

Most information marketers package their main product together with free bonuses. It’s a standard marketing tactic which I use and it works very well. Many buyers will buy your product purely for the bonuses, I’ve done that myself. However….do check that the terms of your Resale Rights license allow you to include that product as a free bonus. Sometimes they don’t.

In other cases they may specifiy a minimum value for the overall product, eg “This product may only be included as part of a bonus if the price for the whole product is $40 or greater”. In other words if you’re selling a product for $17 then you may not include it as a bonus, if your selling price is $47 then you’re fine.

Passing On Resale Rights To Your Customers

Whilst you may have the right to sell this product for whatever price you want, wherever you want, some licenses specifically EXCLUDE you from passing on those Resale Rights to YOUR customers. In this case you can only sell that particular product to your customer for their own personal use. Your customer is NOT permitted to sell the product on, only you have that right. Obviously this affects the price of your product, an ebook with resale rights naturally has more value than an ebook with none.

There are other restrictions to watch out for, but the above are probably the most common ones. The point I’m making is check your licenses carefully. There are 2 very good reasons for this

1. Breach the author’s copyright and you can get into very serious trouble. If you are selling on eBay they can and will suspend you. If you’re very unlucky you might also get a nasty letter from a lawyer…
2. Apart from the legal implications it’s actually common courtesy. One day it will be you who is selling YOUR product with Resale Rights. After all the trouble you will have gone to in order to create your product would you be happy if buyers were just flouting your Resale Rights restrictions? Of course not.

Usually your package will have come in “zip” format, i.e. all the various files have been compressed together in one archive file to save space, and make it more convenient. First of all, you need to “unzip” them using software such as WinZip or WinRAR. This extracts the files into their normal folder structure. Usually you will find the License file in one of the following formats:

1. PDF
2. Text Document (Open with Notepad)
3. MS Word Documents
4. HTML File
5. A JPG or GIF Image File

The most common format is a PDF or a TXT file. Usually it has the word “License” or “Read Me” somewhere in the file name. Once you have located the file, open it and have a look inside.

What about products where the Resale Rights License is part of the ebook itself?

It is quite often the case, especially with MRR ebooks that the license is actually contained within the ebook itself, rather than a separate file. You might have to spend a bit of time looking for it but it is usually within either the first 3 pages of the ebook, or on the very last. Sometimes it can be quite complex with all sorts of terms and conditions, in some cases it might be a simple sentence at the end of the ebook “You have full rights to do with this ebook as you want”.

How about if there is still no mention of a License inside the ebook but the source file is included?

I have noticed with a quite a number of PLR products that there isn’t a separate license as such included, but as well as the actual product in PDF format, the source file in Microsoft Word format is also there.

<Disclaimer>This is NOT repeat NOT legal advice and I won’t take any responsibility if you get into legal issues. If you are unsure, then either take appropriate legal advice, contact the original author or do not sell the product.

Having said that – this is what I do. If the source file is included then that almost certainly implies Resale Rights. Whoever you bought it from has not passed on the license to you, either because they forgot or they themselves did not receive it. Read the ebook carefully – if there  is no mention of copyright anywhere then you should be fine.

(On a side note I was nearly caught out once – I was about to sell an ebook which came complete with source files, I did a quick check and on the second page it had a huge copyright warning. It pays to check)

As a final check put the name of the product into Google. There should be others selling the same product as you, with the same graphic and possibly same sales page. That means you’ll be fine – there’s safety in numbers. If on the other hand Google and Yahoo don’t bring up any other searches for your PLR product I’d have a much closer look at it.

If in doubt, don’t sell it. It’s not worth it, there is such a huge choice of Resale Rights material to sell, never ever get hung up on one specific product. Just put it to one side and move on to the next one.

I have narrowed digital media down to 8 different categories. Let’s have a look at them in more detail:

1. Ebooks

The most popular category and, as stated above the one we are most familiar with. Virtually all info marketers have ebooks as part of their selling “portfolio”.

2. Software

Obviously without software our computers would just be very expensive paperweights. All of us have bought computer software. Have you ever considered selling software? There are literally hundreds of computer programs where you can buy MRR or even PLR enabling you to sell them on to others. Most resale rights software is aimed at the huge “make money online” market and largely consists of programs designed to automate repetetive tasks.

You will find software to create eBay listings, submit your articles to Article Directories, create graphics, automate your blog, even create whole web sites at the click of a button! The beauty of software is that it has a far higher perceived value than an ebook, which equals more profits for you. Some software even comes with PLR, which means that you can hire a programmer to edit the source code to give you your own unique piece of software.

3. Articles

These are one of the most useful ways of getting traffic to your web site and getting back links. Resale Rights articles can come in bundles of anything between 25 articles on one particular subject, to huge “bumper packs” of literally thousands of articles. Either use them yourself to promote your site (rewrite them slightly – NEVER EVER submit Resale Rights articles to Article Directories without doing this first) or sell them to other marketers.

4. Audio mp3 Files

These can include audio versions of ebooks, “interviews with an expert type” products or stand alone products which are only in that format. The beauty of audio mp3 files is that your customer can listen to your product whilst they are “on the move” – mp3 files can be played in your car, your Iphone, Smartphone, etc. Audios have a very high perceived value and it is something I would encourage you to look at.

5. Graphics

Hiring a graphics designer is not cheap, and usually a lot of graphics are needed. Resale rights graphics are a very good way of saving money and are a very saleable commodity. The typical packs can include clipart, general web site graphics or even packs of very specific types of graphic – web site headers are a very common one. You could specialise in ONLY selling graphics and you would do very well.

6. Training Videos

My favourite digital product! Imagine for example, if instead of having an ebook which explains in words how to set up a blog you could follow a video showing you every step. All you need do is watch the video which says “Do A, B and C”, pause it, do A, B and C then resume and watch the steps D, E and F. Fantastic! Virtually all of the technical Internet Marketing knowledge I have gained has come from watching videos, rather than reading ebooks. In my opinion these have the highest perceived value of all digital products – and rightly so.

7. Scripts

These are effectively programs that run on your web site. Generally you insert a few lines of code into your web page to activate them. They can range from the very simple (a script that changes the date automatically) to adding popups to your page right through to very complex ones that install a whole web site with a user control panel. Don’t overlook them.

8. Web Site Templates

To create a whole web site from scratch is a daunting task, particularly for the novice. Using Resale Rights Web Templates gives you effectively a ready made site – well, at least the graphic layout of it. The Resale Rights bundles come in various shapes and sizes – packs of simple web site templates, packs of templates for more specialised sites, templates for optin pages, download pages, WordPress themes and so on. Something for everyone. If you sell Web Site Templates you can be sure of a steady supply of customers.

So – when it comes to digital media, widen your horizons and think beyond cheap (or even expensive!) ebooks. There is a whole world of high quality, high ticket Resale Rights products out there waiting for someone to make their fortune out of them!

To give you a better idea of just what is available, click the link below and have a look at my site

www.bestmultimediaguides.com

Browse through the different categories, examine more closely the products that take your interest…..spend just 10 minutes on there and I guarantee your head will be racing with ideas for products – let me know how you get on!

It’s not as straightforward as you might think to select your material. To briefly recap from yesterday’s post, these are some of the problems you are faced with when getting PLR/MRR products:

1. Quality – until you’ve downloaded the files you don’t know the quality. Even if the material is free you may not have wasted your money but you’ve certainly wasted your time. Are you getting a badly written 7 page “report” or a quality 80 page ebook? You don’t know
2. Format – is your ebook a PDF or an “executable ebook”?
3. Does it come with a sales page and graphics? I once bought a “bumper pack” of high quality PLR material – about 100 products for $77. This was heavily promoted by all the “big name” gurus. The products were certainly high quality but NOT ONE SINGLE ITEM came with a ready made sales page!!! There was NOTHING on the web site to indicate that – this was from a very well-known marketer. To add insult to injury there were no graphics either….
4. Does it REALLY have resale rights? Some gurus get carried away – in amongst the 180 ebooks you’ve downloaded there may be the odd one that actually has NO resale rights. It’s an honest mistake, but YOU will pay the price – it happened to me on eBay…
5. Are any other things included – articles, ecourses, keyword lists? This kind of information should be pretty important to have before you hand over your hard-earned dollars or pounds or euros…
6. Why pay for 250 MRR/PLR products when you only need 3 of them? It makes no sense

So what can you do? This issue got me thinking for a long time….the answer was actually staring me in the face. Why not take the successful concept of my eBay shop Bestmultimediaguides and expand that into a full blown web site?

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you:

www.bestmultimediaguides.com

What makes this site different?

• EVERY PRODUCT comes with a SALES LETTER and a GRAPHIC at a MINIMUM
• Every element of the PLR/MRR product is INCLUDED – unlike other places I won’t hold anything back. If it comes complete with 100 articles – you get them too
• Every product neatly categorised – if you’re looking for ebooks on “healthy eating” you’ll find them all in one place – no need to wade through pages and pages of products in which you have no interest
• Only buy what you need
• Ridiculously low prices – yes this is an overused term, but check out the prices and tell me I’m wrong!
• Ebooks ONLY in PDF format – no “executable ebooks”

Am I done? No, I’m just getting warmed up. Now for the 3 “killer elements”….

- Unique Product Information Table

Instantly know if a product has Private Label Rights – if there is a red bold “PLR” in the Resale Rights box you know it has PLR! What else is included? Just check out the rest of the table – no more guesswork. Every ebook I list will tell you how many pages it has – unlike the “ready made ebook web sites” you find all over the internet with same content, I CHECK OUT every single product before listing. For every 1 product you see on the site I have rejected at least 5 due to poor quality….

- Product Location Service

It takes time to list everything on that site. What you see on there is AT MOST 5% of all my MRR/PLR material. In time it will all be there but….

until that happens, if you can’t find it on my site it’s almost certainly on my hard drive – send me an email and I will get it for you!

- CD Ready MRR/PLR Products with INTERACTIVE CD MENU (I’ve saved the BEST for last!)

The information market is moving from downloadable media to physical media. Customers are happy to pay YOU more money for a physical product on CD-ROM. Until now you when you bought a MRR/PLR product you downloaded a zip file and were left to put together your own CD Menu. No longer – I’ve done it all for you! Sneak preview here:

www.bestmultimediaguides.com/thank_you.php

So now you have no excuse to go ahead with your info product business, whether you are selling on CD or not!

1. Most, if not all of them are junk. Think about it – why would someone give away 100 plus quality ebooks for free?
2. Many of them do not come as PDFs, but in “executable ebook” format. I have a real “bee in my bonnet” about these types of “ebooks”, it’s a subject for another day but in essence the information in these “executable ebooks” is stored online, you are directed to a web page. So you need an internet connection in the first place to view them, and you are totally dependent on the web page still being there. Quite often this is not the case…..
3. How many other people have downloaded exactly the same package as you?
4. Unless you’re already an expert, what use are 100/200/whatever diverse resale rights products to you when they come without any sales pages, graphics, etc? Sure you’re all excited as you download file after file imagining yourself to be the next IM guru selling all this stuff. Do you know how you’re going to sell them without even a sales page?
5. The key to success online is to market in clearly defined niches. So you’ve decided to target the “healthy eating” niche – OK not a bad choice. Suddenly you’ve got all these products ranging from “Take care of your Aardvark” to “How to get your web site on every page of the first 100 pages of Google by Tuesday” to “75,000 assorted web site templates”. Easy to get distracted, huh?
6. With so many products it’s not difficult to overlook checking whether you actually do have a resale rights license. I’ve made that mistake – bought resale rights packages from a very reputable source, listed them all on eBay assuming that everything was OK. That got me banned from eBay for 2 months (more on that story in another post). After complaining to all and sundry about how unfair eBay were, I had a close look at the resale rights licenses. Some stated “not to be sold on eBay”, some clearly stated “copyright remains with the author – may not be resold under any circumstances”. Whoops…and remember, these came from very respectable and well-known sources and other people continue to list the same products on eBay

There’s actually lots more reasons why these packages cause more harm than good, but let me just state what I consider to be the most important reason. Do you recognise this?

“You get very excited at suddenly owning all these fantastic products and the $$$$ signs light up in your eyes. However you cannot decide what to sell first – there is just so much choice – and so you do nothing. That doesn’t stop you frantically downloading the next package “this will come in useful one day” and so the cycle continues. In the end there are hundreds if not thousands of digital products collecting digital dust on your hard drive”

Congratulations – you are a Resale Rights Junkie. How do I know this? Because I was/am one too. Approximately 50GB of Resale Rights stuff on my hard drive – that’s right FIFTY Gigabytes. It wasn’t until I spent literally a fortnight sorting through all this stuff that I realised most of it was junk. All this stuff had caused me to lose focus on what I originally set out to do. Does that sound familiar?

So what’s the answer?

• What if there were a place where you knew IN ADVANCE what was contained in a Resale Rights package?
• Where every product was guaranteed to come with a sales letter and a graphic as an ABSOLUTE MINIMUM?
• Where you could tell IMMEDIATELY what extra marketing material (ready made site, articles, press releases, ecourses, etc) was included?
• Where EVERYTHING was neatly sorted into categories so you could find right away what you want?
• Where you AREN’T paying $27…$47….$97…..$197 per product?

In short, a kind of online “Resale Rights Warehouse” where you pay “factory outlet” prices not “retail” prices…where you just get what you want rather than being forced to buy 137 different products for $57 when you only want 3 of them…….

That would cure you of your Resale Rights Addiction wouldn’t it?

More tomorrow.

Let’s take a look at the different elements that could be included in a PLR/MRR Package…..

At a minimum, obviously the product itself is included. If it’s an ebook then this will come in the format of either a PDF – or what is known as an “executable ebook” which runs as a standalone program. Avoid the “executable ebooks” like the plague, they are nothing but trouble. I’ll tell you exactly why that is in a future post – just keep to “industry standard” ebooks written in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.

Software will obviously come in an “.exe” or executable format which is fine of course. Graphics will come in a standard graphics format, audios in mp3 format, and so on. Everything pretty standard with no surprises there.

Other elements that could be included with your PLR/MRR package are:

1. Source Files that can be edited if the product is PLR (Word Docs, Program Source Code etc)
2. Graphics of the product itself (image of the ebook cover or software box). If the product is PLR then the images may be included in a format that can be edited with programs such as Photo Shop (.psd files)
3. A Sales Letter – sometimes very basic, sometimes very professionally written. A ready written sales letter of whatever quality is in my opinion the most important part of any resale rights pack. Unless you are naturally gifted, or have a lot of money to pay a copywriter, then a ready made sales letter is crucial. Even if it is poorly written, it is easier to improve upon a badly written sales letter than to stare at a blank screen thinking “what am I going to write?”. I write from experience….
4. A Ready Made Web Site – consisting of your sales letter, plus web site graphics. These could include a header, footer and background graphics, all of which make your sales page look much more professional. Sometimes other pages are included – a “thank you” page is quite common. This is the page your customer sees after he has paid and includes the links to download his product. Sometimes an abbreviated version of the sales page is included – a so-called “squeeze page” which is not designed to sell the product, but rather to capture the person’s name and email address to add them to your prospectives list.
5. An Ecourse – this is done in combination with the squeeze page. If, for example you are selling a product on weight loss, you might offer a free “5 part ecourse on tips for healthy eating” as an incentive for the prospective customer to sign up to your list. Using an email autoresponder, your prospective is then sent a series of emails over the next few days with their “free tips”. You would also gently remind them about the “great weight loss product” you’ve got. Most people will NOT buy from you the first time they come across your web site. Giving them a free ecourse (which SHOULD contain valuable high quality information) helps them to trust you and will make them more receptive to your offer. Don’t forget that it is generally accepted that a buyer will on average need 7 points of contact with the seller until they buy……
6. Articles – one of the best ways to get traffic is to write articles and submit them to Article Directories. Not only does this increase the number of visitors to your site, Google will push your site up higher in the rankings if there are backlinks to your site from quality article directories. Writing 25, 50, 100 articles takes time though, especially if you’re not a natural writer. That’s why those PLR products that come with “ready made” articles are highly valuable – reword them slightly and you have saved yourself weeks of time
7. Adsense Ready Sites – sometimes these are also included. These are web sites optimised and set up for Google Adsense, with a lot of content already included. This is an additional way of earning revenue from your product
8. Keyword List – if you are going to use Pay Per Click advertising, or even articles, to promote your web site then it is important to know what the most popular search engine terms are for that product. Obviously you can research this yourself, but it takes time, especially for the novice who just wants to get his web site ready. Having a list of keywords included with your PLR product will save you a lot of time and….may save you a lot of money by NOT using Pay Per Click advertising on the WRONG keywords
9. Audios – an ebook resale rights product may contain a separate audio file in mp3 format. Sometimes this is simply the contents of the ebook recorded in audio, sometimes the information in the audio is additional to that in the ebook. This means that your customer can listen to “your” ebook in their car, on an Ipod, PDA, Smartphone etc. No doubt that this hugely increases the perceived value of your product
10. Videos – training videos on “how to use” the product. These are quite rare but I am sure you can see that having a series of training videos included with say, an item of software, will allow you to make much greater profits. Resale rights products that include training “how to” videos are a veritable gold mine.

So that’s a quick overview of some of the different elements that can make up a PLR/MRR product. Naturally the more of those elements that are contained in your package, the easier it will be for you to sell, AND command a higher asking price from your customer.

But…in an age when you and I are inundated with offers of Resale Rights Packages, how on earth can you tell how many of those elements are actually included with your “Hyper Ultra Mega RR Pack”? There’s not a lot of point in buying “100 Resale Rights products for $70, $50, even $7″ if all you’re buying is the products themselves with no easy way of selling them.

So what can we do? Be patient for the next post and all will be revealed…

Originally when I set up the Bestmultimediaguides eBay shop I sold all my products with “resale rights included” because that is what everyone else did. However the true potential of resale rights never really sunk in until a few months later. I never really thought that much about it; I just assumed that whoever I sold an ebook to had the right to sell it just as I had done. That’s true….but there’s much more to it than that.

For the purposes of “our products” i.e. digital media there are actually 2 different types of resale rights products – Private Label Rights (PLR) and Master Resale Rights (MRR), or just plain Resale Rights (RR). The main difference between the 2 is that whilst MRR products must be sold “as is”, i.e. you cannot edit the contents of the ebook – PLR products DO permit you to change the contents.

When you buy a MRR package, whilst you may or may not receive things like graphics and a sales letter with it, when it comes to the product it will come in a format that is not easily edited, usually a PDF. Yes I am aware that PDFs can be edited with the right software but that is breaking the terms of the resale rights license and will, sooner or later, get you into trouble.

The intention of the author is clearly that you do not edit it but sell it in its original supplied format. Typically a MRR ebook will contain several affiliate links to the benefit of the author. Many people have a problem with this. I disagree – I think this is fine – don’t ever think that that is a reason to NOT sell MRR ebooks. I’ll cover that in another post in the next day or so.

Now, in contrast to a MRR product the PLR product WILL contain source documents that you CAN edit. This is usually in the form of a Microsoft Word document. What does this mean for you? Well, firstly you can change the content of the Word document, the structure, the style etc. You could do this simply by changing the font – I have done this myself on occasion, just by changing the font and the layout a little you would be amazed at how changed the new document looks from the original.

You can add new content, remove existing content, change the order of the chapters, rewrite a few sentences here and there, add graphics, change the title and with very little effort you have your own unique product. Imagine trying to write an ebook from scratch – I’ve done it and it’s not the easiest of tasks.

If you have an ebook which is quite long you can split it up into 2 or 3 separate ebooks. Even a short ebook (say 40 pages) can be broken down into four 10 page reports which you can use to promote your business. If you have a few ebooks based around one particular niche you can combine those into your own product.

You can even in MOST cases put yourself down as the author! How’s that for instant fame? I say MOST cases; I used to believe that you could claim ownership of all PLR products. However I have recently come across 1 or 2 isolated cases where it states in the Resale Rights License that you can only do that IF you change a percentage of the content inside – typically 70%. So just watch out for that, always read the Resale Rights License if it is included with the package just to make sure that there isn’t any “small print”.

PLR doesn’t only apply to ebooks although that is where you will most commonly find them. Quite often software is offered with PLR, which means instead of a Word Document, the program source code is included. The beauty of this is that even if you don’t know programming (and I don’t have the first clue about it), you can easily pay someone to make a few changes to it so that it becomes “your” product. Change the name of the program, include your own graphics in the start up screen, have links to your other products within the program, change the menu options, even include your own product tutorial with relevant links. The possibilities are endless!

So with PLR products, with a little bit of tweaking here and there you can very quickly become an authority in your niche. Tomorrow we’ll have a look at all the different components that come when you buy a PLR package.

When I started listing CD-ROMs on eBay I thought most of my customers would be one-off purchases. These would be  people either looking to boost their own feedback by buying a relatively cheap item, or people who bought because they were interested in that subject but were unlikely to buy products on other subjects. I was completely wrong! Whilst during the first few weeks that was certainly true, most were one-off purchases I noticed an interesting pattern from July 2008 onwards – I was getting repeat business AND multiple purchases.

Then the emails started to come in – “I’m interested in buying 10/20/50 of your products to use on my web site, any chance of a discount?”. So I created bespoke listings for these people on eBay, put all the products on 1 CD-ROM and shipped them out. This was happening at least once a week. I have had 3 sales where buyers have bought my whole shop – ALL 400 items in one go!

So what does this tell us? Well it told me that by the summer of 2008 the profile of the eBay ebook buyer had totally changed in about 3 months. Up until March 2008 when eBay were still allowing digital downloads the typical buyer was only buying cheap ebooks for feedback, he or she probably never even read them. 3 months later my typical customer was someone who either already had an online business, or was looking to start one. My eBay shop Bestmultimediaguides had moved from being a retailer to a wholesaler.

Let me give you a very real example of where this can lead to. I got one such email from an eBay customer back in July – his name is Garry Short, an eBay Powerseller at the time. Garry bought a CD-ROM from me, was very happy with it and then told me he was looking to put together a weight loss product. Did I have any more products in that niche that I could help him with?

So I had a good look through the literally thousands of resale rights products I have on my hard drive, suggested a few products he could use as bonuses for his weight loss product, and we did the deal. This is the completed web site, which has been very successful with over 100 sales in a very short time:

Nufrontiers Weight Loss

(link opens in a new window)

A very nice quick and easy $5000 earned in a short time with very little effort – that’s how to use resale rights products effectively.

I supplied Garry with the free bonuses included in that product, and he tells me that they have been very much instrumental in persuading people to buy his weight loss product. However what is more interesting is that as a result of communicating with each other we decided to create an information product together. This was to be marketed away from the internet via classified advertising. At this time (July/August 2008) people were just starting to realise that the years of so-called economic boom and prosperity were about to come to an end.

What to do? Garry and I had the answer to that (both of us have a financial background) -  a step by step guide on how to survive the coming financial crisis. More on this tomorrow…..

The lessons from this particular post?

1. The typical buyer of digital media on eBay now is either an online business owner or wants to be an online business owner, NOT someone looking for cheap information that they’ll never read although they’re still out there
2. By having a presence on eBay try and see the bigger picture. Never mind the stuff you’re selling on there, look upon eBay as free advertising for your business. Be open to other eBayers contacting you – you never know, you may just have found your next Joint Venture partner