As an eBay seller, expect to get questions from potential buyers about your product. Whilst I’m not going to write about the importance of good customer services today (I’ll leave that for another day), it is very important that you answer any questions quickly and honestly. Since I have been offering Resale Rights for every single product I’ve been selling on eBay, that has also been one of the most common questions I have received. What exactly does “Resale Rights” mean?
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.