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Should I Use PLR Articles?

I have been getting many emails lately asking about PLR articles.

What is a PLR article?

PLR stands for Private Label Rights. This means you have the right to take the article and put your name on it. You can claim it as your own work.

Sounds like a nice deal. You can join PLR membership sites all over the internet where you can get hundreds of free PLR articles each month. Wow... hundreds of articles with your name on it? What a deal!

The Problem:

You are not the only person who is claiming to be the original author of these articles.

Thousands of people are getting these same articles. Who ever submits them to the article sites first will get original author status. Everyone else will be denied for duplicate content. Can you guess who will submit first? That's right, the true original author. He or she will submit his or her articles to the article directories first, then offer them as PLR articles.

If you take these articles, "Out Of The Box", and submit them to the directories, you will absolutely be denied. You may get reprimanded for spamming the site. If you do this more than once, you will probably be banned from using the directories at all.

Where does that leave you?

They tell you that you can easily alter the original articles and make them your own, unique work. Have you ever tried that? I have and it is more work than writing my own articles.

To alter an article enough to make it unique, you have to change at least 50% of the article. That is a lot of work!

What is the alternative to PLR articles?

If you want to have true original content, you can either write your own articles or hire someone to do it for you.

Writing your own articles is not that hard. If it's a subject you are well informed about, you should easily be able to write about the topic. If it is a subject you are new to, here is an easy tip to learn enough about the topic to write about it:

Go to a good article site like Ezine Articles or GoArticles.
Do a search on the subject you are wanting to write about.
Find 4 or 5 articles and start reading.

After you have read these articles, you should have enough information about the topic that you can write your own article.

DO NOT copy another author's article! (You might as well use PLR) You are only reading their articles to get some ideas on the subject. When you start writing, make sure you use your own words and try to throw in some of your own ideas. It's sort of like writing a book report.

You can do this for any topic with a great deal of success. Even if you think you know nothing about a subject, once you read 4 or 5 articles on the subject and start writing, you will form your own opinions and come up with some good ideas. Try it. It is a lot easier than trying to change those PLR articles to make them unique.

Once you are done, you will have your own, unique, one of a kind article that you can proudly submit to the directories. Best of all, this technique is free!

What if you just don't have the time to write your own articles?

The other alternative would be to hire your work out. There are several places on the internet where you can pay someone else to write for you. I have heard that you can get this work done for as little as $2 to $5 per article.

I have never used these types of services my self but if you are interested in trying some, I have heard that RentACoder and eLance are both good companies to work with and very reasonable. You bid on a job, at no cost, and if you get someone to respond to your bid, you decide at that point if you want to pay the price or not.