Internet Business Blog

Private Label Rights material can be a great way of getting content and products that you can call and sell as your own. It can also be a great way to spend good money on a load of rubbish.

As I see it, there are two main problems with most PLR material I come across:

1. The quality of the written content is poor. A lot of what’s produced is from the hands of cheap labour and this usually means it’s sourced from countries where English is not the primary language. It is possible to have a board vocabulary and a good grasp of English grammar, but often you need to be able to think in a westernised way before you can write content that reads like westernised content.
2. It’s already been distributed across the Internet so you can forget about it being original content in the eyes of search engines. It also means that it’s usually no good for submitting to article directories because someone else will have already beaten you to it.

Both of these problems result in the need for a further investment of either time or money or even both as rewriting the content to some degree is required before it can be used to benefit you.

Why do these issues exist?

As happens with many maturing markets, as demand increases for PLR products, the number of suppliers also increases. As the number of suppliers increase, people start thinking a step higher in the food chain, moving away from the end consumer and towards supplying the suppliers instead.

For the end user, this means instead of getting material that’s been produced by their supplier and supplied to a limited number of people, they’re getting material that’s being offered by any number of suppliers to even more end users. Therefore, the chances of someone else already using the same content increases greatly because instead of having one supplier selling 100 copies of an article pack you might have several suppliers each selling 100 copies of the same article pack.

If you’re publishing the same content as hundreds of other people, whether or not you believe in duplicate content penalties will be irrelevant because you’ll still be competing for all the same keywords as the other publishers.

For these reasons, I don’t believe you should consider the majority of PLR material on offer today as ready-to-use.

What do you think of using PLR? Do you use it yourself? Are you happy with the quality of the written content?

The Chances are you already know what Camtasia Studio is. Just in case you don’t, it’s a screen recording, editing and production suite that lets you create multimedia presentations for a multitude of platforms.

Camtasia Studio is especially popular with Internet marketers who use it for everything from creating training videos to delivering sales pitches, but you don’t have to be one in order to benefit from using it. For example, screen recordings make it very easy to submit bug reports or ask for technical assistance. Instead of struggling trying to put the rights words together, just record what happens on your screen, upload the video and email a link to your support representative.

Bundled with December’s edition of PC Plus magazine (issue 262) is a free license for Camtasia Studio version 3. The latest version is 5, but version 3 is more than adequate for most needs.

If you intend to buy version 5 then you’ll be pleased to know that you can upgrade to it from this version 3 for less than the cost of buying version 5. So that’s v3 for free and v5 for about half-price!

You may recall that I wrote about some of NuSphere’s products and how I used them to develop (secure) PHP desktop applications such as Keyword Permutator. Well, there’s currently a sale on PhpED, their PHP IDE, starting at just $79 for the standard version. Before I knew better, I developed all of my code using just UltraEdit. Whilst I still use UltraEdit for everything else, it doesn’t offer the powerful tool set that PhpED does for PHP development.

With PhpED, you get features such as:

• Debugger - follow your scripts step by step and see how every variable gets populated.
• Web server - run your PHP scripts in a local environment. I like using WAMP5 for local development as it comes with Apache, PHP and MySQL pre-packaged and ready out of the box.
• Code profiler - see just how performant your code is before you risk it on a production server or use it to find bottlenecks in your code.
• CVS client - a handy feature, if you don’t already have a preferred CVS client. I use Tortoise CVS quite happily to keep my source code safe.
• Built-in language reference manuals - no more scrambling around for the PHP or MySQL manuals.
• Built-in database client - much quicker than firing up PHPMyAdmin. My preferred tool is a free copy of Navicat I got from the cover of PC Plus magazine!
• Smarty support - Makes working with templates a nicer experience.
• All of the usual code formatting, syntax highlighting, code completion, code folding etc. that you can get with many other programmer’s editors and much more.

If you’re serious about your PHP and you haven’t yet tried an integrated development environment, I’d recommend at least trialling PhpED. If the sale finishes before you decide to buy then check out the built-in tips for a surprise discount!

Technorati Tags: PhpED, web development, PHP, WAMP, NuSphere

If you haven’t yet gotten control of your affiliate links then you’re leaving yourself open to lost time, money and opportunity.

If you’re using the likes of TinyURL to cloak your affiliate links then your income from those links is genuinely in the hands of a third party whom you have no control. If they decide to shut up shop or start charging for their service then you can either pay up or go back, change every instance of those links and that’s a tough thing to do when they’re in a PDF on someone’s computer.

Perhaps you’re already using redirects. That’s good, but are you tracking how they’re used? Do you know which of your links attracts the most clicks? Do you know if your affiliate links work best in certain emails or in certain positions on your web page layout?

The point I’m getting at is that I’m looking for beta testers for a new tool I’ve developed, which will allow you to become a much more effective and profitable affiliate. Participants in the beta test will receive a time-limited version of the product to install and test. Active participants will get free lifetime licenses.

Requirements are:

• You must have a website with PHP and MySQL available
• You agree to provide me with some constructive feedback! Seems obvious, but too many people sign up for testing and don’t feed back.

If you’re interested in taking part and getting something that could increase your affiliate income for free then get in touch.

No more volunteer beta testers, thanks, but if you’re thinking about a publishing a review or offering a special deal for your mailing list then get in touch.

Here’s a tip for anyone hiring a freelancer; don’t part with any money until you get solid evidence that progress has been made on your project.

After recently completing a project with one freelancer, I’ve just had to fire another. Why? Well, to begin with, all seemed well. Although he didn’t have much feedback, what he did have was very good and the bid he tendered for my project seemed to be good value being neither the cheapest nor the most expensive.

The programmer communicated well during the bidding and initial stages of the project. His grasp of English suggested that it was his first language and being able to communicate easily is a huge benefit to any project. He asked questions about the requirements and was able to offer suggestions for improvements.

It wasn’t until well into the project schedule that cracks started to appear…

First, there was a sudden lack of email updates even though I’d stressed that I preferred to keep in regular contact if only to confirm that the project was still progressing as planned, then came the excuses about computers blowing up, being forced to use Internet cafes and other personal problems.

I can appreciate that the unexpected can happen, but in my opinion, it’s unprofessional to let personal matters dominate a working relationship and to leave the customer wondering about the state of their project. After all, I was depending upon him to complete the project and he wasn’t aware of what the effect of it not being completed on time was.

Things then came to a bit of a head when he emailed to say that the work was complete, that he would package up his work and email it in the morning. The ‘next morning’ stretched on for more than a week and eventually a reply came suggesting that his email had gotten lost in the ether some how. I suggested he upload the work and then email a link to me to download. He agreed it was a good idea, but that he needed reassurance so I submitted payment for his work into escrow.

More than a week went by without any contact so I raise a dispute and got my escrow payment refunded.

Next time, I will want to see actual progress!

Technorati Tags: Freelance, ScriptLance, time wasters, project management