October 30, 2005 
Private Label Rights are 'hot' these days. You see private label rights offered all over the place.
They are a special kind of breed among reprint rights and master reprint rights. But I found out, to my surprise, that a lot of people don't know what private label rights really are.
Well, I'll try to explain using my own basic definitions. Read the article below.
Please consult your legal advisor before entering any agreement. The content below is just my personal interpretation in an attempt to clarify what you're facing with private label rights.
Enjoy!
Case
Private Label Rights
Private label rights allow you to make another author's work show like it's yours by changing its content.That can vary from writing an introduction paragraph or editing the title to completely modifying it any way you want and add your name to it as the creator (with or without the condition that you HAVE to modify the content).
Anything allowing you to change the content (except branding an affiliate link) is called Private Label Rights.
Warning: obtaining Private Label Rights does NOT automatically mean you also have obtained the copyrights. That's another issue, because copyrights are granted the moment a document, in whatever form, is finished.
Warning 2: obtaining Private Label Rights does NOT automatically mean you also have obtained any other right like re-selling (Reprint) or even licensing others to reprint (Master reprint rights).
The private label rights hype started for me years ago with reprint rights but since then all kind of new rights have been introduced resulting in a real mix of definitions.
Here's how I see that.
Basically, reprint rights are the rights to re-distribute a work of another author that already has been published, hence RE-print rights.
These kind of rights are not limited to the Internet business, they're quite common in lots of other businesses too.
Maybe the limitation of 'already has been published' in reprint rights was reason to use other words to describe such rights, thus skipping this limitation. That's probably why lots of people also use the terms resell rights or resale rights.
Still, resell, resale and reprint rights often mean the same nowadays.
I will use the term reprint rights in the rest of this article; you pick one of the others if you like.
Then there are Master reprint rights. That means you're not only allowed to re-distribute the product or document, but you're also allowed to trade the reprint rights for the product. Sometimes you're even allowed to sell these Master rights!
Confused yet?
If you are, you're definitely not the only one, but here's how you get around this.
First you have to understand, when talking about (master) reprint rights, you're actually talking about a way of distribution and in NO way about copyrights. That's a big difference.
Further, the only thing you can be quite certain about is the difference between reprint rights and master rights. You now know what they mean.
To solve the confusion about all other criteria is to look at the conditions and terms presented with any right that you want to obtain.
A lot of terms can apply to both sort of rights. You may or may not have permission to:
- give away the product (unchanged),
- give away a branded version (with your affiliate links),
- package the product with other products,
- give it away as a bonus,
- use it as web content (only!),
- brake the product down into articles (only!),
- offer it through auction sites,
- supply the product in a (paid) membership area,
- alter the product (hey, private label rights!),
- let those buyers also sell resale rights.
If you're not absolutely sure what a term exactly means, ask the seller.
Even if you think you are safe knowing all 'ins-and-outs' regarding your rights, things can go terribly wrong.
I once bought the reprint rights to a great copywriting checklist. After purchase it turned out that the only way to sell this product was using the link from the seller, where he had everyone signed up for his newsletter. Deceptive!
And another time I bought private label rights for language books that appeared to be ripped from a rather unknown website. Fortunately I found that out before selling the books. I already bought the domain name though.
But these are exceptions. Most of the time buying rights is ok if you use the checklist above.
Now, back to private label rights.
Private label products can be anything from software, graphics, reports, documents, articles, e-books and the like. You can use private rights to expand your existing product line, to increase professionalism of your products and enter other markets without product development.
If the terms allow you to change the content and present it as your own, you could have something valuable. As with all other rights, it depends on the quality of the product, but if that's good, you can sell the product and brand your name on the Net.
Just to take away all the confusion about private label rights, let me emphasize my warnings above again:
Some people think, that once they have obtained private label rights, they automatically are the owner of the product.
You're NOT! Unless explicitely stated.
And lost of other people think, that once they have obtained private label rights, they can distribute the product any way they want.
You CAN'T, unless explicitely stated!
If the agreement doesn't say say, then do NOT assume you have any sort of distribution right (reprint or master)!
ASK the seller!
In the last couple of months lots of private label rights are offered for article series. That's because of the 'Adsense'-hype: put up hundreds of sites for high paying keywords, slap the Adsense code to it and pray they will make some money.
Because you can't create all high value content yourself, people using this strategy (apart from using scrape software to copy all kinds of web content) buy private label rights to article series concerning their topic.
Buying private label rights is a lot cheaper than having the content created by ghostwriters for you. These guys charge a lot per article, especially when they're good.
The downside of course is, that the article series you buy aren't unique, because the private rights are sold to more people. But since you are allowed to change the content you can make these articles unique.
And that means that buying private label rights can be a very interesting strategy for you, if you play it right.
You see, if the content is good, you immediately have lots of new web pages. Interesting for your visitors and it could increase your website's visibility in the search engines and generate some extra traffic.
Of course you can add your Adsense code to it, but don't expect to make tons of money right away. You'll need to build a real Adsense emporium to to that.
Or, you could use the private label articles to make an ebook about the subject and use that as a viral marketing tool or even sell it. Or you can create an educational autoresponder series with great value for your prospects.
Please understand that this article reflects my personal interpretation of the rights mentioned. It is for informational purposes only. You should seek competent legal advice if you want to obtain such rights, because laws are different all over the world and I do not know which law applies to you.
(Ok, my lawyer made me say that, but it's true. I'm just covering some basic understanding here. In no way I'm giving you legal advice!)
Finally, let me give you some really great PLR resources.
Here's a great membership site offering various forms of resell rights, including Private Label Rights.
Another great resource is Nicheology, a site where you can get complete PLR products once a month. Unfortunately this membership site is closed. However, occasionally they let new people in who signed up for the waiting list. If you're interested in great PLR products, you really should get on that list!
If you're in the health niche, here's a resource sharing 200 health related PLR articles a month. The quality is outstanding, so you'd better check this out.
And here's another great resource: 25 Free PLR Articles
After grabbing your 25 articles, consider signing up there, because every month you will get 100 more and they are of very high quality!
Finally let me share with you that I have been searching for a very long time to find a software program that allows you to change PLR content in a flash. The purpose of such software simply is to avoid duplicate content.
I've seen and tried many products, but there's one that towers above all the others and you can see a demo video here.
You really should download your copy today and test it. Powerful!
I wish you success,
Case Stevens
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