If you’ve been in the internet marketing business for more than a couple of months, you’ve run across something called PLR. You may not be sure what this is or even what it stands for. As it happens, PLR stands for Private Label Right (not to be confused with the UK’s Public Lending Right, which is very different). What does PLR mean and what are the differences between this and other license agreements like Master Resell Rights (MRR) – and for your purposes, does the distinction matter?

PLR is a licensing standard for products which fall under the intellectual property umbrella. This includes audio recordings, video content and written materials. PLR licenses may vary slightly from one license to another, but broadly speaking they permit the purchaser to use the licensed material any way they choose.

Someone wrote, designed or recorded this content. However, they for one reason or another have decided against selling these products themselves and they license it to other people or businesses to market and sell instead.

There are different types of PLR websites. Some require memberships to access the content others do not. Membership sites limit the number of buyers for certain information products, however not all the content you get will be relevant to your niche. When you buy content from PLR sites that do not have memberships, you are able to choose content specific to your niche market. That way, your hard drive doesn’t fill up with useless files.

The PLR license for the content offered for sale will specify what you are and are not permitted to do with the material. The most useful PLR content of all is content which offers unconditional use. This means that you can literally do anything you see fit with the material. You can rewrite, edit, re-mix, repurpose and generally suit it to your needs. You may even be able to resell your PLR material!

However, it’s important to read the license carefully before you buy any PLR material. You may find that the license prohibits you from doing something with this content which you’d intended to do. If so, then simply keep looking. There’s a lot of good PLR-licensed material out there to choose from.

You’ll also want to take a look at the material before you buy. See if you can view a sample so you have an idea of what you’re getting. There is PLR content which is comparable in quality to what you’d pay a small fortune for from an ad agency or a marketing consultancy and PLR content which is completely without value. With written material, Google a sentence or two in quotes so you can see how many others are already using this content. If everyone and their mother is using the same content, you’ll probably want to pass.

Unconditional private label rights content can save you a lot of time and money. You can choose to spend a great many hours creating information products yourself, pay a lot money to freelancers to do the work for you, or get top quality PLR content for only $50 to $200. So, if you value your time and money, PLR could be the best solution.