13 Ways to Give your PLR offering more “oomph”

Today I’m debuting my new look! Special thanks to Mary at IM Freeway for the slick new design.

Selling private label rights content is a great way to make money with your writing online. Here’s a Thursday Thirteen dedicated to PLR.

1. Research your niche topic before committing to it. Make sure there are an adequate number of searches per day by using a keyword research tool.

2. Find out if there is an existing PLR on the topic, and try to hit different angles and subtopics.

3. Give away a free PLR sample so buyers can see what your work is like. This is so important these days because a lot of crappy PLR is floating around. People are leery of buying from a new face. Don’t charge them for trying you out.

4. Work with another writer in a partnership to get more articles for the same topic. Different perspectives can help give your offering more variety.

5. Limit your offering to less people so you can raise the per package price.

6. Offer several different products for the same topic. Package an ebook, articles and blog posts together.

7. Consider starting a plr membership site - but keep it focused on one theme. The more targeted your membership site is, the more people will join. They don’t like to pay for a membership site and get topics they don’t need.

8. Pair your articles with a graphic designer and offer PLR graphics to go with your ebooks.

9. Offer large packages of PLR. Twenty or thirty articles on a topic will do much better than just ten.

10. Offer rewriting services on your own PLR for a small additional fee. Since you wrote the original articles you know they won’t be difficult to reword (unlike rewriting random PLR that your client gives you….which can be a job and half if the PLR is junk).

11. Upsell your PLR customers by offering them a discount on your freelancing services. For example, when they buy a package they get a 10% discount on the next order from you.

12. Check out the competition often. See what they are doing and learn from their mistakes. Improve on their offers and give 50% more value….through pricing, packaging or service. Set yourself apart from the rest of the pack.

13. Keep a license for yourself! Put your PLR to use and create your own mini-sites and blogs to get long term income.

September 20, 2007 | Filed Under Thursday 13 | 6 Comments 

Thirteen Great Things about the 1K a Day Forum

My membership to the 1K a Day forum has already proved itself to be invaluable. To get a sneak peak inside, watch this video.

1. The members are truly there to help each other. There’s a whole section dedicated to business ideas that people share for others to use freely.

2. The founder, 5BuckaDay Guy Dennis Becker, is on hand to answer questions and offer advice. He’s really a part of the community.

3. There are 9 different streams of income that have a dedicated section on the forum.

4. People are making real money! The success section is filled with the stories of members who have put these methods to work and are seeing results.

5. It’s a wonderful place to network. I have received several quote requests and a few jobs from my membership there.

6. The forum is all about action. Instead of sitting on ideas forever, our members take concepts and try them out immediately. This leads to better, faster results.

7. There is a huge downloads section where you can get access to a variety of special reports and even longer ebooks for free.

8. If you want to expand your web writing contacts and skills, there’s a section for that.

9. There is every level of marketer imaginable, from the complete newbie to the seasoned pro.

10. The Idea Incubator section of the forum is dedicated to helping you develop your fledgling ideas into profitable business models.

11. Since it is based on the 5 Bucks a Day philosophy, the emphasis is on focusing on one project until it’s done. No more flitting from idea to idea!

12.  You can offer your services in a special section of the forum to get new clients, or get help in the areas that you need.

13. It’s just plain fun!

You can take a sneak peak at the forum by watching this video. I hope you watch it and if you decide to join, drop me a pm! I’m “courtney” at the forum.

August 16, 2007 | Filed Under Making Money, Thursday 13 | 4 Comments 

13 resources for web writing

This Thursday 13 is all about gathering the resources you need to write online.

1. A good word processing program. I use Microsoft Word, although a lot of clients want things delivered in .txt format. To solve this, save your Microsoft document as a .txt file instead of copy/pasting it into Notepad. I learned this mistake the hard way! Copying and pasting takes all of the Microsoft coding into Notepad and makes it look like gobbelty-gook.

2. A professional looking e-mail address. Professional doesn’t mean boring…it just means something other than sexylover55 @ aol.com or something complicated that’s hard to remember.

3. A paypal account, and a paypal debit card. This makes it so convenient to get paid, and use the money easily. Plus, when you use your paypal debit card, you get cash back. It’s not much, but by buying my groceries directly with my Paypal account instead of transferring the money into my bank account, I’ve made $25 this year.

4. A web presence. If you don’t have a website, my previous post about Squidoo. You can also use a free blog. Or if you are so inclined, you can set up your own complete website. It doesn’t matter how fancy your website is as long as you have somewhere to send people and something to put in your signature file on forums. Make sure to keep samples on your site (I’m breaking this rule on my page at this very moment!) and make sure they are free of errors.

5. Timestamp software. This little program has really helped me improve my productivity. It’s “donation ware” meaning it’s free to download, and if you find that you like it, you can donate some money. Timestamp is kind of like a stopwatch for work, but it also helps you calculate your profit per hour, and how much money you spend when you have “slack time” ie: surfing youtube for 20 minutes instead of writing (yeah…that’s my work vice). It will also help you calculate your cost per project so you can adjust your rates.

6. WinZip. If you don’t have this utility program on your computer, you can get it at here. Most, if not all, of your work is going to be delivered to your clients with Winzip.

7.  World Clock This program is great if you have international clients and need to figure out what “tomorrow” is for your client. This can help you avoid a lot of confusion.

8.  Cute PDF This program will help you create pdf files quickly and easily. Honestly, I’ve only used it once or twice for a client. But it’s nice to offer your clients PDF creation as part of your services.

9. Get to know a good graphics person. Content may be king, but images sell a heck of a lot of product. You can team up with someone who does graphics and offer package deals on an ebook, an ebook cover and header graphics. To most marketers, that’s an incredible deal.

10. Firefox web browser. If you’re networking with people in forums, you want to present yourself as a writer. This means spelling things correctly. Since forums rarely have spellcheck, Firefox’s built in spell check is a godsend. It’s amazing how many things you misspell when you type fast. (for instance, I misspelled “misspell”) …thanks Firefox!

11.  A “swipe” file. Start bookmarking websites and saving e-mails that you can learn from. When you come across a good piece of web content, you should study it.

12. A short list of forums to visit and network in. I’ve found this to be much more lucrative than bidding sites.

13. A positive attitude! Writing online means working for yourself, and that means looking for and securing projects. If you’re leaving the “comfort” of a 9 to 5 job, this may seem intimidating. But actually your success is directly related to your attitude. Keep positive and the work will start coming your way.

June 28, 2007 | Filed Under Resources, Thursday 13 | Leave a Comment