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Has Anyone Sold Digital PLR Products in Their Store? (5)

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Hi guys.

I've decided to set up my first ecom business. I've been reading Ecommerce Evolved by Tanner Larsson, and I would like to test out the funnel-based ecom strategy that Tanner recommends.

Since this is my first store, and I don't have any experience with customer service, shipping, or fulfillment, I have decided to begin by focusing on digital products, because there's no shipping involved and customer service is more streamlined.

Since I'm not an expert on any subject, and I don't have the capital to hire a content writer to create a product for me, I've thought about using a PLR product (rebranded as my own) as my first offer, and investing the profits from that offer into creating an original product targeting the same niche.

My question to you guys is if any of you have actually done this, and if so, what strategy did you use? My strategy idea is to use a PLR ebook as the first product in my funnel, and then offering another PLR product as an upsell. I know video courses work well as upsells, but I've also considered offering a newsletter subscription. I would initially use PLR articles for newsletter content, and hire a content writer once I've made some money and I know that the niche and the offer is viable.

I have also considered offering a print-on-demand copy of a PLR ebook as a free-plus shipping offer, but that would add some extra headaches when it comes to shipping and customer service. It would, however, allow me to use the marketing edge of free-plus-shipping in my ads.

If you have any advice for making this work, I would love to hear it. I know this is sort of an unusual strategy, and any input you might have to offer would be a big help to me.

Thank you in advance for all your help. I appreciate anything you might have to offer on this subject.

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This isn't an unusual strategy at all - PLR has been around for at least as long as I've been doing online marketing (circa 2004-2006).

Not all PLR is made the same. Try to choose ones that are helpful and provide actual valuable information. Some of them are obviously very general information that are a waste of the reader's time to read - avoid those.

And if you want to sell clickbank products to your list, many of the bigger (more popular) products will provide ready-made emails that you can just send out with your aff link.

The "spend as little money and effort as possible until I start making money" approach is a good one. However, if you're planning on buying paid traffic, then your funnel needs to be good enough to at least make back the money you spend on acquiring opt-ins. Safest way would be to try to at least break-even on the initial front-end offer, then any revenue you make on the backend would be profits. Over time though when you have more data and are better able to calculate LTV, you may be able to spend more on acquiring each opt-in.

Have fun and let us know how you get on!



Amy

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Thanks for letting me know. No one really talks about PLR on this forum, and I was beginning to think it was some long-dead strategy from the pre-Panda years.

Do you have any tips for vetting PLR products, or any PLR marketplaces that you recommend? It can be hard to tell the value of a product by the product's description alone, especially when the product description exists solely to get you to buy the PLR. I've been thinking about buying my first PLR product from unstoppableplr.com. Their products are written by professional writers with English degrees, and look very well-put together. But of course, looks can be deceiving. Based on your experience, do the products on unstoppableplr look good by PLR standards, or should I look somewhere else?

I've noticed that a lot of PLR products do that too. Some of them even have ready-made landing pages and sales letters. Should I run them by the STM Copywriting forum before I run them to make sure they're up to snuff? Also, should I split-test them with my own sales materials to see if I can create a better sales pitch?

What kind of pricing strategy do you recommend for an offer of this type? Tanner recommends selling a product for no less than $25, but he's talking about physical products, which have more sourcing costs than digital ones. Most information products I've seen do tend to sell for at least that much though, with some selling for way more. Do you think I could realistically sell a PLR product for at least $25, so long as it is of high quality?

Also, how much do you think I should charge for a newsletter subscription, which I plan to use as one of my upsells? My plan is to buy some PLR articles to use in the early days of the newsletter, and hiring a content writer to take it over once I have some revenue coming in. Do you think $4.95 a month would be a good price, or is that a little low?

Thanks for the chat Amy. You gave me a lot of ideas to work with. I'm looking forward to your response.

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How is eCommerce evolved (the book)? I have it on my shelf for once I finish the 4-hour Work Week and Secrets To Closing The Sale.

What is it's main thesis/points? And is it worth reading?

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TBH, I haven't personally used PLR products since my SEO days, which has been a few years. I no longer remember which websites produced the best PLR stuff. It's been too long.

But content is content - good informative content will always be welcomed by subscribers, and whether that content is PLR or not shouldn't make any difference. Quality is the key.

I DO remember having bought quite a few different PLRs for each niche I wanted to focus on, before deciding which one to use (usually as a lead magnet - but of course you can also sell them at a price). Alternatively, I would combine the best content across several PLRs, and even do additional research to add more valuable content to product the final product.

As for whether you should run stuff by the copywriting forum before using it - feel free to do that. However, if you have a basic sense of what good vs. bad copy looks like (if not, read Cashvertising), you should be able to tell whether there'd be a need to rewrite the PLR materials. Put yourself in your audience's shoes and ask yourself "would I find value in this?" Make sure you would answer in the affirmative before driving traffic to it.

You can also ask your customers for feedback - work this into the autoresponder series for customers. If you're charging money for something, people WILL let you know very quickly whether they're satisfied with the product or not. (And if you're offering a money-back guarantee - which you always should - then the refund rate should give you some insight as well.)

As for price point - you should definitely test different ones to see which one works best. This is a must no matter whether you're selling digital goods or physical goods. A good start would be to check a few similar products on the market to get an idea on the price range and go from there. (And remember to factor in the refund rate at each price point when deciding on which price point to settle on.)

As for the newsletter - I think $4.95/month would be a good place to start (mostly because that's the price point suggested in "Ecom Evoled" so we know it works), but make sure you deliver enough value - or at least enough PERCEIVED value. I don't know if I've suggested this in an earlier post, but it would help to use an RSS aggregator to collect lots of up-to-date information relevant to the particular niche. Each time you need to put out a newsletter, browse all the entries logged in the RSS aggregator feed since your previous newsletter, and cherry-pick the best to include in your newsletter. Check out member manu_adefy's "What the Aff" newsletter:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...for-affiliates

Model yours after that and you can't go far wrong - although it's a free newsletter the quality is there and I bet many affiliates would gladly pay money for it. To justify charging money for a newsletter you'll need to deliver value, and in the beginning it would seem like overkill because you won't have enough customers to justify all that effort. But if you don't start providing value from the first day, you'll NEVER have enough customers.

Good thing is, no matter how big your customers list grows, the amount of effort you need to put into making the newsletter should stay pretty much the same. So if you stick with this long enough, you can potentially generate a pretty nice semi-passive income stream. (You can choose to outsource this as well - I would!)

I appreciate our chat as well! And apologies for the late response, we were having too much fun at AWE. Feels good to be back home and working again though - all that fun was exhausting as hell.


This book has become my bible when it comes to ecommerce. To get a good idea of what it's about, please read my summary of the first part of the book:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...n-introduction





Amy

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