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How much have you/can you make selling PLR Article Packs here? (Breakdown of real numbers)

by Saito
15 replies
Any realistic numbers from those who have done it here would be helpful. I have done it once with limited success and want to weigh how profitable it is compared to writing exclusively for clients of mine (which pays pretty well).

My past results:

I offered my first WSO here a few months back, if you want to see what I did.

It offered 13 articles on business productivity, 13 audio narrations, and combined them into a 25-page Ebook with cover graphics.

I priced it at $14.95 and sold a whopping 7 of them. Great reviews, but all that work for $105? I also approved about 20 affiliates to promote the WSO but not a single one produced a sale.

It probably took 8 hours to put together and I'm worth more than $12/hour so I'm curious if these results were typical, and what caused them to be so low. The topic? The offer? The price? The exposure in this forum?

My estimate of the future:

I don't intend to create and promote a PLR store, but I know a few writers and am tempted to have one write 20 articles and list another WSO offering the pack for $19.95.

Seeing as it is not worth my time, let's crunch the numbers to outsource another PLR pack:

20 articles x $10 = $200
20 articles x $15 = $300
20 articles x $20 = $400
WSO Special offer = $20-40
Simple sales letter offering PLR pack: $0 (I can do)

Looks like I'd be putting out $220-440. What could I make?

Sell 10 packs for $20 = $200
Sell 20 packs for $20 = $400
Sell 30 packs for $20 = $600

Unless I can find a way to sell at least 25-30 article packs, it is just not worth it in my opinion. How could I sell 30 of them?

It just seems like there is too much risk involved for producing one-off article packs and not worth making them myself without promoting an ongoing business, building a reputation, etc. Nothing wrong with persistence and hard work, of course, but I have that for more lucrative projects. I just don't want to rule out the possibility of producing and promoting PLR packs here and there--so long as it can be done profitably and predictably.

How does this compare to your own real-life experience selling PLR?
#article #breakdown #make #numbers #packs #plr #real #selling #you or can
  • Profile picture of the author Martin Pupke
    Personally I like the PLR model - write once and get paid many times over. However, I think it all comes down to the marketing. If you don't have a comprehensive marketing plan in place before launching the packs then I think chances of a good number of sales is slim.
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  • Profile picture of the author Shai
    I think you could make a lot of money selling unique PLR articles. It is likely (speculative) that the subject was the reason for the low sale numbers. If you were to focus on more popular niches that more people are into (health, nutrition, pets, etc...), you might have a lot more sales.

    I'm sorry. I don't have any numbers for you, but I know that many people are happy to get their hands on good quality PLR articles.
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  • Profile picture of the author pdrs
    Yeah I think it was definitely your niche in this case. You need to focus on trending topics upcoming stuff that you know people are going to be looking for.

    Your sales page was decent and I'm sure the package was probably pretty well done but this is really sort of vague info and there is already a glut of it out there.

    Find an upcoming hot product, write a bunch of stuff around it that can be used for promoting it and I think you'll have much greater success
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  • Profile picture of the author Saito
    That is a good point...I suspected that managing your time is not as sexy as whatever the latest traffic method or hot topic. Truth be told, I wrote those articles a while back and wanted to leverage them instead of writing from scratch. Even just re-touching them up and recording the audios and the sales page took like 8 hours.

    I would consider doing more marketing, but the simplest way seems like getting a few real affiliates or existing successful PLR marketers to add it to their store or promote it. I'm sure a simple store with sales pages for each pack would create some sales from my signature here over time, but more importantly the initial promotion should at least recoup my costs to produce, IMO, so that's what will make or break this particular opportunity for me.

    I'm still curious to know what numbers I can expect with a PLR pack on a hot topic, promoted only as an WSO. How many packages sold is realistic? I mean, even if I doubled or even tripled my sales next time it doesn't seem like that great of an investment of time and money to do it.
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  • Profile picture of the author pdrs
    I think you're looking at it the wrong way a little bit.

    It's not really a matter of numbers per WSO, your first 2 or 3 might even be at a loss (considering outsourcing/time spent) on a hot topic but you're starting to build a list of people who are interested in buying the sort of content that you offer - this is pretty powerful.

    Not only can you then recommend other products to them, you have a great research tool for your next product in the palm of your hands. Ask them what they're looking for and after awhile you can always guarantee a product will sell at least enough to break even and will keep netting you new customers.

    You need to keep the ball rolling so to speak and not think of it in terms of if I do this it will equal this.

    If you're not thinking of it this way and just thinking "can I make a quick buck with a PLR product" then it's never going to be worth it
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  • Profile picture of the author Saito
    Bump because I am still waiting for real numbers.

    I agree that it's a neat business model in general, and of course it is better to have a list than to not use one. Of course every business takes some work and failure to get off the ground---but i already have several projects doing just fine, so the question is how does PLR compare to the myriad other business opportunities?

    Show me what the potential is with real numbers.

    Even marketers skilled at building lists know it's all about at least breaking even on the front end, every time.
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    • Profile picture of the author Michael Oksa
      Originally Posted by Saito View Post

      Even marketers skilled at building lists know it's all about at least breaking even on the front end, every time.
      This is where I disagree. It is not about breaking even up front, it's about the lifetime value of a customer.

      Retail stores use loss leaders all the time. They are willing to lose money on in-demand items just to get people into the store. Once people are in the store, they tend to buy other stuff too, and that's how the retailer makes their profit.

      You can use the same idea for your PLR.

      Sell an introductory pack at a very low price, or give it away. This is so you can build a list. For example, you could price your current package at $7 and see if it does better. You could also take 5 of the articles and sell them for $1 or give them away, then give people an upsell to the full package for just little bit more. You can make it clear that it's an introductory offer if you wish.

      Keep writing article packs and sell them to your list.

      It's also a good idea to let all buyers (introductory or not) see all of your available packages.

      Your sales will continually increase as your list grows and you offer more packages.

      All the best,
      Michael
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  • Profile picture of the author Saito
    You have never heard of a Self-Liquidating Offer? Ask Ryan Deiss or Rich Schefren.

    Being a loss-leader is great if you're Taco Bell. So is expensive branding and image marketing. Are we modeling Fortune 500 Companies now, or are we modeling successful home-based internet marketing businesses?

    Breaking even on the front end is pretty much crucial for all of your marketing methods or you will run out of cash FAST and grow SLOW.

    Even though 80% of the profits come from the back end you have to focus 80% of your time on making the front end CONVERT.

    I would be curious to hear someone who has posted 3-5 WSOs offering PLR packs who could tell me how big of a list came from that and how it affected sales. I would like specifics, because even if I were to make a few packs at a loss to build a list, it still might not be a big enough future opportunity to be worth the effort.
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    • Profile picture of the author skylang1
      Bump again, because I think this is an important question. Successful business is about numbers, not just ideas. What's the necessary investment in time and equivalent $$$ before PLR reaches the breakeven point?

      Retail stores use loss leaders all the time. They are willing to lose money on in-demand items just to get people into the store. Once people are in the store, they tend to buy other stuff too, and that's how the retailer makes their profit.
      This is over simplifying the situation. A retail store's "loss leader" only loses money per unit sale, it doesn't lose the store any money overall, because the store has hard figures that show it exactly how much its "loss leader" will bring in, in terms of total sales and profits. You can be sure stores have a very good idea of what revenue and profit each dollar invested in a loss leader is worth. That's the OP's question here and its very relevant and important.

      If my time is worth $XX/hour (a lot more than minimum wage!) then if I invest YY hours in creating PLR packs, be they freebies, low-priced introductory packs, or the real deal for real money, plus the time and money spent marketing them, then how much time (and therefore my $$$ worth) will I have to spend before reaching the breakeven point (when revenue = money and time valued in $$$) and what is the potential for going beyond that point, in other words the profit potential.

      I like the idea of creating an inventory of content that has value, but the question is, is it profitable? If it is, how profitable? Any business proposition has to have numbers, so we're looking to people who have been there, done that, to say, if they're willing to.
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  • Profile picture of the author DoubleOhDave
    Just wanted to bump this too, cos it's something I am also considering as I am writing a lot lately and had the idea that putting some of my articles aside and creating a content plan might result in some good PLR products.. has anyone got any further ideas about this?
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  • Profile picture of the author JRJWrites
    A quick Q - did you have any sort of list when you released your first PLR pack, Saito?
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  • Profile picture of the author DoubleOhDave
    Yes, and that's exactly why I am curious to see if any of the original contributors to it went any further with their plans or ideas.. or whether they gave up
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    • Profile picture of the author mom2childs
      I'm interested in this topic as well. I bought Tiffany Dow's Ghostwriting Cash and am considering buying PLR ATM, but I'm not sure how viable selling PLR is right now. I see so many sites are now out of business...

      I'm sure the established site will continue to stay in business, but wondering if a new seller can get a share of the market.

      Is PLR dead or still very much alive?
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  • Profile picture of the author Stuart Walker
    A quick look at the stats for PLR on WSOPro and JVZoo I can see that some vendors can easily sell 1,000+ each product and others can't sell 10.

    It's like every product. Depends on a lot of different factors like content, marketing, ability to network, whether you can get affiliates on board, size of your list and so on.

    There's no doubt however that PLR is an in demand product though.
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