PLR and Ghostwritten Articles: Are they Ethical?

By Nina East | January 21, 2010

This article is by guest columnist Nicole Dean.

Recently, in an interview, I was asked “Is it ethical to use private label rights and ghostwritten articles?”

Let me step back a moment and explain… Private label rights (or PLR) articles and ghostwritten articles are used by web owners as a
method of outsourcing some of their content.

* PLR articles are packages of articles that are pre-written and sold to more than one person.
(The Association of Personal Growth Professionals uses EasyPLR as one of its resources.)

* Ghostwritten articles are articles that are written by someone else just for you that you can put your name on and are not sold to
anyone else.

In both cases, you are allowed to edit the content as much or as little as you’d like and use the articles on your website, blog, or in
your newsletter.

So, back to the question. Is it ethical? My answer was, “usually, yes”.

If you’re using the articles and saying “written by me” without changing anything at all, it may bite you in the butt later, when
someone else does the same thing. Does that make it unethical? Not really. It’s just not smart. Can you use the article as it is or edited
slightly, without saying it was written by you? Of course!

Most PLR packs are written by ghostwriters. Ghostwriters are professional researchers and writers. If you purchase well-written,
informative PLR or ghostwritten articles and share them with your readers, don’t you all benefit? Your readers benefit by getting great information. You benefit by saving time. Is it any different than hiring a graphic designer or webmaster? Not in my opinion. Heck, most politicians don’t write their own speeches. They leave that to people who are professional speech writers.

Of course, you’d want to only use top-notch PLR articles and not “sell-out” just to pump out blog posts or web pages quicker. We
recommend you research thoroughly before choosing any ghostwriter or PLR service.

Here’s what to look for in a PLR service so you don’t waste your money:

1. Make sure the articles are written well.

2. Make sure that you know what topics you’ll receive (instead of some grab-bag of articles).

3. Be sure that the people running the program have some experience in article writing themselves, so they know what they’re doing.

There’s no point in doing everything on your own, especially if you dislike writing. All successful business people outsource the tasks
they are not good at or dislike. Check it out. It might take some pressure off you and allow you to spend more time with your kids. And,
that’s definitely ethical.

Nicole Dean welcomes you to check out EasyPLR.com – where you’ll find high-quality PLR articles on niches sold in very limited quantities.

Part of the reason we recommend EasyPLR is because Nicole limits the number of packages she sells – so you know when she says she’ll sell the rights to a set of articles to only 10 people, that’s what she means.

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