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Up until a year ago I had never even heard the term PLR and because of that would never have considered it to be an avenue to helping my freelance writing career. PLR stands for Private Label Content. The great thing about PLR is that online business owners are always looking for it. PLR articles and content can be rewritten and in fact it is encouraged that business owners rewrite any PLR articles or content that they purchase from writers.

So how does this help you the freelance writer to make more money? Well, believe it or not, you can write PLR content. That’s right you. Even if you’ve never written PLR articles before you can start right now. The nice thing about PLR articles is that they don’t have to be perfect, nor do they have to be particularly long. The main things online business owners who purchase PLR articles are looking for are a) articles that fit their niche b) articles that are written well enough that it is easy to rewrite them c) articles that don’t cost an arm and a leg

As a writer you have two avenues for selling PLR articles and content, you can a) sell them yourself in packages from your own website using a Paypal buy now button or b) you can find a website online that is willing to pay you to write PLR articles and content for their membership website. Personally, I prefer the idea of selling PLR articles from my own website. While this does entail a bit more work on my part such as advertising and setting up the Paypal buy now button, I like it because I can set my own price and I get to keep 100% of the money made.

A few pieces of advice I would give those just starting out writing PLR articles a) don’t get too detailed, or do tons of research because typically you’re only going to make a few dollars an article on PLR articles b) Pick a niche, research it and then write spend a day or two writing ten or twenty articles in that niche, then you can sell a pack of twenty articles for $20 c) If the idea of not being able to claim the work bothers you ie that you don’t get to say “you” wrote those articles since this is essentially ghostwriting, then you may want to skip writing PLR content and articles.

If you’re like me and you love to write, then you know the holidays is a treasure trove of ideas for articles. Holidays always make writing easier because finding topics to write about that you’re already familiar with is so easy.

 Here are some tips for holiday article ideas:

 1. Write an article about a family holiday tradition that is unique to your family and how others who might like to try it can get started.

2. Write a how to article on a hobby of yours that you use to help you celebrate the holidays. A few examples would be scrapbooking, working with beads, or even painting. How do you use these talents to celebrate, and how can others?

 3. Tips on how to save money when doing holiday shopping. Do you have a secret method you use to keep your holiday spending down, but that still enables you to get everyone on your list a gift? Tell your readers how you do it!

These are just a few ideas to get you started. There are hundreds of possibilities, it just takes a little imagination to come up with them. 

Okay, I’m hearing the protesting already from those who have had some success with bidding sites. First of all I’m not saying that it’s impossible to have success with freelance bidding sites, but my experience has been that if you want to make serious money as a freelance writer ie you want to make a living at it, bidding sites are not always the best choice. Here’s why:

1. There is always going to be someone who is willing to outbid you for a job. Meaning they are willing to go down to the lowest possible amount of pay in order to get the gig. I’ve even seen people who are willing to take $1.00 an hour. You can’t make a living on that, and there is no way to compete with people who will make the absolute bottom dollar bid just to get the gig. 

2. Most bidding sites want you to pay them a monthly fee in order to be able to make more than three bids a month. Both E-lance and Guru will give you three bids for free but after that you have to pay their fee. I see this as the same sort of thing that you see where websites offer you a list of freelance jobs but only if you pay the monthly fee like Go Freelance. While you dont’ openly bid on these, but simply apply it’s the same principle. There are a lot of ways to find decent paying freelance gigs online without having to pay an upfront fee that may or may not mean you find some work.

If you do decide that you want to try out a bidding site, the only one that I’ve found to be good and that doesn’t charge you is Odesk. Plus they have tests you can take to prove your skills and this increases the odds of your getting a job there. Keep in mind there are many low bidders on Odesk, but there are also some professionals there and it helps to keep the rates reasonable at least on some of the jobs.  Check out Odesk.

Go Freelance used to call itself Freelance Work Exchange. I wouldn’t have even figured this out if it weren’t for the fact that about a year and a half ago, I got scammed by Freelance Work Exchange. The thing is many beginning freelance writers and those who want to work from home using their computer initially think that the only way they can get jobs is by paying for a service that gives you listings. This of course is not true but manytimes when we are just starting out with something, we think spending money is the only way.

Now back to my little story.  I’m always searching for new clients for my writing online. When it comes to making a living as a freelance writer, the more the merrier is true. I’m not suggesting you overload yourself with low paying gigs, or even high paying ones, but having more than one client means that when other clients don’t have work or work is slow or even low paying, you can access other clients to make ends meet. So, one day I was surfing the internet looking for some new gigs when  I happened upon what appeared to be a new website called Go Freelance. Don’t ask me why but as soon as I surfed there I was immediately suspicious. The first thing that tipped me off was the whole “just pay $2.49 for the first month to try us out” thing, then of course every month afterwards it’s $30+ a month. The second thing was the fact that their mailing address was the same one as Freelance Work Exchange that’s when I knew the scammers had changed their name to Go Freelance. Freelance Work Exchange got a very bad reputation because if you didn’t pay them with paypal, there was virtually no way to cancel your account and get them to stop charging your credit or debit card for their worthless service. I say worthless because the job ads they posted and made available were never updated that I could see, or were only updated very seldomly, and many of their pages were “under construction” indefinitely.  My belief is that over time the word got out and who knows maybe someone was threatening legal action? But they suddenly up and changed their name, and their website. The only problem with that is that they did not change their tactics and that is how I was able to figure it out. So, if you’re thinking about plopping down $30+ a month for Go Freelance, please don’t, you will not only be  horribly disappointed by what they have to offer, but if you pay them with anything other than paypal which allows you to cancel subscriptions which is what Go Freelance is, then you will have weeks if not months of trying to get them to stop charging you for their worthless service.

Want to read my full expose on Go Freelance? You can check out my article Freelance Work Exchance aka Go Freelance, Is Anything But Free! Why You Should Avoid Go Freelance.com Like the Plague

While SEO which by the way means Search Engine Optimization is important, it’s becoming slightly less important in the days following Web 2.0.  The idea behind SEO is that you put short key words or phrases within your articles or webpages that the search engines will pick up and then of course list your website in their results. A few years ago, SEO was thought to be absolutely critical to getting your website listed in the search engines, particularly if you wanted them to be listed on the first page, although depending on your topic this may not always happen.

However, with the advent of Web 2.0, SEO can actually hurt more than help you if you continue to do it the way many people have been doing it. What I mean by this is that when you write articles where you are using the key words or phrases in every sentence or even every other sentence, this can actually make it to where search engines pass you over for listing. The reason for this is that search engines are not looking for the same things they were even a couple of years ago. Search engine spiders are getting smarter and smarter and articles or content that is inundated with key words is less likely to get picked up than an article where the writer writes as though she is talking to someone. 

In conclusion, using key words is fine, but it’s really only necessary to use your key words or phrases once in the title and then once or twice each paragraph. Doing so, particularly when you write on popular topics that surfers are looking for, will make your articles and or content much more likely to turn up in a search than if you overdo it with the key words.