If you’re looking to outsource content, chances are you’ve heard about PLR and ghostwriting. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. The choice of which to use really comes down to how you want to run your company.

Here’s an explanation of each and an analysis of who should use each tactic.

==> What Is Private Label Rights (PLR) Content?

Whenever someone writes something, they automatically have the rights to it. Private Label Rights (PLR) is when someone either gives or sells you all or part of those rights.

Usually these rights give you the ability to at least copy and distribute the content. You can usually also put your name on it and claim it as yours. Generally PLR content also includes the rights to change the content as you see fit.

Sometimes the rights will not allow you to give the content away for free, though usually you can use it in both paid and free sites. Generally PLR won’t give you the right to sell PLR rights to the content, unless you also purchase the Master PLR Rights or Master Resale Rights.

In other words, you’re buying a package of content that someone else wrote for you. However, you’re usually also buying the content along with a bunch of other people. That means you run the risk of duplicate content.

Search engines are very conscious of duplicate content and penalize websites that have the same content as other websites. The big downside of PLR is that it’s sold to so many people that you risk getting hit with the duplicate content penalty.

The way around it is to have the PLR content rewritten. It’s often much cheaper to buy a PLR content package and have it rewritten than it is to buy brand new content.

==> What Is Ghostwriting?

Ghostwriting is when you hire someone to write your content for you. You buy all the rights to the content, meaning you can put your own name on it.

Furthermore, you usually get some sort of confidentiality agreement where the writer cannot disclose that they wrote the content. As far as the world is concerned, you wrote the content.

The upside to ghostwriting is that it’s completely exclusive, as you have a one on one relationship with the writer.

The downside is the cost. The cost of hiring your own ghostwriter is naturally much, much higher than buying content from a PLR distributor.

==> The Decision

The decision comes down to this: with PLR content, you get cheaper content, but it has to be rewritten if you’re using it for SEO purposes.

Ghostwriting gets you content more specific to your purposes with no chance of duplicate content, but is much more expensive.

At the end of the day, you have to figure out which model fits better for your business.