Introduction: A Quit Smoking Analogy
Managing PLR hoarding seems to be a bigger challenge than it should be. First - an analogy. I supported a Quit Smoking Facebook Group for quite some time.
I developed a framework for helping people to quit smoking - it had 6Ds
D - Desire
D - Decide
D - Deliberate
D - Do
D - Double
D - Dream
The first step to quitting any addiction is one has to have the DESIRE to decide to tackle the problem. The smart way to make DECIDE happen is to have a compelling reason (Desire) to take action. To quit smoking this could be to save money, to fix your health, to protect your family from passive smoking, etc.
The next step is about being DELIBERATE. Used as a verb "to deliberate" means "to think it through". I used the word because it had a D and this step was all about making a deliberate plan of what you were going to do up to D-Day and the day after and the week after. One of the keys to breaking any addiction is to break the patterns of behaviour that reinforce the addiction. Examples for smoking would include not going to the pub, only going to non-smoking restaurants, changing the store you buy the milk from, going for a 5 minute walk instead of a smoke break, steering away from friends who smoke, taking away the chair on the front porch, etc. The plan also needs to cover the reinforcing and coping actions - example, knowing what you will snack on, knowing how to quell the cravings (chew on a lemon wedge, stick your head in the freezer compartment). There is quite a bit to deliberate on - turn it into an action plan.
Now you have an action plan you are in place to DO it - on D-Day - pick the day and Do. That gets one to the next phase = DOUBLE it - made 1 day, double it to do 2 days, made 2 days, double to make 4 days. The good news for smokers is the chemical addiction can be broken with 3 doublings (i.e., by day 8). After that is broken, it is all about emotional addiction and that is what the action plan has steps to tackle. Once you are past the 8 days and beyond is the time to DREAM - dream about a new lifestyle, dream what to do with the spare cash, dream how to share time with your family, dream what to do in a healthier retirement, etc.
Managing PLR Hoarding: Lessons Applied
I was prompted by a PLR report from Rachel Youngson called Breaking the Cycle of PLR Hoarding to think about tackling addiction as a way of managing PLR hoarding. You see there are lots of Internet Marketers who have an addiction to PLR - it is a subset of the addiction to Shiny Objects.
How do people become addicted to PLR?
Well there are a few threads. The PLR sellers put a lot of pressure on you with special discounted pricing and special bonuses and all this stuff. Ticket prices are really low - it is too easy to say yes because the price is not significant - it slides in below the radar. The offer comes along with a shiny look that will solve all your immediate problems. There is a fear of missing out story too. The back story is most people do not take action - me too. A lot of PLR arrives as bonuses to paid products too = they add to the addiction.
That is where the story begins to unravel. The PLR is bought and (sometimes) it is downloaded on the PC. I know in many cases I have bought PLR and not even downloaded it. In fact, something like 90% of PLR bought is never used - Rachel suggests 7 or 8 out of 10 - who knows? I am a firm believer in the 80:20 rule. 80% of PLR buyers do not use it - of the 20 percent who do, 80 percent use it without making changes and so on. Think about that as lazy PLR - well it is not the PLR that is lazy, but that is another story. We always promise that we will use it - and nothing happens.
How to break the addiction? 6 D's applied
The question then is how do you break out of this addiction. I am going to suggest some D's - maybe 5. Let's see.
D - Desire: You bought the PLR for a reason - to support your business in some way. Get back to what that reason is and articulate it very clearly. Go up a level and make that into a Mission Statement about your internet business. Think things like niche, target prospects, value proposition, product offering, etc.
D - Decide: This is the easy part because the addiction is not like smoking or drugs or alcohol - it is entirely in your head and not a physical thing in your body. Clear your head and decide two things
- Not to buy any more and
- Use what you already have.
- First is a plan to unsubscribe from all those emails. I wrote a lot about that in Conquer Shiny Object Syndrome. Easiest way I found was to subscribe to a service called Mailstrom - it goes through all your emails and categorises them by vendor - unsubscribe and delete is done in one pass. The free service throttles the amount you can do - just work within the limits. I bought an annual subscription and blitzed my whole list in a few sessions.
- Plan two is an action plan to work on one item of PLR you have bought - this will give you a template for the future. More about that below.
- Plan 3 is about what you will do with the other PLR you already have. The suggestion is to file it all in an archive preferably off your own PC in the cloud somewhere - Amazon S3, One Drive, Google Drive, Dropbox. The good thing about this is it frees up your own computer and it is backed up by somebody else. Next step is to categorise it all - niche, topic, author. This is key so that you know what you have before you get tempted to buy anything new.
- Start with plan 1 = empty your inbox - unsubscribe and delete = be ruthless.
- Follow up with plan 3 - categorise what you have and bring it all together in one place.
- Now that you have that done, it is quite easy to start plan 2 - go back to your mission statement and find the piece of PLR that fits best with fulfilling that. The way to think about plan 2 is as a profit plan. How can I make a profit out of this piece of PLR? Short term idea would be to package some of it up into a sell now product. A medium timeframe idea would be to create two elements - one as a lead magnet to build a list and one as a product to sell to the list. A longer time frame idea would be to build it into a membership site, maybe as a video or audio series. It is also worth thinking about how you might use the remaining pieces to support your business - content pieces for you blog, content pieces for social media, images for posting, etc,
D - Dream: Job done. Now you can dream about the lifestyle you had in mind when you created that mission statement in the first D.
Take Command of Your PLR - PLR Boss Time
Now comes the important stage of managing PLR hoarding. You know what you have in your archive. You have a clear picture of what your business is. You have a template for how you have been taking action with your PLR.
And someone pitches a new piece of PLR which looks really smart and has a super appealing price.
It's simple really - answer these two questions:
- Do I have a piece of PLR in my archive that can do the same job with a little work? For example, add a few new sections, refresh with new images, add in some stories, turn into a video series, turn into an audio series.
- Do I have a plan for using this new piece of PLR? How does this PLR fit into the business plan? How will it add value to the customer experience and the business offer?
Resources
Inbox Management I use Mailstrom to manage my 21,000 unread email inbox down to 8,000 and still working on it. They offer a free plan that will analyse 5,000 mails and fix 25% of them. The paid plan is $49 on an annual plan. Get a $5 discount with this link and I get $5 too. This might feel like a shiny object but I can assure you it will save $49 worth of your precious time in a heartbeat and it will stop you buying something before you need it Mailstrom.coUse PLR Rachel Youngson is the author of the two PLR reports I used to compile this article. If your mission statement supports selling a product around this topic you can still buy the PLR for PLR Hoarding and PLR Boss - sadly the discount coupons I used are no longer valid and full price is $37 each. PLR Hoarding covers the core of the topic in this blog post - archive, list, categorise. PLR Boss is more forward looking at how you can take command of using PLR in your business. Another idea is to have a look around her website and see what fits with your plans. Check out Use PLR here. Join her newsletter - find her Facebook Group and join there and start a reinvigorated journey with PLR
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