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Are Reprint Rights A Good Idea For Your Business?
By Terry Dean
Are reprint rights a good idea for your business?
The answer is, "Yes" and "No."
I wish there was a simple answer to this question, but there really
isn't. Buying the reprint rights to a hot selling product could be
the deal of a lifetime.
You could end up with a product that already has a hot market ready
to buy without having to do any of the research, creation, or ad
writing. It could be the perfect opportunity. Or it might not be.
This same 'perfect opportunity' might be sold by thousands of
businesses already...It could be outdated...and it may never have
sold well in the first place!
So, reprint rights may be right or wrong for your business depending
on a number of factors.
I have experienced both the successful aspects of reprint rights,
and have been able to avoid most of the pitfalls...but not all.
I have created many of my own products such as the "Instant
Internet Cashflow System" series of ebooks and our newest video
course "Internet Publishing."
Even though I have created my own products, we have still used
reprint rights licenses in many ways to either expand or generate
new profits.
I purchased reprint rights to several products when I first wanted
to market online. The early success I experienced through selling
these products led to the business I am in today.
Doing a quick run-down of the office shows that we currently have
reprint licenses on 23 different products. One of these products has
19 videos and 2 manuals in it. Another one has 24 audio tapes, 2
videos, and a manual.
Other products consist of electronic books only. There are
advantages and disadvantages to each format. The primary advantage
of an electronic manual is that it is easy to setup and sell and
requires no fulfillment or shipping costs which can be major
hassles.
The primary disadvantage of electronic books which no expert seems
to like to discuss is that most people don't like to read on their
computer. They prefer to read a hard copy book, listen to an audio
tape, or watch a video. Plus, it is much harder to show the
uniqueness of an electronic book.
Both types of products (electronic and hard copy) have the unique
advantages and disadvantages. I have been successful buying reprint
rights on both!
So, I am speaking from a position of authority. Reprint Rights have
been a part of my business from day one.
SECTION ONE: What Are Reprint Rights?
First, let's cover the different types of rights that are available
out there on different products.
1. Affiliate Programs
Affiliate programs could be considered a form of rights, although a
very basic one. Most of my readers understand exactly what an
affiliate program is so I won't go into here. The advantage of
affiliate programs is that they have little or no cost to get
involved in.
The two major disadvantages are that you receive the smallest piece
of the action from an affiliate program (10% to 50%) and that you
will have thousands upon thousands of competitors. Always remember
this, the cheaper and easier it is to start a business, the more
competition you will have. Affiliate programs usually have no cost
and no time involvement to sign up, so you can expect to have the
most competition through them.
The advantage here is that the affiliate owner actually takes care
of all the fulfillment, order processing, and everything else. So it
is a great way to get started promoting products or to expand your
product line. As I said above though, this could end up being a
double edged sword. It is easy for you to sign up. It is also easy
for ten thousand others to sign up.
2. Resale Rights
A resale rights are a little more involved. Usually when resale
rights are involved, you pay an up-front fee and then you are given
the right to buy the product at a discount. In some cases you buy
the product wholesale and sell it retail.
In most cases though, you take retail orders for a product and then
send the product owner a certain percentage to fulfill the order for
you. This is often called dropshipping.
For example, you may want to sell a video set we have and offer to
pay a resale fee of $500.00. Then, you take orders for it for the
full $297.00 retail price. Every time an order comes in, you process
the card and send us $125.00. We then duplicate, process, and ship
out the order. You would never have to touch the product. That is
dropshipping.
You make much more money this way than an affiliate program usually,
but you do a little more work. You take the orders and process them
yourself. Then, product fulfillment is handled by the owning
company.
3. Reprint Rights
This takes the product selling to another level. With reprint
rights, you actually take over the whole process yourself and don't
have to pay anyone else. All of the money is yours to keep. When an
order comes in for $297.00, you process, duplicate, and ship the
order yourself. Then, you keep all of the money that is left over.
If it was an electronic manual you owned the rights to, then you
would take the order and have digital delivery. All of the
moneyleftover after processing fees would be yours to keep.
So the advantage to reprint rights is that you get to keep all the
money. The disadvantage is that reprint rights usually have a
premium price on them. For most products, you will pay 10 to 25
times the actual retail price of the product for reprint rights.
Digital products usually are on the high end of the scale at 20 to
25 times the price, while audios and videos usually are closer to
the 10 times value level.
So, a $29.95 ebook will usually cost $600 to $700 for rights while a
$29.95 video will usually cost $300 to $400. The reason for the
higher prices on the ebooks in most cases comes from the inherent
dangers of reprint rights to the creator of the information.
As a product developer, it is much more dangerous to sell reprint
rights to an ebook than to a video. Since a video is a hard product,
there are costs associated to selling it (low costs of around $3.50
per video plus shipping). Since an ebook has no cost in delivery, a
customer could buy reprint rights to it and give it away for free or
almost nothing.
For example: Just recently I looked at the online detective ebook
(which is actually more of resale rights not reprint rights) and saw
a price of $4.95, $9.95, $19.95, and $29.95 after looking at several
different sites. All of them were offering the same product, but at
vastly different prices.
Someone could buy reprint rights to your $97.00 ebook and sell it
for $9.95 from their site...destroying your business in the process
(if you rely on only one product). If it is a hard product such as
an audio set or video set, they will be much more unlikely to do
this type of thing since there are costs involved in distribution.
For the reprint rights buyer, owning a successful product can be an
awesome start to your business or an expansion to your business if
you can afford the extra investment required.
4. Master Rights
This is the ultimate type of rights to purchase for your product.
When you buy master rights, you also receive the ability to sell
reprint rights to other businesses.
This added benefit comes at a premium price. You will usually have
to pay 3 to 5 times as much for the master rights as you do for
reprint rights.
For example: Let's take a $297 video set for an example. Resale
rights may be $500 (which gives you the ability to have it drop
shipped for $125). Reprint Rights may be $2995 so that you could
sell the product itself and keep all of the money. Master Rights
would probably cost $8,000 to $15,000 so you could sell reprint
rights at $2,995 each in addition to selling it at retail.
Now, I hope that the above numbers didn't get you confused. They are
just meant to be an example. All deals will be different based on
the product and the creator's goals with it.
In most cases, you really shouldn't even be thinking of paying the
premium price for master rights unless you know you have reprint
rights buyers already lined up...or it will take quite a bit of cash
flow from you for a while.
SECTION TWO: When Should You Buy Reprint Rights?
1. Buy Reprint Rights To Get Started Online.
I bought a low cost reprint rights license to get started online for
the first couple of years. They gave me a good foundation to start
with. The product was already done and I received sales materials to
go with it (I couldn't write an ad worth a flip in the beginning).
You may find the same method will work for you? There is one caution
to keep in mind. Don't buy something just because someone says it is
the best opportunity ever.
Avoid this type of hype when buying reprint rights. As a beginner,
try to find a product you would want to buy yourself. Purchase the
retail version first, try it out, then purchase the rights if you
are still interested.
Owning a product that you bought rights to can give you a good
start. You don't have to worry about writing ads at first or
producing a product. You can jump in, get your feet wet, and start
learning about online marketing. This first product probably won't
make you rich, but it will give you experience for all of your later
projects!
2. Buy Reprint Rights For Back End Products
You have your first product out. It is making money, but what about
the backend? All direct marketers know the real profits of business
do not come from your first sale to a customer. They come from
continually selling over and over to the same customers.
You can expand your product line by purchasing reprint rights to
high quality products. This will help you generate additional cash
flow from your prospects and customers.
In many cases, this is the better direction to take than selling a
product you bought rights to up front. One of the reasons that an
author sells rights to his product is to generate leads for other
products they sell. Very rarely, if ever, are you allowed to remove
the contact info of a product you bought rights to. So, selling
their product does generate other backend sales for them.
For this reason, most experienced marketers will purchase and use
reprint rights for backend products.
DON'T BUY REPRINT RIGHTS IF:
1. You Don't Have a Market.
Don't buy a $1,000 reprint rights package if you don't already have
a plan in mind to sell it. Just because it is the most awesome book
on the planet doesn't mean it will sell.
The best situation is when you already have a market lined up to buy
from you, such as your own newsletter list or daily traffic at your
site.
You should examine the product by buying a retail version. Then,
figure a way to sell it. Then, buy the reprint rights. Finally, go
for master rights once the reprint rights have started earning you a
profit.
2. It is Outdated.
A lot of people don't offer reprint rights on a product until it is
already outdated. Instead of updating it, they sell off reprint
rights to unsuspecting buyers.
I made this mistake myself in one case and bought rights to a tape
set which was badly outdated. It cost me $2,000, but it wasn't worth
even a couple of hundred.
I was speaking to another experienced Internet marketer recently and
he told me that he bought an $8,000 master rights package to a set
of CDs when he first got started online. Little did he know at the
time, the whole set was years old and most of the information on
them were wrong now. It was a quick way to lose thousands of
dollars!
3. The market is saturated.
This danger will only usually occur for one of two reasons...either
rights are selling way too cheap and everyone is buying them OR
someone buys rights to an electronic book and prices it at almost
nothing.
This again comes back to the point that sometimes a bargain
(especially dealing with reprint rights) isn't a bargain at all. The
cheaper the rights are, the more likely the product will be offered
everywhere and at too low a price for anyone to compete.
How to Find Resale, Reprint, and Master Licenses
I have made references and have seen others make references that the
easiest way to find reprint rights to products would be to do a
search for "reprint rights" on the search engines. Well,
guess what, I have never bought a reprint rights package this way.
Most of the sites that come up when searching for reprint rights
aren't selling the types of products you should be buying rights to.
If you could find them simply by using the search engines, then
everyone else could do the same.
You need to put a little more effort into it.
The mistakes I have made in buying reprint rights came from using
the search engines to find them...every time. I was too desperate
looking for rights and a hyped sales letter did the trick to finish
me off.
Over half of my good reprint rights products were purchased because
I was a customer already of the person I was buying from. I knew
they had good products which I could sell.
Several of my products were purchased by directly soliciting the
owner of them. They wouldn't have any posting on their site about
rights, but I would send them an email and offer them cash of $1,200
or so (whatever I thought I was willing to pay). They would usually
think about it and email me back a counter offer.
Some would outright reject the offer. So, what. It didn't hurt me
any. For those who countered, I either paid the counter price or
went into more haggling on price.
I have also heard of other methods. For example, I have heard Ted
Nicholas say that he has called up publishers of older books and
asked for license rights to them. Sometimes if it is a book they are
done with, they would sell rights for as low as $300. It all depends
on what they want.
If you make an offer, all you can receive is a yes or no answer. So,
go ahead and make an offer to people. If your offer is high enough,
the greed factor might step in and bring you the rights even if they
never thought about it before.
Also mention to them that you will leave all information on the
product exactly as it is, so they will receive more leads for other
products they sell. Their name will be published all over the
Internet by you. So, they may receive additional advantages of
selling to you besides the up-front cash.
Terry Dean, a 5 year veteran of Internet marketing, will Take You By
The Hand and Show You Exact Results of All the Internet Marketing
Techniques he tests and Uses Every Single Month" Click here to
Find Out More: http://www.netbreakthroughs.com
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