Affiliate Marketing 101 says that producing regular, original content for your website gives a big boost to ranking, traffic, and conversions. But making time to write articles is hard to do.

But, don’t despair. You can buy Private Label Rights articles (material for which you own all editorial rights to the content), and tailor them to your own needs, giving them your distinctive twist.

You are in control, just as if you had authored the article. But, remember that others can also buy and publish the same article, as they are not copyright free. Often, brokers who sell PLR articles will sell to thousands of purchasers.  This is why services like Stephan Everaet’s Niche Content Packages (http://www.niche-content-packages.com), which limits the number of subscribers for any given pack of articles, is a superior choice.

But whether you’ve bought an article that thousands of others have bought, or one that is offered in limited supply, you’ll want to tailor it. Re-writing it allows you to distinguish that article from all those others, which can help your search engine rank.

Engines factor do factor in whether your content is exactly the same as that found on other sites. More importantly, re-writing also helps give the article that particular spin that best serves your specific niche, merchant, and product.

Fortunately, re-writing articles is a lot easier than writing them from scratch. Even when you do substantial tailoring, the Private Label article — if well written — will help give you ideas and specific facts that stimulate your own writing.

And, with a Private Label article, since you own the content, there’s never any suggestion of plagiarism. (Plagiarism isn’t just unethical and illegal. It could hurt your search engine placement to build a site that consists of nothing but copy from other sites.)

Here are some suggestions that will help even the novice content creator tailor a Private Label article to his or her own needs:

Check grammar, spelling, and length.
Just because you paid money for it, doesn’t mean it was professionally written. Depending on the price and your circumstances, you may want to ask for a refund, or spend the time to clean it up.

Never publish amateurish material. Your sales will suffer. Also, Private Label articles are written with a very general audience in mind, and often targeted at a specific length. That may or may not suit your format and needs. Adjust as needed.

Adapt to your demographic.
Take into account age, gender, educational and income level, cultural differences, and anything else you know about your readers. If your site is targeted toward a less sophisticated audience, you can make the language simpler. If your audience prefers language that’s a little more complex or advanced, you can adapt it to that.

Adapt to your specific product.
Don’t be generic, but rather focus on a current, specific good or service.

Stamp it with your own personality.
No matter how many people buy the same article, they can never be you. No two authors write exactly alike. That individual slant can start with an excellent template and morph into something that is unique – and uniquely your own. And, in the Internet age, where the audience increasingly has access to the same information instantaneously, there’s nothing better than “unique.” Differentiate your article from your competitors.

Combine it with other articles.
Since you have complete editorial control over PLR content, you can alter the length, style, and focus simply by combining multiple articles in creative ways. You could take two wine articles and put them together to meet your need for greater length. Or combine a wine and a beer article into one, in order to attract a wider audience. You could take a game article and a movie DVD or MP3 music article and combine them to create some product synergy. Hollywood marketers do this all the time.

The possibilities may be unlimited, but since your time isn’t, keep in mind the reason you bought the article in the first place: to save you time and effort and allow you to focus on your area of expertise. After all, you have more things to do than write.

Let Private Label content save you that effort, so you can devote your time to other areas, such as making money from your site.