There are many ways for the holder of resale rights to make money. One way is to simply sell the work to interested buyers. Master resale rights are particulaly useful for direct sales, because your product will attract not only buyers who want the product for personal use, but also buyers who want to resell the product. If you offer private label rights, your product will even attract buyers who are not completely satisfied with the work, because private label rights allow the buyer to improve the work or even divide it into several works. You could also start an affiliate program in which buyers are paid a commission to sell the work for you.

Another way to make money from resale rights is to distribute a written work for free and insert links to your website on every page. This approach works best if your website sells products related to the topic covered by the work for which you hold resale rights. The same general approach can be used for list building. One way to build lists is to obtain master resale rights to an e-book on a popular and specialized topic. You could then allow the e-book to be downloaded from your website free of charge as long as the user supplies his e-mail address and agrees to receive periodic newsletters.

Another money-making option would be to buy private label rights for several related e-books, organize them into an online e-course, and modify them for internal consistency. You could either charge for the course, include links in the e-books to a web page selling related products, or both. Moreover, you could either sell the related products yourself, or simply sign up as an affiliate with a vendor and include your affiliate link in the e-books.

Regardless of how you plan to make money from resale rights, profit margins can be enormous. Since you don’t have to create the work from scratch, and since you need not pay royalties, your only major costs will be marketing expenses. If you already own a popular website from which the work can be downloaded, your marginal marketing expenses could be negligible. There are probably hundreds of ways in which a creative marketer can directly and indirectly profit from resale rights.

Resell Rights - Publishing Bonanza of the 21st Century

Resale rights are creations of the information age that are commonly bundled with the purchase of digital works such as e-books and software. Obtaining resale rights will allow you to copy and sell a work that you did not create without having to pay royalties to the copyright holder. This arrangement can drastically reduce your business expenses and fatten your profit margins.

The terms “resale rights” and “resell rights” refer to a class of copyright licenses that have arisen in response to the ease with which digital products can be copied. Copyright law contains a loophole called the “first sale” exception, which allows the owner of a copy of a copyrighted work to sell it second-hand without having to pay royalties to the copyright holder. This exception worked well in the pre-digital era, but began causing problems when e-books and other forms of digital media came along. If a vendor sells you a paperback book, he is deprived of the use of it because he handed it over to you when you paid for it. But in order to sell you an e-book, he simply copies it and keeps the orignal. For this reason, the first sale exception does not apply to the distribution of digital media. Resell rights are rights retained by the buyer of a copyrighted work in order to sell or give away the work to an unlimited number of buyers without infringing the copyright. There are five major forms of resale rights.

Basic Resale Rights

Basic resale rights, also known as standard resale rights, permit the buyer of a copyrighted work to copy the work and sell it to a second buyer. There are two major “catches” to this form of copyright license. First, the second buyer is entitled to personal use only and may not sell or give it to someone else. In fact, the seller may require the original buyer to affix the words “Personal Use Only” to any copy that he sells. Second, the original buyer is normally required to sell the product at the price determined by the seller. Some master resale licensing agreements require only that the original buyer refrain from selling the product any cheaper than the price set by the seller.

Master Resale Rights

A buyer who obtains master resale rights may sell the work to a second buyer without the “Personal Use Only” restriction. Some licenses require the second buyer to affix “Personal Use Only” to the work if he sells it to a third buyer, while others allow the product to be indefinitely transferred to buyer after buyer. This type of license is ideal for network marketing arrangements, affiliate programs, and other multi-layer distribution systems.

Private Label Rights

Private label rights are a favorite among buyers, because they allow the buyer to modify the product in any way he pleases. A buyer with private label rights can even take the seller’s name off the product and replace it with his own name. In the case of e-books, private label rights essentially turn the seller into a ghost writer for the buyer, except that the seller retains the use of the original work. Keep in mind, however, that private label rights are more expensive than other forms of resale rights. If one of your motivations for purchasing resale rights is to save the time and expense of creating a digital work yourself, then there is no point in paying more for the right to modify a work that you don’t intend to modify.

Names such as “master resale rights” and “private label rights” are only general descriptions. Buyers and sellers are free to create new forms through the terms of their copyright licensing agreement. For example, a copyright licensing agreement entitled “License of Private Label Rights” might allow the buyer to modify the work but forbid him from transferring these rights to a second buyer. Such a license would be a hybrid between private label rights and basic resale rights. Master resale rights can also be combind with private label rights to allow the buyer to modify the work and sell private label rights to a second buyer. Consequently, if you are offered “Private Label Rights” or some other resale arrangement, you should closely examine the actual terms of the licensing agreement.

Giveaway Resale Rights

Giveaway resale rights work the way their name implies – the buyer may distribute the product for free, either with or without the “personal use only” retriction. This type of arrangement is often preferred if the seller’s purpose in marketing the work is to promote another product – for example, an e-book may contain a link to the seller’s website.

Branding Resale Rights

Branding resale rights allow the buyer to alter the product by affixing his logo, trademark, website links, and other advertising and promotional material onto the work. Most branding agreements do not allow the buyer to remove the seller’s own branding.