Constant Content

Just thought I would see what the opinion was on unique rights.

I am not sure whether to include unique when pricing an article. I can see the reason for usage, it offers a customer the chance to grab the article at a reduced rate and still leaves the article live, so we authors have the chance to earn money from further downloads. Full rights I get, the customer basically owns the article and can do as they wish. Therefore, we charge a higher premium as they are taking the article and we do not get future sales. I do not see the point of unique rights, the price is usually lower than full but the end result for authors is the same...the article is sold and gone. I understand the difference for customers but what is in it for authors? Why not just lower the full rights pricing?

I have sold articles from all pricings, I recently sold two unique rights (I do use them, but then I am new and learning) and it occured to me that I received a lower price and yet my article is still gone and I will not earn any money from it.

Does anyone else have an opinion on unique rights? I am considering not offering the option anymore.

The only advantage I see is the byline. If you're trying to build a reputation and want to be able to show prospective customers where your work has appeared online, the unique license could do the trick. Some sites are okay with bylined articles but want exclusive rights instead of usage. I think unique is fairly limited though. After all, if the customer wants to add a hyperlink, change a word so it's more SEO friendly, or anything else, they can't do so.

In my experience, few customers have purchased unique rights. Could be because I tend to price that license close enough to full rights that they just opt for the full rights license, but I think that many customers really do want to drop the byline and have the ability to edit the content to suit. I've also had many customoers opt for full rights and not change a thing, including the byline.

I have only sold one unique rights article--a public request that asked for unique rights only (weird). I never offer unique rights and usually price usage the same as or very close to full. Since I don't care about building an online portfolio, I would rather have the articles sold for full rights at a higher price and out of my hair. If an article sells for usage, it often sells only once or maybe twice and then Ihave to worry about whether it's displayed correctly or if someone is posting it somewhere without my byline, etc. Once an article sells for full rights, my obligation to police its use is gone. I suppose that's true for unique rights, but why make less money for little added benefit?

Since I never use a byline on my articles, I have no reason to offer unique rights, and the bottom line is the same whether I sell unique or full rights -- the article's sold and can't be sold again. So I list the same price for unique and full rights. I do price usage rights lower, though, just so buyers can opt for something less expensive if they don't mind the article not being exclusive. The problem I discovered, unfortunately, is most people seem to want full rights, so once an article sells for usage, that's likely to be the only time it sells. I know people have sometimes sold the same article more than once, but I gather that doesn't happen very often.

I've seen a number of articles in the database sold more than once for usage, but the best thing about Usage is to take anything you sell for Usage and use it yourself on a site that allows duplicate content. Go get it earning for you while you also continue to offer it for another usage sale.

Unique, I see it as a bit of a discount. They have to use my byline... but who cares. Usually I price Unique same as Full or very close.

Thnaks for the posts, very useful and cleared things up for me quite a bit.

But I do have one question that I hesitate to ask as It proves my lack of knowledge in the author field...oh well here goes...

Byline? I have some idea but not 100% and would it just be a line or two added to the actual article body?

Oh dear...newbies eh!

The byline is just "by Firstname Lastname" --not to be confused with a bio (a brief description of you and your work). At CC we don't include bios in articles although occasionally a buyer may contact you to ask for one. Aren't you glad you asked

I always put my byline immediately after the title. For example:

The Best Way to Extract Buttermilk from Clownfish
by Antonia Anderson

I see, a byline is the authors name! One last annoying question on this subject...would you add your name after the title, when filling in the title section in "submit article", or add an actual title to the article body itself? Hopefully, I am ending my run of irritating little newboy questions, think I am almost up to speed I never thought including a byline, how stupid of me. Thanks Antonia, I will be adding bylines from now on!

Nope, the title field in the Submit Article page is just for the title. Add your byline to the top of your actual article, like this:

Article Title
By Your Name

The article body, blah blah blah.


This way, when your articles sell for usage, your byline is in the file the customer receives - they have no excuse for not using it on their websites.

The newspaper industry uses the term byline too. It is the line that tells you who is guilty of any errors in the article. I don't include a byline in the submission form since the site already ads it for us. Every document I upload starts like this through:

Why Constant Content Rocks
By Jade Dragon

980 Words

The first reason....

With just one exception, the only customer who bought unique rights to my work was a print mag editor. Since it was based in China, I have no way of checking if the rights were adhered to. After the CC blog once suggested that usage rights were ideal for print publications, he reverted to buying those. I put my prices up then. The customer doesn't seem to come here any more.

Thanks for clearing things up. I never used a byline (yes, I can use the term now that I know what it means!) but will now. For some uknown reason I thought you could not include a title in the actual article, so I just started with the intro. Don't ask me how I got this wrong!