You may have seen a TikTok or YouTube video about a new digital marketing trend called “master reseller rights.” These social media posts present the concept as a quick way to make thousands of dollars in income. Many of these claims sound too good to be true.
In this article, we’ll go over what master reseller rights are, the (limited) pros and (and significant) cons, why they’re so popular, and what to consider before making this your online business strategy.
Key Takeaways
Here are a few basics to keep in mind as you explore master reseller rights products.
- Master reseller rights (MRR) give you the opportunity to buy a digital product and sell it multiple times. The rights to sell the product are conveyed to your customers as well.
- Many MRR products allow you to customize them or put your branding on them to make them look like your own original work.
- While this may seem like a quick way to make passive income online, this business structure is prone to oversaturation and requires you to actively market the product to attract customers.
What Are Master Reseller Rights?
You’ve probably seen people selling e-books and online courses on social media. The appeal of selling these types of products is that you can create something once and sell it over and over again without doing more work.
But what if you didn’t even have to create the product first? What if you could take something someone else wrote or made and sell it? And what if you could go one step further and allow your customers to sell the same eBook or course to others? This is the basic gist of master reseller rights.
Master reseller rights are attached to a product, usually a digital one, granting the owner not only the legal permission to duplicate the product but also the right to sell additional copies to others. What’s more, these rights often get passed along to your customers, allowing them to resell the product to others as well. Some examples of products often sold with MRR include e-books, digital courses, software, templates and more.
There are many marketing and legal terms surrounding MRR, and there is some overlap between MRR and other passive income strategies, such as affiliate marketing. So before we dive in any deeper, let’s define a few of those terms to understand exactly what MRR is and what it’s not.
MRR Terms to Know
- Private label rights (PLR): This means you can edit or customize the product, including putting your own brand on it to sell it as your own.
- White labeling: This allows you to purchase the product and put your own brand on it, but unlike with PLR, you cannot alter the product itself.
- Reseller rights: This is the legal right to resell a product you have purchased. Resell rights do not give your customers permission to resell the product; they are non-transferable.
- Affiliate marketing: This is when you sell a product that is owned and distributed by someone else in exchange for a portion of the proceeds (a commission). This is often accomplished via affiliate links.
To illustrate the difference between these very similar concepts, let’s look at an example of a website template.
If the template had private label rights, you could change the settings, color scheme or look of the product before reselling it.
If it came with white label rights, you couldn’t alter the template, but you could sell it under your own brand.
A template with reseller rights would allow you to resell it, but the customer couldn’t turn around and sell it again.
In contrast, master reseller rights are conveyed to your customers so they can resell the product.
If you were an affiliate selling this template, you’d receive a commission each time a customer bought the product through your affiliate link, but you’d have no say in what the product contained, how it was marketed or how much it was sold for.
Why Are Master Reseller Rights Products Exploding In Popularity?
You can see the appeal of selling products with master reseller rights. It saves you the trouble of creating an original product to sell, and the investment is onWith a few sales pages and a new social media account, you can start up a new business very quickly, easily and cheaply.
The potential for passive income is another major draw. Once you set up your sales funnel and marketing strategies, earning money involves minimal ongoing effort.
Examples of Master Reseller Rights Programs
While several websites sell all kinds of digital products with master reseller rights, most of the attention this concept gets is from the sale of online courses.
Some of the more popular ones include:
- The Roadmap to Riches 3.0 (sometimes referred to simply as Roadmap 3.0)
- Digital Wealth Academy (DWA)
- The Ultimate Branding Course (UBC)
- Legacy Builder Growth
- Simply Digital
The subject matter for most of these courses is how to build an online business, including selling the MRR product you just bought. They cover things like marketing, social media, systems to put in place, the tech stack and more.
Sometimes people refer to an individual course (usually Roadmap to Riches) as MRR, much like referring to all bandages as Band-Aids, even though there are different brands of this product.
The value of buying an MRR product just to resell it is debatable. You’re creating a business selling people on the idea of creating a business, who then sell other people on the idea of creating a business. (This is probably why MRR gets confused with MLMs and pyramid schemes.)
However, the content of these courses is sometimes relevant and valuable. If you plan to use the content of the course to augment a pre-existing or future business where you sell your own products, they could be a good investment (with the added bonus of being able to recoup it quickly by selling the course to someone else).
Risks vs. Rewards
Like any business, selling MRR products involves the potential for risk and rewards. Here are some of the main ones to explore before deciding whether this business model is right for you.
Pros:
- You don’t have to go through the time, energy and research to produce your own digital product. This is a huge advantage as this initial investment is what holds many would-be creators back.
- You can hit the ground running on a new business quickly. Creating your own products could take weeks or months. With an MRR product, you can get started much quicker.
- Low initial investment. MRR products vary in price from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars. But no matter how much you spend, you only need to sell one copy of the original to make your money back.
- Some MRR products allow you to white-label or customize them. You can alter the product to reflect your brand, add new content or speak to your specific audience.
- You keep 100% of the profits. Unlike affiliate marketing or other commission sales models, you don’t have to share your revenue with anyone else.
Cons:
- The products lend themselves to market saturation. If someone sold you the master reseller rights to a digital product, you can bet they’ve sold it to someone else too (who is also reselling it). This can lead to a market that’s inundated with your same product very quickly.
- Possible legal problems. Tread very carefully when reading the licensing agreement. There are many nuances to MRR (as well as private label, white label and reseller rights), and misunderstanding what you’re legally allowed to do can be a costly business mistake.
- You need an audience to sell to. If you don’t already have an online presence or other audience of people who know, like and trust you, it will be much harder to peddle your wares.
- Products may or may not include updated versions. Many MRR products include lifetime update access, but some do not. When information becomes dated or obsolete, your product will be harder to sell.
Are MRRs a Legit Way to Make Money?
Possibly. People who have bought MRR products note that while it’s possible to get your money back from your initial purchase, to be successful you have to have an existing audience to sell to (see this Reddit thread for more). This involves much more time, money and effort than TikTok makes it out to be.
They also note that because you’re only making money selling the course, it’s hard to build a business as you keep repeating the same tired messages on social media. Many of the income claims also appear to be exaggerated. In a somewhat ironic way, many sellers don’t use the contents of these digital marketing courses and resources to create their own products; rather, they buy the course to make a business selling nothing but the course.
You may be able to make some money with MRR, but without significant inputs to infrastructure (hosting a Stan Store or website) and marketing (emails, social media content and funnels), your business won’t go anywhere.
Is MRR a complete scam? No. But it’s not a promising business model either, just like a cul-de-sac is technically a road, but it doesn’t lead anywhere.
What’s the Difference Between Master Reseller Rights and MLMs?
Many people equate MRR products with those sold by multi-level marketing (MLM) companies. There are a few similarities between these two structures. In both instances, there is a creator on the top, selling the same products to many other people as well as recruiting others to sell the product. Both MLMs and MRR sellers run the risk of saturating a market with similar products.
Another shared attribute of MLMs and MRR is the tone of the advertising. If you follow some of the social media accounts that sell these products, you’ll hear some of the same things touted: “Be in control of your own income.” “Break free from your 9-5 job.” “No experience necessary.” “Pay off your debt and be financially free.” Some influencers also share income reports, though without any way to verify whether they’re truthful or not.
However, that’s where the similarities end. Unlike MLMs, most MRRs don’t give the original creator any kickbacks or a cut of future profits. In other words, there is no benefit to having a downline with an MRR. Also, while most MLMs call their sellers “independent business owners” or “consultants,” they protect the parent company’s branding fiercely. This gives MLM sellers little to no ability to customize the products they sell or even the marketing materials they use.
Some MRR products come with templates or sales pages to get sellers started reselling the product, but sellers are ultimately responsible for hosting websites, customizing funnels and emails, and so on to attract customers.
Summary and Final Thoughts
Master reseller rights offer a tempting opportunity for entrepreneurs looking to start a digital business without creating products from scratch.
And while the low initial investment and potential for passive income sound appealing, there are real risks associated with MRR.
Market saturation, legal complications and the need for an established audience are just a few of the hurdles sellers need to overcome to be successful.
Remember, success in business requires more than just a tantalizing product. It requires the infrastructure and inputs to keep customers coming in and buying, which is made more difficult when you sell products with MRR because you’re creating your own competition.
