Do You Sell Public Domain Products?

One of the things that folks find most challenging about using public domain information is knowing how to create products which will result in profitable products. Do you sell public domain products? Did you know that their are some simple steps to find out what will make the most profitable products?

Typically the most common public domain content is found in a book or magazine. It could be drawings, photos, articles, stories, poems or a ton of other information just waiting to be re-published by you.

This content can be:

• - Repackaged and resold
• - Used as promotional website content
• - Reformatted and resold
• - Used as a bonus or upsell product
• - Used as a marketing tool

The key of course is how to decide what to do with the marvelous public domain content you’ve found.

Here are three steps to turn public domain content into a profitable product:

Step One: Do a little keyword research. There are several keyword research tools available online including

Google -

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

and

WordTracker -

http://www.wordtracker.com/

You can use these tools to find three very important statistics:

• How many people are searching for information on your topic
• How much competition there is for your topic
• How much demand there is for your topic

For example, if you’ve found a public domain collection of fairytales you can see that the keyword “Fairytales” and “Fairy tale” are very popular however other keywords like “Classic fairytales” are completely ignored.

There are people searching for the keywords but not many websites devoted to them. Right off this may tell you that simply repackaging your fairytale content may be a profitable product.

However you’re not ready to assume that just yet.

Step Two: Check out your competition. Visit auction sites like eBay and see what is being offered there. Head to ClickBank and see if anyone is offering fairytale books. Get on your favorite search engine and start finding your potential competitiors.

Don’t forget to look at the PPC ads too. Note that all of this research will not only help you create a great product, it’ll help you begin for formulate marketing ideas too. Take notes on what your competition is doing.

Step Three: Meet your audience. Visit forums and chat rooms dedicated to your subject.

• You can join and simply ask people if they’d be interested in your product.
• You can also eavesdrop and read forum posts to see what your audience has to say.
• Lastly, you can create a flycatcher page and a corresponding pay per click campaign to test and measure interest. Place a survey, quiz, or questionnaire on your splash page and track the number of visitors.

Taking these three steps will help to ensure your public domain products have not just the right marketing keywords and strategies but also a foundation to measure the success, and profitability of your public domain products.

FACT: Of The Millions Of Books Published In The U.S. Between 1923 And 1963, the U.S. Copyright Office Estimates That Only Roughly 15% Had Their Copyright Protection Renewed. This Means That Around 85% Of All Books Published In The U.S. Between 1923 And 1963 Are Up For Grabs! That’s Billions of Pages of Material That You Can Use To Create Your Own Outrageously Profitable Multi-Media Information Publishing Empire…Faster Than You Ever Dreamed Possible…. Click Here To Claim Your FREE 54 Page Special Report…

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How Do You Repackage Public Domain Information For Sale?

** Got this question today from my friend Nick and I thought I would share it here for the benefit of all**

Hi Nick,

Thanks for the great question!

The fact is that there are literally millions of ways to repackage public
domain content for sale. To keep this brief I’ll share some of the most common
ways that I and many other people do it…

1. use public domain content to create ebooks
2. use public domain content to create printed books and manuals
3. convert a public domain book into an audio program
4. take a bunch of public domain books, magazines, or images on a related topic and sell them on a cd
5. sell public domain movies and cartoons on dvd
6. use public domain images to create new framed artwork and prints
7. use public domain content as blog post content
8. use public domain content to create your own line of private label rights products

I could go on and on, the only real limits are your imagination, budget, and
time.

The product you ultimately create will depend on what niche market you are
creating a product for. I’ve seen people come up with all kinds of creative
ways of using pd material in their product creations - creativity and
ingenuity are the key to successful product creations using public domain
material!

Thanks Nick!

FACT: Of The Millions Of Books Published In The U.S. Between 1923 And 1963, the U.S. Copyright Office Estimates That Only Roughly 15% Had Their Copyright Protection Renewed. This Means That Around 85% Of All Books Published In The U.S. Between 1923 And 1963 Are Up For Grabs! That’s Billions of Pages of Material That You Can Use To Create Your Own Outrageously Profitable Multi-Media Information Publishing Empire…Faster Than You Ever Dreamed Possible…. Click Here To Claim Your FREE 54 Page Special Report…

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Why Would Anything Old Enough To Be In The Public Domain Be Worth Anything Today?

Many people have the misconception that anything old enough to be in the Public Domain, (i.e. old enough to have had its copyright protection expire) isn’t worth anything today. There is no way anyone would be interested in something that some joker wrote 100 or even 50 years ago.

I love this one because it’s just not true and people that think this way have blinders on that keep them from seeing the enormous potential of Public Domain material.

These people think that that a work written before 1923 won’t have any relevance today and you may feel the same way, however here is the truth of the matter.

Ever since the beginning of time, mankind has been dealing with essentially the same issues no matter how far we think we have advanced.

It makes no difference whether you were born in 1874 or 1974 you still essentially have the same problems to solve and challenges to overcome. For instance, you may want to:

1. Learn ways to raise your kids better
2. Learn how to improve your relationship with your spouse or other loved ones
3. Learn how to become more successful in your business dealings
4. Learn how to make more money or how to handle your finances better
5. Learn how to save time by doing certain things more efficiently
6. Learn how to do something quicker and easier than you can do it now, thereby avoiding effort.

You get the idea. We’re not that different really than we were 100 years ago. There are still today millions of people on the internet searching for ideas that will help them improve their marriages, or help them advance in their careers, or help them achieve a better quality of life physically, spiritually, and emotionally.

Sure, fads come and go. Nobody cares about hoola-hoops anymore, but there are lots of timeless “evergreen” subjects that people pursued way back that are still pursued today.

There weren’t such things as computers back in 1935 (at least not like we have today) so you won’t find any books written about them from back then but there are plenty of ideas that you will be find that can be very easily carried over into the digital age. What are chat rooms and blogs if nothing more than just more modern mediums for human communication?

Much of what lies on the realm of Public Domain is still relevant today.

For the purposes of information publishing and this discussion, it must be understood that I am speaking exclusively of non-fiction works not fiction. Public Domain fiction gas a place too but we’ll leave that for another discussion.

Any type of “how-to” book could potentially be a goldmine if positioned properly.

How-to type books are where the money is at – these sell really, really well as long as there is a demand in the marketplace for the subject of the book. How-to books are the easiest type of books to repackage as information products.

By how-to books I am referring to any book or course that takes a specific topic and breaks it down into step-by-step detail, with or without lots of pictures, and shows the reader how to do something they are interested in.

Here are some examples of how-to type books:

1. How to improve your fly-fishing skills
2. How to grow a vegetable garden
3. How to play the guitar
4. How to improve your golf swing
5. How to boost your self-confidence
6. How to make money in the stock market
7. How to train your dog

The more specific the topic, better. For instance:

1. How to take 3 strokes off of your golf game by improving your swing
2. How to get your dog to stop barking all night long
3. How to grow 10 pound tomatoes in your own backyard

People love step-by-step instruction showing them how to do something they are interested in. In my opinion, being able to provide this how-to type of information is the key to success in information publishing.

Of course before you try to start marketing a book on “How to grow 10 pound tomatoes in your own backyard” you have to make sure that there is a hungry market for that topic.

If nobody is looking for that particular info then it is a waste of time to develop a product about it. You have to be able to determine the demand in the marketplace for a particular subject before you send a lot of time developing a product.

There are hundreds of thousands of great how-to books in the Public Domain that can be republished for profit right now and sold to an almost unlimited number of niche markets.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that just because a book was written 100 years ago means that it is worthless today.

In fact, I have found quite the contrary. A book written 100 years ago will surely contain “long lost secrets”, and if you market it this way, people will eat it up.

Also, I have found that people had a tendency to write better back then. Today, we are all so busy, distracted with this and that, our minds being dulled by the television screen.

People placed much more importance on communication skills in past decades, the farther back you go, the more you will find this to be true. They wrote better, they are more skilled at expressing ideas and teaching. You can use this to your advantage over and over again.

I once heard someone say, “What’s old is new, and what’s new is old.” Think about that for a little while. There is truly nothing new under the sun.

People have been dealing with the same basic issues for centuries, writers have been writing about how to deal with these same basic issues for centuries. You have a large body of work that you can pull from to help people solve their problems.

You can always update it, freshen it up a bit, and put your own spin on it - but either way most of the heavy lifting has already been done for you – take advantage of that!

FACT: Of The Millions Of Books Published In The U.S. Between 1923 And 1963, the U.S. Copyright Office Estimates That Only Roughly 15% Had Their Copyright Protection Renewed. This Means That Around 85% Of All Books Published In The U.S. Between 1923 And 1963 Are Up For Grabs! That’s Billions of Pages of Material That You Can Use To Create Your Own Outrageously Profitable Multi-Media Information Publishing Empire…Faster Than You Ever Dreamed Possible…. Click Here To Claim Your FREE 54 Page Special Report…

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What The Heck Is Public Domain Anyway And Why Should It Matter To Me?

So what the heck is the Public Domain anyway? You probably already have a very broad understanding of what the Public Domain is or you wouldn’t be here.

According to Webster’s Dictionary Public Domain refers to “the realm embracing property rights that belong to the community at large, are unprotected by copyright or patent, and are subject to appropriation by anyone”

Here’s my definition as it relates to us as information publishers and online entrepreneurs:

“The Public Domain is a huge body of works in the form of written books, courses, articles, images, films, and all sorts of other intellectual properties that have for one reason or another lapsed from copyright protection meaning that we as individuals can take them and use them in anyway we see fit both legally and morally for the purposes of repackaging the works and selling them for profit.”

You see, it’s really simple. The term Public Domain is just a term used to describe the millions of works that have been produced over the last century or so that no longer have copyright protection.

When a work is no longer protected because the copyright has expired anyone can take that work and do whatever they want with it legally.

Any intellectual property published in just about every country is protected by copyright laws so no one else can take that same work and publish it as their own product. The owner of the copyright for the work is automatically granted certain exclusive private rights to the work and the owner alone has control of how the work is presented and distributed.

Anyone caught in violation of copyright laws is said to have committed copyright infringement and will most likely end up in court very quickly. Um, trust me on this - I know!

Copyrighted works are protected for a certain number of years and then eventually the copyrights expire and the work falls into the Public Domain. Then the work is no longer protected by copyright and anyone can do anything they want with the work without having to worry about getting sued or landing themselves into legal trouble.

Copyright Laws can be very complicated as they have had a very dynamic history in both the U.S. and abroad. The copyright laws that are applied to a work can change radically depending on what year the work was first published and what country the work was published in.

Copyright laws differ all over the world so a thorough understanding of how copyright works where you live is essential (and the country where you plan on selling material based on a Public Domain work).

There are an estimated 85 MILLION books in the Public Domain. This copyright-free content can be used in any manner you see fit - content for websites, blog, web 2.0 properties, ebooks, print books - literally anything you can imagine!

There’s a lot more than just books waiting for you in the Public Domain as well - magazines, newspapers, comic books, movies, music, paintings, photographs - all kinds of things.

And the best part of it is that it’s all sitting there waiting for you to take your share. It’s your legal right as a citizen of the world to reuse the stuff in your own product creations. That’s what the Public Domain was intended to be - a base of intellectual material that other’s could reuse and expand upon thus adding to the infinite pool of human knowledge and in doing so, ensuring that this material gets shared and passed on to future generations.

So what are you waiting for? The Public Domain belongs to you every bit as much as it belongs to me. Start dipping into the vast ocean of Public Domain material that’s available to you today and you’ll never be short on quality content for your info products again - guaranteed!

FACT: Of The Millions Of Books Published In The U.S. Between 1923 And 1963, the U.S. Copyright Office Estimates That Only Roughly 15% Had Their Copyright Protection Renewed. This Means That Around 85% Of All Books Published In The U.S. Between 1923 And 1963 Are Up For Grabs! That’s Billions of Pages of Material That You Can Use To Create Your Own Outrageously Profitable Multi-Media Information Publishing Empire…Faster Than You Ever Dreamed Possible…. Click Here To Claim Your FREE 54 Page Special Report…

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How To Research Public Domain Magazines

Do you have a blog? How about ten or fifteen blogs? I have over 40 blogs, hub pages, squidoo lenses… etc. Yikes. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Now… I know how hard it is to keep all those blogs and content hosting websites filled with fresh new content. Some blogs were getting very stale… until I found Public Domain Magazines. Woot!

Magazines are filled with great material for blogs already written in article length. I spent many happy hours on eBay purchasing magazines on a ton of different subjects. The packages were rolling up to the front door on a regular basis.

Then… I realized that I was wasting money. Not because these magazines weren’t great… but not all old magazines are in the Public Domain. And… if they are, some of the content may not be.

I was a bit discouraged by the notion that I had an office filling up with stacks of periodicals that may only be good for kindling.

Anyway…. I spent some time figuring out how I could research these magazines “better”. I needed a system.

It’s a bit difficult to research a magazine when all you can see is a picture of the cover. And… if I was lucky enough to find a stack of old magazines at a yard sale or at my local bookstore; I still didn’t have a way to research them. I would need to purchase the magazine before the research could begin

Researching Copyright for Public Domain Magazines.

The easiest way to get your hands on great magazines in the public domain… is to just buy, buy.. buy.

They usually aren’t very expensive and if you have done minimal research… chances are most of the content will be in the Public Domain.

What do I mean by minimal research? Have a list of magazines that are most likely in the public domain and stick with those. Then when you have them in your hot little hands and in front of a computer, you can dig deeper with your research.

Now… let’s get into an example:

I found an old periodical that looks as if all issues are in the Public Domain, but… I need to document the research and check to see if the articles are useable as well.

The name of the magazine: Profitable Hobbies
Publisher: Modern Handcraft Inc.
Published Year: March, 1954
Volume 10 Number 3

So now I can check on the magazine copyright status:

http://www.copyright.gov/records

I searched for the periodical title and publisher name.

Your search found no results!!!

Okay… but what about the article I want to use?

Title of Article: Libby’s Lamps Light Lots of Homes
Author: Patrick J. Galvin
Published Year: 1954 + 28 yrs : 1982
Note if article is republished from a book or previously published.

I searched the author name:

Just to make sure, I put the name in several ways:

P. Galvin
Pat Galvin
Patrick Galvin
Galvin P

Finally I did get some results

None of these results refer to the article I want to use.

As a side note: The legal area of this magazine lists Patrick J. Galvin as the photographer also.

If the image has a recognizable brand or product featured in the photograph the logo, brand or manufacture name may be copyrighted. This would require another go at the Copyright research just for those images.

Okay… now I am convinced that I have a magazine with an article I would like to use that is in the Public Domain.

This article is 6 pages of very interesting, and unusual content. It’s actually a story with some great business advice woven in. Because the article is so long, I can break it up into at leas 8 blog posts or use it for a mini-report to sell.

I spent about $8 including postage for some very interesting content. And… this magazine has at least 3 other articles that I will research.

The fact that it takes a bit more time and effort should not discourage you from learning how to research public domain magazines.

FACT: Of The Millions Of Books Published In The U.S. Between 1923 And 1963, the U.S. Copyright Office Estimates That Only Roughly 15% Had Their Copyright Protection Renewed. This Means That Around 85% Of All Books Published In The U.S. Between 1923 And 1963 Are Up For Grabs! That’s Billions of Pages of Material That You Can Use To Create Your Own Outrageously Profitable Multi-Media Information Publishing Empire…Faster Than You Ever Dreamed Possible…. Click Here To Claim Your FREE 54 Page Special Report…

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What’s Your Biggest Question About Repackaging and Profiting From Public Domain Material?

What’s Your Biggest Question About Repackaging and Profiting From Public Domain Material?

Not long ago, I conducted a little online survey concerning finding, republishing, and profiting from Public Domain material.

I’ve been using material from the Public Domain in my own business for several years now to create and profit from information products.

Even though about 70% of my products are based on Public Domain material, I had never really spoken with many other online entrepreneurs about how they use Public Domain content in their businesses. I just stayed to myself, quietly using Public Domain content to build my business.

A few years ago, I began teaching others how to create information products quickly and easily from Public Domain material like I do. My students had been asking questions like - “How many other creative ways are people using Public Domain content?” and “How many other people actually know about this stuff?”.

I learned everything I know about copyright laws and the Public Domain from a dear copyright attorney friend of mine who has since passed on, so I had to admit I was extremely curious about these questions as well. To help my students get the answers to their questions, and to satisfy my own curiosity, I slapped up a short survey on the internet.

When I launched the survey I really didn’t know what to expect. I had only planned on gathering around 200 completed surveys, but what happened next surprised even me - after roughly two weeks, I ended up with just over 2000 surveys!

The results of this little survey and the answers that were submitted were thought provoking, enlightening, and even entertaining to say the least!

About 10% of the answers were unintelligible (some even down right offensive), another 10% were obviously answers given by seasoned online Public Domain veterans, but the last 80% of the participants had one definite thing in common - a strong desire to learn more about how to use Public Domain material but no clear understanding of how to go about it.

From the survey results, I gathered that many people had heard of this wondrous thing called the Public Domain, but very few actually knew how to use it to their advantage. There seems to be quite a bit of confusion of how copyright laws work and what the Public Domain actually is.

It would seem that to many folks, the Public Domain may as well be the Bermuda Triangle because it seems to be shrouded in just as much mystery…..

You see, when I conducted this survey I was expecting to get a lot of answers to my questions but quite honestly, most of what I actually got was more questions - hundreds and hundreds of them in fact, most centering on the same subjects with regard to the Public Domain.

Some of the most common questions were:

• How do I find really good public domain material that I can use to make money?
• How do I repackage my public domain material in order to sell it?
• How do I find out if a particular work is in the public domain?
• How can I ensure that my product will sell before I invest the time into creating it?

There were hundreds more, but most of the questions seemed to revolve around those four main themes.

Most people expressed frustration about the lack of good clear information regarding the legalities of using Public Domain material and the apparent lack of good resources available for finding quality Public Domain content.

To those of you that expressed these frustrations - just know, you are not alone, I hear you! The internet can be a vast wasteland when it comes to the subject of Public Domain and I feel your pain…there would seem to be very few good sources of information on the subject (yet there are tons of great sources for quality Public Domain content - IF you know how to find them).

It’s for you guys and gals that Debra and I decided to create this blog and it’s accompanying magazine, “Pirates of the Public Domain”. I couldn’t just leave all of these questions unanswered. Rather than try to respond to your questions individually, I decided that it would be much smarter to compile the questions and answers into one source of information that everyone can benefit from…

And so this blog was born! The information you will find here is the direct result of that survey and I promise that I will strive to provide answers to all of the most common questions that you have asked about Public Domain.

Think of the info you’ll find here as your “Public Domain Primer” or “Public Domain 101″ if you will. My sincerest hope is that it will finally answer some of your questions and give you at least a general road map that you can follow for successfully using Public Domain material in your business.

In this blog you are sure to find something that you can use to help your business grow. You may learn a few new tricks while some of it may be old hat.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart for taking part in my survey, my little online experiment. Your answers have touched me, enlightened me, and enriched me in ways that I’ll probably never be able to fully express.

For those of you that put heart into participating in my survey and weren’t afraid to ask questions in return, this blog is for you!

FACT: Of The Millions Of Books Published In The U.S. Between 1923 And 1963, the U.S. Copyright Office Estimates That Only Roughly 15% Had Their Copyright Protection Renewed. This Means That Around 85% Of All Books Published In The U.S. Between 1923 And 1963 Are Up For Grabs! That’s Billions of Pages of Material That You Can Use To Create Your Own Outrageously Profitable Multi-Media Information Publishing Empire…Faster Than You Ever Dreamed Possible…. Click Here To Claim Your FREE 54 Page Special Report…

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The Public Domain - A Vast Hidden Treasure Chest of Copyright-Free Books, Music, Film, Images, & More?

“What Would You Do If You Discovered A Vast Hidden Treasure Chest Of Books, Artwork, Photographs And More That You Could Legally Do Anything You Wanted With?”

What if I told you that right under your very nose there’s a vast hidden treasure of copyright-free books, music, film, images, and all sorts of other intellectual properties that are FREE for the taking and you can do anything you want with - including legally repackaging and SELLING FOR MONEY AS YOUR OWN PRODUCTS?

It’s True!

How would you like to be able to “steal” a never-ending supply of content - millions and millions of pages of content - and never have to pay one cent in royalties or licensing fees and use them to create products that you can sell over and over again keeping 100% of the profits?

Seriously, how would you like to be able to steal the hard work of other people - experts in their respective fields even - and use their work to crank out information products that you can sell without ever having to go through the pain of writing a word yourself?

What if you could quickly, easily, and legally use this copyright-free material to:

• Easily create your own high-priced , hot selling info products like ebooks, printed manuals, audio programs, CD’s, DVD’s and more…
• Quickly build huge cash pumping Adsense or affiliate marketing content websites and blogs…
• Effortlessly create articles and special reports without having to write a word yourself and use them to drive massive traffic to your website or build a huge mailing list…
• Magically create all sorts of hot physical products like t-shirts, posters, framed prints and more using copyright-free artwork and images…

The crazy thing is that most people have never even heard of this vast treasure or if they have heard of it, they really don’t understand the enormous potential that lies within.

Insiders have been using these incredibly valuable copyright-free works to create all sorts of products and have been making thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, with them year after year.

Yeah, that’s right - I’m talking about the Public Domain…

If you know how to identify, repackage and market these copyright-free works, you have a GOLDMINE on your hands. There are literally millions of works in the Public Domain right now just waiting for you. Talk about a massive treasure chest of copyright-free material!

“There Are Over 85 Million Books, Tons Of Artwork, Photographs, Films, and Music In The Public Domain That You Can Legally “STEAL” And Use To Create Your Own Hot Profit-Generating Products!”

The Public Domain is a huge repository of works that for various reasons are not protected by copyright laws. This includes books, manuals, plays, articles, photographs, posters, music, magazines, newspapers, cartoons, movies, artwork, audio recordings, works produced by the federal government, and more……anything that is NOT protected by U.S. copyright laws.

In the U.S., any work that is published before 1923 is automatically in the Public Domain. There is a lot of great stuff from before 1923, but here is the real juicy secret that most people don’t understand - there is a ton of stuff that was published before 1963 that is in the Public Domain now because the copyrights that protected them have expired.

There is also tons of great stuff published every day that is automatically added to the public domain upon creation…

Once you understand exactly what the Public Domain is and how it works, you’ll have a never-ending supply of fresh material at your fingertips perfect for creating your own unique, new products with very little effort.

In fact…..

“It’s Like Having An Army Of Ghost Writers At Your Disposal Cranking Out Millions And Millions Of Pages Of Killer, Valuable Content Night And Day And You Never Have To Pay Them A Dime!”

Really, why spend all of the time it takes to create your own products from scratch when you can legally use the creative works of thousands of authors, artists, film-makers, photographers, and others that have come before you?

You can use Public Domain material to create products at lightning speed and begin putting money in your pocket immediately without struggling and sweating to create your own original stuff.

I’m talking about material that you can use to create e-books, printed books and manuals, audio programs, videos, DVD’s, clothing like T-shirts and hats, and any other physical product you can imagine like coffee mugs, mouse pads, framed artwork prints - literally anything you can imagine!

That’s the power of Public Domain - a vast treasure of stuff that you can take and do anything you want with - ANYTHING - including repackaging as your own products that you can SELL FOR PROFIT.

How can you harness this power?

FACT: Of The Millions Of Books Published In The U.S. Between 1923 And 1963, the U.S. Copyright Office Estimates That Only Roughly 15% Had Their Copyright Protection Renewed. This Means That Around 85% Of All Books Published In The U.S. Between 1923 And 1963 Are Up For Grabs! That’s Billions of Pages of Material That You Can Use To Create Your Own Outrageously Profitable Multi-Media Information Publishing Empire…Faster Than You Ever Dreamed Possible…. Click Here To Claim Your FREE 54 Page Special Report…

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