“a crash course on the public domain - your most...

“A Crash Course On The Public Domain - Your Most Common

Questions Answered…”

Brought to you by

Debra Conrad

http://www.PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com

Chameleon Computer Services Inc.

340 W 32nd Street #153 Yuma AZ 85364

http://www.publicdomaintreasurehunter.com/

Public Domain Treasure Hunter’s Questions Answered

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Table Of Content

Introduction................................................................................................................................... 6 “A Crash Course On The Public Domain - Your Most Common Questions Answered…”............ 8

What Is The Heck Is Public Domain Anyway And Why Should It Matter To Me? .................. 8 How does something become ‘Public Domain’?.......................................................................10 Why Are Public Domain Works Profitable? ............................................................................. 11 Isn’t Everything On The Internet In The Public Domain And Free For The Taking? ............. 12 What Kinds of Things Can Be Found Within the Public Domain? .......................................... 13 Why Would Anything So Old Be Worth Anything Today?....................................................... 14 What Kinds Of Products Can I Create Using Public Domain Material? .................................. 17 Eight Quick & Easy Ways To Make BIG Money In Your Online Business Using Nothing But Public Domain Material... ......................................................................................................... 19

Ebooks and Special Reports .................................................................................................. 19 Website Content .................................................................................................................... 19 Use Public Domain To Get Traffic!!!..................................................................................... 19 Printed Books and Manuals ................................................................................................. 20 Audio Products ......................................................................................................................21 Video Products ......................................................................................................................21 Email Marketing and List Building.......................................................................................21 Special Covert Tactics........................................................................................................... 22 More Killer Ideas:................................................................................................................. 22

What Are Some Other Creative Ways That People Are Using To Profit From The Public Domain? ................................................................................................................................... 22 Are There Any Good Sources of Public Domain Content On The Internet?........................... 29 How Long Does Copyright Protection Last And How Long Does It Take A Work To Fall Into The Public Domain?..................................................................................................................31 When Dealing With Books, Doesn’t “Out of Print” Mean Public Domain? ............................31 If A Work Doesn’t Include A Written Copyright Notice Does That Mean That It’s Not Protected?................................................................................................................................. 32 Can I Do Anything I Want With A Public Domain Work Including Changing The Title Or Claiming Authorship? ...............................................................................................................33 How Can I Protect My Products From Being Ripped Off If Someone Discovers That They Are Based On Public Domain Content? ......................................................................................... 34 What About The Competition? .................................................................................................35 What Should I Do To Protect Myself If Someone Challenges My Claim That A Work Is In The Public Domain? .........................................................................................................................37 The Future Of The Public Domain........................................................................................... 38


Letter from the Author

Hi... It's Debra Conrad (in case you didn't know that already) :) I'm so happy that you have taken the first step in your "education" about using Public Domain content. Get a pen and notebook... you are about to get the ride of your online business career! Buried in secret nooks and crannies all over the World Wide Web, are millions of pages of content that is free for you to use.

Those lucky treasure hunters that are privy to this secret know that a vast, untold wealth of content treasure is freely available and ready to be plundered with just a few clicks of the mighty mouse. This treasure trove of content is patiently waiting for you - ready to be used in any way you can imagine - without having to pay the original authors any compensation or give one line of credit (unless you choose to). It’s yours for the taking! A massive amount of copyright-free and royalty-free material is online – books, photographs, drawings, films, animations, music, you name it – it’s out there! I like to call these secret collections of public domain gold “Hidden Treasures”. To find these hidden treasures, you need a special kind of map – a map created by true public domain treasure hunters, left behind for other hunters to follow along in their footsteps. You will no longer have to fruitlessly browse the internet searching for the "free" content you need for your new product or website. I've sailed ahead and discovered all of the best online treasure troves for you, leaving a map behind so that you can follow my path! Be wary! This map is not intended for use by anyone that doesn't yet know the basics of finding and using Public Domain content. You still need to have the basics under your belt.

If you don't have a clue what the public domain is (or even what it means), then I'm here to help.

This guide walks new public domain treasure hunters step-by-step through understanding exactly what the public domain is and how you can use it to create tons of great products so easily it will make you wonder why anyone would ever spend weeks agonizing over creating their own original content!




And Now A Bit About Debra Conrad... I am not a writer... I got straight C's in college from my English teachers. I have the gift of gab and a creative mind... but that isn't what good literary writing requires.

Sometime in 2005 a local historical group decided that I should author a book about the history of the Yuma Mesa Homesteaders. Why they thought I could

write a book… is still a mystery.

I finally decided that I could write about half the book using Public Domain material. The other half is actual stories written by the Homesteaders themselves.

This is about the time I fell in love with all things Public Domain… but didn’t find my real calling to use it until Jan - 2008. I found that I could use Public Domain material to fill my blogs with unusual and relevant content as well as create products that would be profitable.

Public Domain material has saved my butt more times than I can count.

I am now creating products and blog content using public domain material to prove the point that you don’t have to be a “guru” to make a living with blogs and your own products. I spend an enormous amount of time sharing ideas here: http://www.PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com. I also shares no-nonsense online business advice and personal productivity tips and strategies on my blog at http://www.DebraConrad.com.



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http://yumamesahomesteaders.com/

http://www.publicdomaintreasurehunter.com/

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Introduction

I just love the idea of creating and selling high demand information products on the internet…

The key point here is "Idea".

It's easy to come up with so many ideas for products, but the challenge sometimes is transforming these ideas into reality.

Let’s face it - it takes time and work to create products.

I don't care what any "guru" tells you - there’s always some hard work involved. It's not digging ditches type of "hard work”...but you still have to put in a lot of time, effort and focus. If the idea just stays an idea it will never make one cent of profit.

Several years ago I went on the hunt for an easier way. Wouldn’t you love to find that "easy button" that would just magically take your ideas and instantly turn them into products ready to sell? How cool would that be???

Well... I won't ever tell you that I found an "Easy Button" anymore. I know from personal experience that an online business is a "business" and it takes work.

Anyway... I stumbled across the idea of using other people’s time, effort and talent for my own personal gain. It's pretty simple really. When I learned that millions of books were no longer copyright protected... it was like a great big door to the library had been opened just for me to walk right in and take any book I wanted.

I can now take any number of books, mash up the content to create an "in demand product" and have unique products ready to sell in less time than it will take most writers to create an outline.

Does This Sound Possible To You? Or Just Hocus-Pocus?

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

I'm talking about over 85 million books, tons of artwork, photographs, films, and music - literally millions and millions of copyright-free works covering every subject imaginable, all of which you can use to create your own freebie reports or products.






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.

Information Publishers and Entrepreneurs in the know have been using this secret treasure to make themselves wealthy for years....

Yeah, that's right – I'm talking about the Public Domain.

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 don't have to pay them a dime ever! And I'm not just talking about books and articles either. We're talking music, motion pictures, animations, audio recordings, artwork, photographs - all sorts of things!

Insiders have been using these incredibly valuable works to create all sorts of products and have been making hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions in some cases, with them year after year.

I'm talking about stuff that you can use to create:

e-books, printed books and manuals, audio programs, videos, clothing like T-shirts and hats, other physical products like coffee mugs, mouse pads, framed artwork prints - literally anything you can imagine!

Within the pages of this book, you’ll discover the answers to many of the most common questions regarding the Public Domain and how to use copyright-free material to create your own profit-generating products faster than you ever dreamed possible!

You’re in for a wild adventure so let’s get going!




“A Crash Course On The Public Domain - Your Most Common

Questions Answered…”

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

The term public domain is just a term used to describe the millions of works that have been produced over the last century that no longer have copyright protection.

The public domain inherently encompasses all creative works and other mediums of information that are not protected by copyright law.


Note: In this case, ‘work’ refers to anything that can possibly be published and sold. Thus a work could be a book, a course, an instruction manual, music, movies, photographs, reports, recipes, ideas, inventions and lots more.

Example: The famous Mona Lisa, painted by that great artist Leonardo da Vinci has the potential to fall under the public domain. In the same vein, Beethoven’s 5th Symphony would also be considered

in the public domain.

John Reese’s Traffic Secrets course, however, is definitely not public domain (although the ideas and techniques used within them are).

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.

For instance, when a book is first published in the U.S. it is protected by copyright laws so that 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 over 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.

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.






How does something become ‘Public Domain’?

To understand the Public Domain, you must know how any work can potentially fall into the Public Domain. In fact, there are several ways a work can become public domain, and some of these are listed below:

The work was created and published before there were copyright laws. This distinction is very important and is the sole reason why the works of Shakespeare are considered public domain while Darwin’s ground-breaking book, Origin of Species, is protected by copyright.

The work cannot be copyrighted. This includes things such as ideas, facts, theories, mathematical or scientific formulas, and also simple things like a list of ingredients or components. Therefore you cannot copyright the Theory of Relativity, or the knowledge of how to make a Molotov Cocktail, a type of a home-made bomb (don’t ask us why we know that).

Note: Some copyright laws (for example the US copyright law) forbid certain types of work from being copyrighted. This includes the examples mentioned above, as well as government publications.

The work is a publication by the government, related agencies and/or officials. Specifically, the US copyright law prevents such publications from being ‘copyrighted’ (this has a lot to do with the definition of copyright and copyrightable work) and thus they are directly part of the public domain.

The work’s copyright protection has expired (and not been renewed). It is quite possible to find works published as late as 1963 whose copyright has expired and has not been renewed under current copyright laws.

The work was never copyrighted – This is a tricky issue. Logically, if a person publishing his work does not acquire copyright, then by reason it is automatically part of the public domain.

The copyright owner dedicated the work into the public domain. This is more common than you think. An often-quoted example is that of freeware software or freely distributed source code. Sometimes artists tend to dedicate their work to the public domain as well. Many bloggers are even donating their writings to the public domain these days!




Why Are Public Domain Works Profitable? The most important thing about public domain works is that anyone can use them to create products of their own, either through re-packaging, or from a derivative work.

Note: A derivative work is, according to copyright law, an artistic creation that includes aspects of work previously created and protected. Derivative works of copyright-protected works are prohibited by law, unless a specific permission is acquired by the author / copyright holder. Since commercial use of a work in the public domain is not protected by copyright law, creating a derivative work out of the public domain is commercially legal.

Since you are free to use information / works from the public domain and use them either personally or commercially without restrictions, the possibility of profiting from public domain works is immediate and very real.

Public Domain works are profitable because:

Many public domain works include (nearly) timeless and entirely relevant information on wildly popular ‘interests’ such as making money, self-improvement, writing, playing sports, interpreting dreams, astrology, public speaking, entrepreneurship, recipes and lots more.

The information is immediately usable – for many public domain works all you need to do is to simply do some minor editing, re-package the knowledge into a medium of your liking (we discuss this in more detail a little later) and then sell it. Of course, you can also produce derivative works, but the power of immediate re-usability is one of the primary reasons many people are attracted to the public domain.

There is an abundance of such information. We’re talking about publications that span over a century, and maybe even more than that when you take into account classic works that were published before copyright law even existed.

Use of a particular public domain work by someone else does not mean that you cannot use that same public domain work for your own commercial purpose. In other words, you can use the SAME public domain resources that someone else has used, and restructure them to suit your commercial venture.




This is the real strength of the public domain – the information is not a resource

that is ‘used up’ over time – in fact as more and more people begin to embrace the ‘free information’ movement (and the open source movement in software development), you will find that the public domain will only increase in size over time.

Public Domain works are in diverse mediums. You have software, books, instruction manuals, photographs, music and even government publications. Any and all of these mediums can be used to generate specific and different types of selling opportunities.

Public Domain works are not restricted in the format they are stored. Thus you can convert a book on interpreting dreams into an audio course, or create a website around a book on public speaking. This is more of a ‘how to profit from public domain works’ feature, but it’s important enough to note here.

Isn’t Everything On The Internet In The Public Domain And Free For The Taking? It seems that many people believe that everything on the Internet is in the Public Domain and that they can use everything and anything that they find on the Internet for any purpose they want.

Wrong!

It’s amazing how many people believe this. A friend of mine used to believe this himself until he got himself in big trouble really early in his career (that’s a story for another day!). – For now consider the following warning: Don't use anything off the internet unless you have done the research to clear it first!

Even content that is posted on the internet in the form of text and images is in most cases protected by copyright laws and there are very, very stiff penalties for the illegal use of such things.

Sure, you know as well as we do that you can download illegally copied music and movies all day long from the internet but believe me, you don’t want to get caught trying to sell this stuff and you certainly don’t want to attempt to build a business off of illegally copied works!

You can’t just copy other people’s stuff off of the internet and expect not to get into legal hot water. Go ahead and try it – You’ll start getting these really fun letters with words like “Cease and Desist” in them. It’s no fun at all.




You can never build a true information publishing business with any degree of long term success by stealing other people’s copyright protected works. It just isn’t going to happen.

Build a business that you can be proud of by creating good quality products that you have legal rights to. Don’t try to illegally use other people’s stuff – it’s just not worth it especially when there are literally millions and millions of pages of great undiscovered material just waiting for you in the public domain.

What Kinds of Things Can Be Found Within the Public Domain? You name it – it’s out there just waiting to be found! Some things are harder to find... or take a bit of thinking-outside-the-box to locate, but there’s an almost unlimited supply of material to pull from!

Just imagine - over a centuries worth of intellectual properties at your disposal! Do you have any idea of how many books have been published in the United States alone in just the last 100 years? We are talking millions of books on just about any subject you can think of.

And the exciting part is this - of the hundreds of thousands of works published between 1923 and 1963, only roughly 15% had their copyrights renewed.

This means that around 85% of all works published between 1923 And 1963 are up for grabs!

That's millions 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....

You’ll find tons of images and artwork, films, music, books, and other written, visual, and auditory items of all kinds!

For now just realize this – The public domain is the best thing to ever happen to information publishing and your online business!

The public domain is a huge untapped goldmine of content that you can utilize anyway you want. Millions of works are your for the taking – you just have to know how.

In my business, I focus mostly on finding how-to books that have fallen into the public domain because those are what lend themselves easily to being republished as information products.




EXAMPLE: Let’s say that you wanted to create an information product or a website on dog training. Now, there are millions of different subjects that you could choose from, this is just one example.

You could spend the next year trying to write everything yourself or…..

You could find an available public domain work or collection of works on the subject of dog training and have all of the content that you would need to create your info product or website quickly and easily without having to write a word yourself!

And not only that, but you don’t even have to know much of anything about the subject. When you write a book yourself you have to be an expert on the subject you are writing about.

How can you write about something you know nothing about?

When you use public domain material you don’t have to be the expert – all of the hard work has already been done for you – you are using the work that an expert has already done for you to create a new product.

Never before has there been a quicker or easier way of creating your own information products. It’s like having an army or writers at your disposal. You can instantly grab all of the material you need on virtually any subject you can imagine just by plundering the hidden vaults of the public domain.

No more spending months slaving over your keyboard, no more having to pay ghost-writers ridiculously high fees to write for you. Are you starting to understand the true power of the public domain?

I'm not just talking about a bunch of dusty, useless old books here.

I am talking about the keys to cranking out your own hot-selling info products very quickly by using work that has already been done for you by experts on their subjects that you can legally steal.

And the thing is – hardly anybody knows about this! Or, if they do know about it they don’t really know how to go about using it properly.

Why Would Anything So Old Be Worth Anything Today? Many people have the misconception that anything old, (i.e. old enough to have had its copyright protection expire) isn’t worth anything today. They think there’s no way anyone would be interested in something that was written 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 same people think 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:

Learn ways to raise your kids better Learn how to improve your relationship with your spouse or other loved ones Learn how to become more successful in your business dealings Learn how to make more money or how to handle your finances better Learn how to save time by doing certain things more efficiently 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 hula hoops anymore, (well... they might care, but it probably wouldn't be a best seller) 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 or digital cameras back in 1935 so you won’t find any books written about them from back then but there are plenty of ideas that you will 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?

Plus - the US Government produces work every day about all sorts of current issues... Really. It's almost all free to use!


Let Your Tax Dollars Work For You

Much of what lies on the realm of public domain is still relevant today.

For the purposes of information publishing it must be understood that I am speaking exclusively of non-fiction works - not fiction. You probably won’t turn much of a profit by republishing fiction books (although there are some exceptions to this).

For instance, 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'm 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:

How to improve your fly-fishing skills How to grow a vegetable garden How to play the guitar How to improve your golf swing How to boost your self-confidence How to make money in the stock market How to train your dog

The more specific the topic, the better. For instance:

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



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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.

The point I am trying to make here is that 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. People have been dealing with the same basic issues for centuries and 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.

What Kinds Of Products Can I Create Using Public Domain Material? There are countless ways that you can make money with public domain works and there really is no limit to the amount of products you can create. In many cases you can even create a variety of different products from the same public domain work!

This section looks not only at a comprehensive list of ways to generate cash from public domain works. It also outlines a pattern for you to create your own ways of earning money from the public domain.

I'm just showing you a few ideas to give you an idea of the countless possibilities:

Re-publish public domain content – A lot of the information is relevant today. Books on cooking and recipes, public speaking, hobbies and learning languages all contain knowledge that is applicable to our time (50 or 60 years doesn’t change the way you interpret astrological signs, for example). All you need to do is to find the relevant public domain work, re-package it according to your needs and then create a business model around it.

Use Public Domain as a source of content for your website. Whether you want to start a membership website or just an informational website that earns money through advertising and affiliate revenue, the important thing is that you won’t have to wait for months to create the content – it’s ready for you to use immediately.




Create a derivative work – Use the public domain work to spawn targeted,

niche-relevant products by creating your own product around it.

Change the format of the public domain work – create an audio course for a how-to-manual to increase the ‘perceived value’ of the product so you can make more money off of the same information.

Release the product in multiple, complimentary mediums. This is a combination of the above two ideas – You can teach a course using audio CDs, instructional watch-and-learn DVDs and package a learning manual together to make a killer course that is a physical product instead of allowing people to simply download an ebook. This immediately raises the perceived value of the product.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are dozens and dozens of concrete examples of using public domain works within your business, either to supplement your business model or to create a new income stream.

Example:

Let’s say you find a book titled ‘The Art of Playing Poker’ from 1960 that you’ve checked and now know is free of copyright and is firmly in the public domain. What should you do with it?

Your first step would be of course to have it scanned (via an OCR service) and converted into an editable format such as MS Word or even simple text files.

Next, you would decide on what you actually want to do with the product. Let’s say this is your first business venture and you’re interested in getting started FAST and want to see some results before you dedicate more time and money to this idea. So what do you do?

Break up the book into separate articles, build a website around the content and earn AdSense revenue from them.

Package the book into an e-book and sell it via a mini-site.

Create a membership website using the content. An extension of the first idea, this will require some work to keep the website updated regularly.

I have more ingenious marketing and business ideas that you can use to make money from the public domain, no matter what your commitment level. Keep reading...


Eight Quick & Easy Ways To Make BIG Money In Your Online Business Using Nothing But Public Domain Material...

Ebooks and Special Reports - Create your own highly-profitable ebooks or "special reports". Instantly downloadable ebooks are a great way to get started in the information publishing business with practically no overhead and almost

100% profits!

No matter what you may have heard elsewhere, ebooks certainly are not dead!

The idea of creating "special reports" before spending the time and effort to create a full ebook is a great idea. If someone will pay money for a 15 page report... you know that this niche idea is profitable and can be expanded into a profitable book and/or website. Now... I'm not telling you that you can just get any public domain information off the internet and create a word document and it will sell. It does take some effort to publish good products. And... you need to know a bit about the format requirements of an ebook or "special report".

But, once you know the basics of ebook design... it will be easy to for you to create a product 1-2-3!



create a

Website Content - Use public domain books as content for building websites and drive revenue through either Google Adsense earnings orAffiliate Marketing tactics or a combination of both. You could also

membership website and charge for your content or use as content for your blog.

This is my personal favorite idea of all the ideas using Public Domain material.

If you have a blog... you now have unlimited content for your blog. If you find a book or several magazines in the public domain... you now have the content for hundreds of blog posts at your fingertips!

Imagine finding a public domain book about quilt making. This book is about 300 pages of techniques and patterns. Now... what if you take every pattern and technique and create a separate blog post with each one. Just think - within that 300 page book... you should be able to create about 150 pages of content.

Then... you add Google Adsense to each page. And...a few Amazon books about quilting. You start getting traffic to your website and making a few bucks...

Use Public Domain To Get Traffic!!!

Chop up public domain books and use as content for articles that you can post up all over the internet and drive traffic back to your website.


You can also use public domain as content for improving the ranking and positioning of your website

... or use as content for viral pdf's that people will pass around to their friends which provides a link back to your website producing, you guessed it - more traffic!

It's important to have ton's of articles and website content at the ready. These days you need content to post in many different places on the internet to drive traffic back to your website.

One of the biggest mistakes a new internet marketer makes - thinking that "if I build it... they will come". First the search engines have to find your site and then they will "help" you get traffic if you know how to go after all of the "generators" on the internet.

This takes loads and loads of content. One of the best and "cheapest" ways to have a back load of great content? Get your hands on a few Public Domain books or magazines dealing with some aspect of your website’s niche topic.

What could you do then??? Well, how about taking a chapter from that book and making a free special report? Start taking names and email addresses in exchange for this free report?

Now... you’re making a few $$ and you have a list to market other products to.

My next move would be to find another public domain book on quilts (hopefully filled with pictures) and make a few ebooks to sell. Now you have a few products of your own to sell to your list.

Did you realize that in just a few short paragraphs I have just described a business plan? What are you waiting for?

Printed Books and Manuals - How about using one of the many Print-On-Demand services available to create your own physical printed and bound books that you can ship directly to your customers?

You could create all sorts or books or manuals very easily.

You could even create your own high-end "home study" courses just by putting your product in a three-ring binder and using dividers to separate the sections.

Would you love to be an author? If you really paid attention to the information about my first book (see About the Author)... you will notice that Ididn't write one bit of that book’s content herself.




I did not make a fortune from this book... but it did give me huge credibility because I am now an "author"!

Audio Products - Simply read a public domain book into a microphone and record yourself and create an audio book!

You could distribute your audio product on CD Convert in into an instantly downloadable MP3 file Present it as streaming audio from your website

Audio products are extremely popular and are a great chance to separate yourself from the competition. Everyone in your niche selling ebooks? Be different, sell audio books instead!

Video Products - Use public domain content as a script for creating a video product!

You can make an instructional how-to video and distribute it on DVD You could produce instantly downloadable videos Stream your video from your website Place your video on YouTube.com and link to your website

Video products make a killing when done right!

Be a star, create your own video products! You could also use this content as a script to create a video to endorse someone else's product that you earn an affiliate commission for.

Email Marketing and List Building -

Slice and Dice public domain books and use as:

content for your auto-responder email messages, create free mini-courses you send a prospect when they sign up on your mailing list, or use to create a free gift to send them as a thank you for subscribing to your list.




Special Covert Tactics - Use public domain content to:

create special bonus material that you use to entice people to buy your other products,

use as an "upsell" with one of your existing products, use as a free gift to solicit testimonials from happy customers, create resell rights products and sell to other people looking for their own products

to sell, create products that you can give away to people who buy products you recommend

through your affiliate links.

More Killer Ideas: How about using public domain material as the basis for e-classes taught by you in which your students pay to participate?

You have to work a little bit harder to find just the right public domain product to fit into this idea... but they are out there. And... when you find it, it will make a killer product!

What Are Some Other Creative Ways That People Are Using To Profit From The Public Domain? I've had seen people (they shared these really interesting ideas with me) profit from Public Domain material. Honestly, I was given quite a few ideas that we had never even considered before!

Be creative! The only limit to what you can create with Public Domain material is your imagination!

Check out some of the clever ways people are using Public Domain material to make money:






Posters – Find artwork (paintings, prints, illustrations, etc) in the Public Domain and turn them into posters or framed reproductions.

This gorgeous bird plate is one of 6 available in a book actually already digitized and available online!

These could be printed with archival inks (waterproof) on some great paper and sold as a set on eBay.

Or... you could sell a huge set of bird related images on a DVD.

Or... you could set up a store though one of the print on demand poster printers available online and have an entire store front selling vintage posters of any size.

Or... you could print this picture in black and white or sepia and hand color them. Hand colored prints are of especially high value if well done.

Video– Find Public Domain films and convert them into video for your website or to sell. You can post Public Domain video on YouTube.com to drive traffic to your website. Or... you can just put the film on a DVD and sell it on eBay!

Want an example?

I found this movie on the archive.org website:


This seller digitized the movie and put it onto a DVD for sale on eBay:

I used this same film from Internet Archive to drive traffic to one of my niche websites. I chopped and mashed it up so that it was relevant for use by today's DIY decorator:




Plus...I also put it on my niche website as relevant content for my visitors.

Compilation CD/DVD – Find collections of something like vintage crochet patterns or doll house plans that are in the Public Domain and combine them together on one CD/DVD. Huge collections of maps, baseball cards, recipes, Christian images... all these and more are all being sold on eBay and on huge bookstore style websites. Here is an example of a collection of more than 250 fine Japanese woodblock prints from before 1915 on CD available on eBay:



Pick a topic/subject that interests you and start looking for everything you can find related to that topic. Put all that great Public Domain information onto some digital format CD/DVD and create sets to sell. You won't believe how easy this is to do!


Collected Works – Find a bunch of Public Domain books on one specialized subject and package them together to create a super collection or even bundle books by the same author.

One gal told me about how she did really well with a compilation of old ghost stories that she strategically released just before Halloween.

I recentley picked up a book that was a compilation of Ghost Stories related to the region I live in. This book has an author and a copyright notice. What's really interesting is the copyright...

It actually states: All rights reserved, except

as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act.

So I checked the back of the book for a resources section and they had one! Most of the resources are public domain books. The author can claim it as her own... because she

took public domain information form several sources, and created her own published work.

Another highly profitable area is genealogy. Here is a CD compilation of books for genealogists:




Encyclopedic Content Rich Websites – Find a Public Domain encyclopedia and convert the entire thing into a content rich website using Google Adsense and / or Affiliate Marketing links to generate revenue. This works great for specialized encyclopedias like an Encyclopedia

f Crafts or Home Decoration.

ything a niche ecific Wiki might need. But several public domain books might do the trick.

o

Other website owners love to link to websites that offer lots of easy to use, relevant content related to a specialty. You may not be able to find just one book that covers eversp

What if you could find several large books filled with terms and definitions about Railroads or Steam Engines? This would be a gold mine for railroad, model railroad, industrial steam engine or model steam engine enthusiasts. Then - take all that information and mash it up into a "guide" for your niche and sell it.

(You wouldn’t want to try this with a regular Encyclopedia as the information provided in these

too generalized.) is

Rare Japanese Artwork – One of my subscribers revealed that he takes really old and rare Japanese paintings and reproduces them as framed prints which he then sells to collectors and

alleries across the country. Maybe something like this eBay seller:

g




Old Baseball Cards – Here’s a great idea for sports fanatics! Take old turn of the centurpublic domain baseball cards (like the ones that used to come in packs of cigarettes

y ) and

print them as collector’s cards or put them on coffee mugs, magnets, or stickers.

re

Humorous “Old-Timey” Photographs – Another gal about how she has built a whole business around taking old public domain black and white photographs and adding humocaptions or little funny cartoon bu

rous bbles to them and selling them on ebay as mouse pads,

t same thing by producing humorous greeting cards

sing old public domain photographs.

magnets, calendars, and t-shirts.

This is a great idea if you have a good sense of humor and are very creative. We’ve seen someother publishing companies do the exacu



PLR - I've been using "rewritten" public domain content to help fill up my new PLR site.

asurehunter.com/2010/10/28/follow-along-as-mandy-learns-to-

You can read about how I'm using Public Domain content for some of my articles:

http://www.publicdomaintreuse-public-domain-content/

Cookbooks and/or

out it here:

Public Domain Cookbook Empire

Cooking Related Blog Content

I've done this! I love it! You can read ab

http://www.publicdomaintreasurehunter.com/2010/10/28/follow-along-as-mandy-learns-to-use-public-domain-content/




Are There Any Good Sources of Public Domain Content On The Internet? Yes! There are. There are thousands of really good online sources for Public Domain content – it’s like a giant warehouse for hidden public domain gold - the challenge is that they can be extremely difficult to find sometimes.

Just try going to Google and searching for “Public Domain” content and you’ll see what I mean. This method of trying to find public domain content will drive you nuts and make you throw yours hands up in disgust and you’ll probably give up very quickly.

You’ll find that’s it not very hard to find sites that have collections of public domain works that you can download and start using right away. You just have to know where to look and how to find them.

There is public domain stuff all over the place online but here’s the catch – nobody is going to advertise the fact that their using public domain material for fear that everyone else is going to rip off their content.

Think about it - if you built a website using public domain material or created an e-book using public domain content would you tell everyone that? No way! Most likely, you’d slap a copyright notice on it and stay quite about the fact that the content is actually from the public domain.

So, what most people don’t realize is that there are thousands of websites that are built from public domain content but how do you know which ones? You don’t.

Here is the biggest challenge most people face when it comes to the public domain – They have no idea how to tap into this vast treasure of public domain works.

The big question becomes – How do I find Public Domain works, especially the really good stuff that I can use to create products that people will actually want to buy?

That’s a great question and it’s at the heart of what this report is really all about – how to find good, high-quality public domain works that you can use right now to create products that are relevant to our times, based on popular subject matter, that people will actually whip out their credit cards to buy?




Now here is the hard truth – there is no one database of every work that has ever fallen into the public domain. There is no one place that you can go that lists every single book ever published in the U.S. or abroad that no longer has copyright protection.

Nobody advertises this stuff. There’s no blinking neon signs to be found that say “Hey! Over here! I’m no longer protected by copyright laws and you use me anyway you want!”. If there were such a thing there really wouldn’t be any need for a kit such as this.

Nope. The only way to uncover public domain material in most cases is through detailed research and investigation. But not to worry – I've got the map!

Here’s another revelation for you that I have learned from hard-won experience and hundreds of hours of research……

I'm telling you – the really good stuff, the stuff that is the most commercially viable (profitable) hasn’t made it online yet.

When hunting for good public domain content, I spend most of our time and energy out in the real world – used book stores, libraries, etc. and online used book portals such as Alibris and AbeBooks.

Now, I don’t want to give you the wrong impression here – you can find some really good stuff online, tons of good stuff.

The point I am trying to express to you is that if you only limit your searches for public domain content to the online world you are making a huge mistake and really limiting the results of your searches.

Just keep that in mind.


How Long Does Copyright Protection Last And How Long Does It Take A Work To Fall Into The Public Domain?

1. Any work published in the U.S. before 1923 is now in the Public Domain.

2. Any work published in the U.S. between the years 1923 and 1963 could potentially be in the Public Domain if it’s copyright protection was not renewed in it’s 28th year after publication.



n 3. Some works published after 1963 could be

in the public domain depending on certaicriteria.

4. All work created by the U.S. Federal government are automatically in the Public Domain.

5. Many works are donated to the Public Domain

6. Many works are automatically in the Public Domain as soon as they are created.

My favorite area is number 2 above as I believe that this forty year period contains the best, most commercially viable (i.e. salable) works.

Don’t get me wrong – there’s a ton of great stuff that was published before 1923 that you can repackage and sell as well.

When Dealing With Books, Doesn’t “Out of Print” Mean Public Domain? I was surprised to find that some people think that when a book is “Out of Print” that means that the book’s copyright has expired and it is no longer protected.

Sorry, wrong again.

Being out of print has nothing to do with the status of the book’s copyright protection. Lots and lots of books are currently out of print but that doesn’t mean that the copyright has expired, just that for whatever reason the publisher isn’t printing anymore copies at that particular period in time.




This could be for a variety of different reasons, usually because the book wasn’t selling very well (not necessarily because the book is no good, it may not have been marketed properly or met initial sales expectations).

Even a book originally published just a year ago can currently be in “out of print” status, but the copyright for the work won’t expire for another seventy years. Same thing with a book published thirty years ago. It may not currently be “in print” but it is still protected by copyright law.

As you start hunting for potential public domain works that you can use, you will run across many, many publications that are currently “out of print”. Just don’t confuse “out of print” with Public Domain.

If A Work Doesn’t Include A Written Copyright Notice Does That Mean That It’s Not Protected? Not necessarily.

There was a time that every work had to include a valid copyright notice to be legally protected by U.S. Copyright Law and we will be talking about this a little later.

What you need to know here is that as of March 1, 1989 it became optional in the U.S. to include a copyright notice on any work. Even without the notice, any work created after March 1, 1989 could be protected by copyright.

This is true for anything – articles, advertisements, works of art, images, books, movies. So, don’t make the mistake of assuming that something is copyright free just because there is no copyright notice on it.

Most publishers still include the copyright notice just to make it absolutely clear that the work is protected, but many don’t.

The best policy is to just always assume that if you are looking at a creative work, it is copyright protected unless proven otherwise. Don’t try to use it without permission.

A work published in the U.S. before 1989 without a valid copyright notice could very well be in the Public Domain.




Can I Do Anything I Want With A Public Domain Work Including Changing The Title Or Claiming Authorship? Absolutely! You can do anything you want with the material ~ that’s the whole point! You can claim authorship, you can change the title, and you can edit all of the material in any way you see fit.

A public domain work is like putty in your hands and can be “sculpted” into anything your creativity and ingenuity can come up with!

If you feel uncomfortable claiming authorship, you could always keep the original authors name intact and establish yourself as the “publisher” or “editor”.

It’s really all up to what your marketing angle is for the product. In some cases, I will slap my name on the product as the author (actually, I almost always use a pen name), but more often than not, I will use the original author’s name to establish credibility especially if the author is well known in the particular niche that I'm working in.

For instance if you have a product that teaches people how to draw cartoons, it would be much better to have a well known cartoon artist’s name attached to it rather than just your own. This way you can play off of the author’s credibility and name recognition in your sales copy for the product.

Keeping the author’s name and adding your own as the editor or the publisher is a great way to qualify yourself to be able to sell the product in your customer’s eyes. You don’t have to be the expert, just the editor.

I almost always recommend changing the title of a work because in most cases, you can come up with a better title than the original. You can come up with an exciting, colorful, benefit-driven title that will grab people’s attention.

Another major benefit of changing the title is that you make the work your own unique product only available through you. If you use the same title and the original author you make it really easy for someone to find the same work somewhere else online (unless the original is scarce) or even worse, you could be announcing to your competition that the work is in the Public Domain. You’d be giving them the exact title and author making it really easy for them to go get their own copy of the same work and create a directly competing product.




How Can I Protect My Products From Being Ripped Off If Someone Discovers That They Are Based On Public Domain Content? This question was asked in variety of different ways but the essence of it is this – what can I do to make a public domain work my own unique product, fully protected by copyright law?

In other words, “How can I keep other people’s hands out of my cookie jar?”

The first thing you have to understand is that once material is in the Public Domain, it’s there for good. If you use Public Domain material as is (without modification), anyone has the right to take that material and use for their own purposes.

You don’t want other marketers ripping you off, stealing your products and claiming them as their own.

In order to protect your products, you’ll need to do a few simple things that will make your work eligible for copyright protection. Now, you can’t just re-copyright a public domain work as is, you have to create what is referred to as a “derivative work”.

A derivative work is when you take another work (one that you have the legal rights to such as a public domain work) and use it to create a new original work. You can then copyright protect this new work.

Here is what I usually do to with a public domain work to satisfy the minimal creativity requirements and produce a derivative work that qualifies for copyright protection:

Change the title. Add an introduction to the report or book written by "me". Expand the original material adding my own original content like notes,

comments, and updating out-dated language, etc. Add pictures to the text. Sometimes I will modify the text if the language seems too old or stuffy. Sometimes I will add whole new chapters to the book if I feel something was left out.

Doing any of the above things will produce a derivative work which is then copyright protected and will help fend off most would-be thieves.

You must understand this though – when you create a derivative work, only the changes and things that you have added are protected, not the original public domain material.

In other words, someone could still come along and extract the public domain content (if they somehow found that it was in the Public Domain) from your work and legally use it but they can’t use your original stuff.

The Essential Public Domain Treasure Hunter’s Reference Guide

© 2011 Chameleon Computer Services Inc. All Rights Reserved.

www.PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com Unauthorized duplication or distribution is strictly prohibited.

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Your job is to make it hard to tell what’s in the public domain and what’s not by implementing the actions we have recommended above.

And of course, under no circumstances would you advertise that your product is based on Public Domain material in the first place.

This brings up another really important point and I am sharing this with you to keep you out of trouble – Always Go Back To The Original Source!

What I mean is, never copy a copy if you can avoid it. If you know that someone else’s product is based on a Public Domain work and you would like to create a similar product, don’t try to use theirs, go find the original work that they used to create their product and use the original to create your own unique product.

So the moral of the story is this – don’t use someone else’s derivative work, use what you have learned to go find the original public domain work to create your own unique copyright protected products.

What About The Competition?

Many people seem concerned about the level of competition in their respective marketplaces. Their belief is that if too many people start marketing the same type of products (that is, there is too much competition in one niche), it isn’t as profitable as before to start a business in that niche. This is true no matter what market you’re working in. I can understand the concern however, it’s important to understand the ‘nature’ of the Public Domain. The Public Domain is not a business in itself. It is the information, the knowledge contained in public domain works that can be used within a business. In other words, the public domain is a very powerful resource. Nothing else. What is true is that since everybody can essentially use the same information, you can have a situation in which the same knowledge, packaged in more or less the same formats, is saturating the market. You have a situation where the public – the people buying your products, now have 10, or even 20 similar products to choose from. That’s not an enviable position to be in. Heck, it’s almost like you were a real-world business.




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It’s the same situation many brick and mortar (for that matter, many online businesses as well) are in right now, and while many are failing, many are also quite successful in what they do. So, what’s going on? Isn’t market saturation bad? Economics tells us that if supply (you and your competition) is higher than the demand (the people’s need to buy that particular information or product), then you’re in for a bummer. With more sellers and less buyers, prices will fall and profits will vanish. So what’s an honest guy (or gal) gonna do? Follow solid business advice. Don’t move into a market that’s already too saturated unless:

You have considerable experience in running a business

You have a special advantage in that market AND

You have multiple streams of income to fall back on in case this deal goes bad.

Find a niche that has little competition, or still room for entry

Select your business model

Use public domain works as your product / content source, and

Market your business like crazy.

Thanks to the abundance of online scams such as the ‘get-rich-quick’ schemes prevalent on the Internet, people seem to have forgotten that while there may be a thousand and one ways to make money, there are always a few core principles that invariably apply whenever you’re talking about building a business or an alternate income stream. But enough about that. Let’s concentrate on the ‘competition’ factor in the public domain. From what you’ve learned so far, you should know that the ‘competition’ itself is not a product of the public domain. Far from it.




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What Should I Do To Protect Myself If Someone Challenges My Claim That A Work Is In The Public Domain? The best way to protect yourself is by being organized. I keep permanent file folders for each of my Public Domain projects that contain all of the support documentation for that project just in case somebody decides to “blow the whistle” on me.

It's the same as PLR and Resell Rights Products you purchase. You should always keep the documentation that proves you have the rights to use the content.

In this folder I keep a copy of the original work if possible or at least a photocopy of the copyright page that shows the title, author, publisher, and copyright date.

I also keep all of my notes explaining how I found the work, the process I went through to verify the work is in the Public Domain, and the results of my copyright renewal search.

If you had the U.S. Copyright Office or a private search firm run the copyright check for you, you would want to keep the results of their search in this folder too.

Basically, you just want to have a paper trail that documents all of your efforts to ensure that the work is in the Public Domain.

If you ever get a “Cease & Desist” letter from another entity claiming that they are the copyright owners of the work in question, respond to the letter immediately, don’t ignore it.

Tell them you are investigating their claims. Then double check all of your work to verify whether or not they may be right.

If you are sure that the work is in the Public Domain and you don’t want to give up the right to use the material (especially if it’s proven valuable to you), then you can decide where to go from there but by staying organized from the beginning, you’ll have everything you need to back up your claims.

I personally have never been challenged, in fact, I've had nothing but

favorable experiences using Public Domain works.




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The Future Of The Public Domain More content is being added to the public domain every day.

This is another area where people are often ignorant, or just don’t make the effort to think hard (no offense, it’s our job to get those creative juices flowing, just hang on for a little while longer) When most Internet Marketers talk about the public domain, they only talk about books and recipes and self-improvement courses. Now, this is either because they don’t know better, or they’re not telling you everything. In both cases, they are doing you a huge disservice.

The future of Public Domain is in its diversity. With government publications on environmental issues, public health issues, and many more subjects of relevant interest being placed in the public domain every year, this is just ONE of the sources of public domain that you can use to generate a stable income stream. And of course, the public domain is not limited to books and reports. You have art, music, software, and most importantly, ideas. Ideas are not the property of any one person. Therefore, any idea, any great theory, any great scientific achievement can be used without fear of legal reprisals. How does this help you? There is more than one way of profiting from a niche. For now, remember this:

The Public Domain is far wider, and far deeper an ocean than you think (and the

Internet Marketing gurus would have you believe).

Warmly,

THAT Public Domain Diva



www.PublicDomainTreasureHunter.com

Ready to get serious about Public Domain profits?

Check out my best selling Public Domain training package,

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