Public Domain Profit Centers - Amazon S3 · Public Domain Profit Centers ©2016&Tony&Laidig&&&&&!""9"!&&&&&PublicDomainUniversity.com& PublicDomain4is4notprotected4by4copyrightlaw

Public Domain Profit Centers

©2016 Tony Laidig -‐ 1 -‐ PublicDomainUniversity.com



Public Domain

Profit Centers

The Public Domain Code Book 2.0

Tony Laidig The Public Domain Expert http://publicdomainuniversity.com



LEGAL NOTICE

© 2016 – Tony Laidig. All rights reserved.

The Publisher has strived to be as accurate and complete as possible in the creation of

this report, notwithstanding the fact that he does not warrant or represent at any time

that the contents within are accurate due to the rapidly changing nature of the Internet.

While all attempts have been made to verify information provided in this publication,

the Publisher assumes no responsibility for errors, omissions, or contrary interpretation

of the subject matter herein. Any perceived slights of specific persons, peoples, or

organizations are unintentional.

In practical advice books, like anything else in life, there are no guarantees of income

made. Readers are cautioned to rely on their own judgment about their individual

circumstances to act accordingly.

This book is not intended for use as a source of legal, business, accounting or financial

advice. All readers are advised to seek services of competent professionals in legal,

business, accounting, and finance field.

This is NOT a free book. It is for personal use only. It cannot be given away in any form

and cannot be sold or offered as a bonus.



Table of Contents

Introduction ............................................................................................... 5

Public Domain – A Primer ........................................................................... 6

Are Public Domain Profits Here to Stay? .................................................. 15

How to Profit From Public Domain Works ............................................... 22

Copyright Made Easy ................................................................................ 41

Copyright Research Step-‐by Step ............................................................. 44

Using the Links ......................................................................................... 48

Book Links ........................................................................................... 49

Media Links ......................................................................................... 58

Sheet Music ......................................................................................... 75

Software ............................................................................................. 81

Audio .................................................................................................. 85

Video .................................................................................................. 95

Government Links ............................................................................. 103

Copyright Info ................................................................................... 107

Using Public Domain Works for Product Development ......................... 111

Innovation and Creativity ....................................................................... 128

Product Creation Outline ....................................................................... 141

Software and Productivity Tools for Information Product Creation ...... 145

The Public Domain in the UK and Other Countries ................................ 151

Appendix One Google Books Research Tricks ................................................................ 166

Appendix Two Niche (and Public Domain) Research With a Spin .................................. 175

Appendix Three Find the Experts! .................................................................................... 179

Appendix Four Print-‐on-‐Demand Printers and Publishers Resource Guide ................... 184



Introduction

If you have followed my writing for very long, you know that I’ve spent a LOT of time

and research on all things Public Domain. It’s been an exciting and profitable (VERY

profitable) journey that began with my very first product, the extremely popular, “Public

Domain Code Book.” In that book, I offered a collection of nearly 300 websites that offer

all types of Public Domain works…from books and videos, to photographs, illustrations

and so much more. Since the release of the Code Book a few years ago, I’ve continued

to research websites to find great Public Domain content. This book, “Public Domain

Profit Centers: The Public Domain Code Book 2.0,” shares the additional results of that

ongoing research by providing an additional 230+ websites for you to loot for Public

Domain treasure.

I have a saying that I’ve used for a while now that goes like this:

“You can’t find what you don’t know to look for!”

The certainly holds true in any situation and certainly when it comes to the Public

Domain…which is why I’ve made it my mission to TELL you and SHOW you what to look

for and where to find it. That’s the purpose of this book, just like the first volume of the

Public Domain Code Book. Unlike the first book, however, I’ve also included detailed

sections on Copyright Research and Product Creation…two vital keys to achieving

success when using Public Domain works.

The truth of the matter is that the Public Domain is the BEST source for proven

content…PERIOD! No other content source even comes close! And trust me, you and I

will never tap it out…it’s just too vast. So here’s to your content finding success! Let’s

get started!!



Public Domain – A Primer

If you already know what the Public Domain is, feel free to skim through this chapter,

although there are lots of useful tips that can spark fresh business ideas for you in the

pages that follow.

What is the public domain?

If you want to succeed with using the proven content of the Public Domain, you have to

have a basic understanding exactly what the Public Domain is.

The Public Domain refers to published or unpublished ‘works’ that are not protected by

the U.S. copyright law and encompasses all creative works and other mediums of

information that are not protected by copyright law.

Note: ‘Work’ refers to anything that can possibly be published and sold including

books, courses, instruction manuals, music, movies, photographs, reports,

recipes, ideas, inventions and much, much more.

In the next few pages, I will answer all your questions concerning copyright: How does

the copyright law work? How do you find out if a work is copyrighted or not? Where do

patents figure into all this? How do we distinguish between ‘ideas’ and the work itself?

What about derivative works?

Before we tackle the meaty issues such as copyright law and the other questions, let’s

see how something can fall into the public domain.



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 Pomain,

and some of these are listed below:

Note: Copyright concerns will be addressed in much greater detail later in this book.

• 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).

• The work is a publication by the government, related agencies and/or officials.

Specifically, the U.S. 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 in the late 1800s and the early 1900s (late 19th

century and early 20th century) 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. However, all is not as simple as it first seems, and the

chapter on copyright law maps all legal aspects of such a situation.

• 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.

Through these methods of identity shared above, we are provided access to the largest,

most vast collection of intellectual property and proven content on the planet. A little

later in this book, we will take a more in-‐depth look at how to determine whether a

work is indeed in the Public Domain. I’ve also included a step-‐by-‐step process list for

easily determining the copyright status of a work. The scope of just how massive the

Public Domain is will literally boggle your mind and make you giddy with excitement

once you realize how many opportunities you now have for product creation success!

Why are Public Domain works profitable?

The most important and exciting benefit with 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 is 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 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, videos, audios, 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.

Who can make money from the public domain?

As it can be expected, knowing that something is profitable is not enough. You might

think that finding and creating a saleable product from the Public Domain is too much

work, or you may think it costs too much. You could also be worried that you don’t have

the right ‘business experience’ to pull off such a venture. Worse yet, you may think

you’re totally not an ‘Internet’ person.

These are valid fears, although completely unnecessary. In fact, as this book will help

you learn, Public Domain works are the best way to immediately create quick-‐selling

products, especially if you’re just starting out in setting up your business. It doesn’t

matter if you’re particularly knowledgeable about business matters or the Internet. Let

me ask you to consider the following...



Can you:

• Spare around 1-‐2 hours a day towards a project that could build you a significant

stream of secondary income?

• Follow step-‐by-‐step instructions that will help you locate the most profitable

areas and evaluate an idea’s profitability?

That’s it. In theory this book asks you to do nothing, and only concentrates on showing

you how to create a profitable stream of income (is there any other kind?) from using

Public Domain works.

In reality, I’m asking you to spend a fraction of your daily time in making a better life

for yourself.

Anyone can profit from Public Domain works. All you need is:

• A willingness to earn more money.

• 1 to 2 hours a day working on your new income stream.

Of course, you can choose to work a lot more – maybe 4 hours, or even 6 hours, daily.

But that won’t change your level of success, it will only help you reach your destination

and build your income stream faster.

In other words, if this book can help you get a viable business started in as little as 5

weeks (by spending just 2 hours a day!), spending more time on this would help you get

started earlier.



How can you use Public Domain works?

There are countless ways that you can make money with Public Domain works, and my

chapter on ‘How to Profit from Public Domain Works’ looks not only at a comprehensive

list of ways to generate cash from Public Domain works, but it also outlines a pattern for

you to create your own ways of earning money from the Public Domain.

Here are just a few ways you can use to create cash-‐producing products from Public

Domain works. We’ll examine many more of the countless possibilities later in this book:

• Re-‐publish Public Domain content – A lot of the information is relevant today.

Books on recipes, public speaking, hobbies and learning languages all contain

knowledge that is applicable to our time (50 or 60 years don’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 works 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. I’ve found that Public Domain magazines are the perfect source for

content of this type…especially for blog sites!

• 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 from the same information. Re-‐purposing content is a powerful

weapon in money-‐making success!

• 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

your book. This immediately increases the value of what you’re selling.

These few ideas are literally just 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. Here’s a quick

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. Here are insights

into what you can do with that book.

Your first step would be of course to have the book scanned (via an OCR service) and

converted into an editable format such as MS Word or even simple text files. I use

Adobe Acrobat Pro, but you can also use an OCR program called FreeOCR

(http://www.softi.co.uk/freeocr.htm).

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?



You can:

• Break up the book into separate articles, build a website around the content and

earn AdSense revenue off 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.

These are just a few ideas that can be put into practice quickly and easily. We’ll explore

even more opportunities for you shortly, but first, let’s examine whether working with

Public Domain content actually makes sense from a future perspective.



Are Public Domain Profits

Here to Stay?

It’s true. The proverbial cat has been let out of the bag, and by now you’ll see many

people talking about the Public Domain…and that’s where a lot of newcomers hesitate.

They are afraid that the Public Domain resources will once lots of people get to know

about them. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. While Public Domain

works are finite only in quantity (even though we’re talking about an unfathomable

amount of content); their usage is not finite at all.

Are Public Domain works a finite, free-‐usage resource?

While Public Domain works ARE finite, there are still more books, magazines, films,

images, etc. than you and me and everyone else could possibly use in our lifetimes of

product creation. But more than that, Public Domain works cannot be ‘used up’ like a

regular resource, such as oil or coal. So if one entrepreneur (or infopreneur) uses a

Public Domain work on ‘making more money’ or ‘public speaking’, there is nothing

stopping you from using the same resource for your own business venture.

How does that work?

Let’s take a real-‐world, non Public Domain example. Consider the number of pizza joints

in your town? I’m sure there are many, aren’t there? And yet almost every month or so

you hear a new pizza place opening up. Essentially, what are these people doing?

They are taking an idea, and differentiating it to build a business.



There’s a powerful business idea enshrined in that sentence. What is it?

There are seldom new ideas, but there are always new products.

You don’t need to ‘invent’ something, or ‘create’ something that is ‘new’. In fact, all you

need to do is follow the two basic marketing principles:

• Find an idea / need that is in hot demand

• Find a new way to package and sell that idea / solution.

There are details, but if you are looking to keep one eye on the ‘big picture’, these are

the two steps any successful business MUST have taken.

In future chapters, I’ll tell you in more detail how to apply these core business rules into

your Public Domain venture, but for now let’s focus on what we’ve learned so far: How

you can use the same information / Public Domain work that someone else has used,

and create your own product from it! Now let’s take a look at another key issue

surrounding this method…market competition.

Public Domain – What About the Competition?

You may have a concern 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. 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. While it is

true 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.

So is it really a bad position to be in?

It is 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?

Yes. 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 difficult time. With more sellers and less buyers, prices will fall and profits will

vanish. That’s why it’s SO important to follow the solid business advice I’m about to

share here. Do not move into a market that’s already too saturated unless:

• You have considerable experience in running a business in that market

• You have a special advantage in that market AND

• You already have multiple streams of income to fall back on in case this deal

goes bad.

Instead, consider…

• 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.

Yes, that’s right. As I’ll show you in the ‘How to Profit from Public Domain Works’

chapter, building a business from Public Domain works is not too different from building

any other business, whether it’s online or as a brick-‐and-‐mortar.

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 making money, there are always a few core principles that invariably apply

whenever you’re talking about building a business or an alternate income stream.

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. Even if many people end up using the same

Public Domain resource, the results eventually depend on the niche you are trying to

establish yourself in.

If you pick a hyper-‐competitive niche like Internet Marketing, you’re bound to get lost in

the crowd. Think about who you will be competing with! Instead, if you choose a less-‐

known but profitable niche (a hobby like poker is well-‐known and already covered, yet

hobbies like yachting and sailing still have room for competition), even if there are

others marketing the same material, you’ll still have some of the market share easily

available to yourself.

There’s a lot more to this. You need to learn how to package your product, how to

leverage your visitors’ interests and most importantly, how to drive traffic to your

website.

But before we go there, here’s one more question people always ask me:



The Public Domain is limited. Even if it will never be ‘used up’, it’s going to be used more

and more compared to what will be added to it in the next few years. What will happen

then? Will the Public Domain become useless?

The Future of Public Domain

Will the Public Domain, without being ‘used up’, become useless? The answer is an

emphatic NO, and the reasons lie in the definition of ‘Public Domain’.

Any work that does not fall under the copyright law.

This also includes works that were published BEFORE copyright law ever existed.

The magnitude of this is not easy to comprehend. Apart from having over a century’s

worth of literature and publications available, you potentially have about a millennia

worth of ‘creative work’ at your disposal. I repeat, a millennia worth of creative work. A

thousand years. At least. The numbers are vast. Yes, a cynic would say that a lot of those

publications cannot be used in today’s world because they are out-‐of-‐date.

Unfortunately, that has more to do with your approach to business. A product does not

always solve a problem. It can also fulfill the need for knowledge, or plain old emotional

attachment.

In the next chapter I will talk to you about a powerful strategy that you can use to profit

from old works that will open your mind to at least a dozen different ideas – all worth a

lot of money.

So, first off, there is literally so much content wealth in the Public Domain that many

regular people don’t know about, that there is no chance of the Public Domain ‘running



out’ of options for the foreseeable future. And then, of course, more work is being

added to the Public Domain every day…especially in the form of Government works.

This is another area where people are often ignorant, or just don’t make the effort to

think hard (no offense, it’s my 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.

That’s the beauty of the Public Domain. It tells you what you should already know. 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. In the

next chapter, this, and many other strategies on how to profit from the Public Domain

are revealed to you.

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). It literally is nearly limitless

containing hundreds of millions of works of all types!



How to Profit From

Public Domain Works

I wrote this book for two different types of people. One, the complete newbie, whose

first exposure to the Public Domain was designed to be this book. In that regard, the

first three chapters have been an introduction to the Public Domain and its advantages

(and issues).

The second type of person I wrote this for is someone who already knows a bit about

the Public Domain, and is savvy enough to know that all he/she really needs are some

guideline! This is the type of person who is ready to go ahead and build their first public-‐

domain powered online business in a week. If that’s your aim, then give this chapter a

thorough double-‐read. This chapter alone is worth the price of this book! The ideas you

will find here can be used instantly, and will help you super-‐charge your business

growth.

Business Principles

In any business, whether an online retail store or a membership website, or anything in

between, there are some specific business rules that must be followed so that the

owner can achieve the primary goal: make money. Now you don’t have to spend hours

and hours working on your business, and you most certainly don’t have to turn over

outrageous profits every month. In reality, every business owner has different needs,

and different goals set for their business.

When I started out, I was managing a commercial printing company that was going

through some hard times, and I was looking for alternative ways to make some extra

income. This was back in the mid-‐eighties, well before the Internet or eBay. It was many



years later that I began using Public Domain works online to help build my business. As a

newcomer to making money online, it was certainly a business education process that

has paid off for me. You, on the other hand, may be well-‐versed in the business world

and could be raring to go full-‐tilt at a profitable business opportunity.

If that describes you, consider this a refresher course. You are of course free to skip this

section, but not only would you be missing out on a concise ‘checklist’ of must-‐know

items, but you’ll also be ignoring the possibility that you may pick-‐up something new…a

certain idea…that could help you easily increase your profits. That is precisely why I’m

putting so much emphasis on the basics. By constantly re-‐evaluating yourself and your

business, you will not only be able to figure out the strengths and improve upon them,

but…

You will also pick out things you might not be doing so well on, and use these

principles to get your business back on track.

So what are these ‘common-‐sense’ principles? We’ve talked about them briefly before,

but let’s look at them at detail.

Ø Forget new ideas, find new products

This principle has been talked about by many top business gurus in many different ways.

One common example is: ‘Copy the masters’. In effect, the trick here is to understand

that ideas by themselves are a dime a dozen. In fact, there are very few ‘new’ ideas, and

chances are that you and I won’t stumble upon any new ones in our lifetime (although

you’re welcome to try).

Instead, what you should concentrate on is to find new ways to market ‘old’ ideas. How

can you do that?



• Differentiate your product – Instead of selling old and rare books, work on

building a niche for yourself on old philosophical works only. This is a very viable

business idea and I’ll tell you how in a little while.

• Find new ways to sell an existing product – The usual example given here is to

convert an e-‐book or how-‐to course into a series of audio tapes or videos.

However, you can also take an existing Public Domain work and split it up into

several parts, and sell them separately – a Public Domain work on poker

strategies could be divided into 3 parts – poker games, poker history and poker

strategies.

• Create a new product out of an old idea.

Ø Go where the money is

Marketers, especially Internet Marketers trying to sell you products, talk about ‘hot’

markets. Jimmy D. Brown calls it ‘burning needs’ (a misquote, I’m sure). Whatever you

want to name it, it makes sense to target products and markets that have a heavy

demand – lots of buyers. But that’s not the only consideration, is it?

Keep an eye out for the other side of the marketing equation – the supply side. Wading

into a highly competitive marketplace is risky if you’re starting your first business. Find a

market which still has room for more competition (the demand / supply ratio is high)

and where the market is large enough to be profitable (targeting Ugandan farmers isn’t

exactly a killer idea – targeting African farmers is a better idea scale-‐wise, but then you

run into purchasing power.)

In other words, pick a market where:



• The buyers are willing AND able

• The suppliers are not too great in number (Internet Marketing is inherently a tough

niche to enter precisely because every one tries to sell marketing products)

• The market is big enough to make a profit and expand in the future.

Ø Do your homework

Research is critical to any business success. In the context of an online business, there

are specific tools and strategies that you use to research and evaluate business

opportunities. I share some of the tools I use later in the book, but here are a few

research strategies you can begin to use right now:

• Find a thriving niche that still has room to grow – Forget about finding

undiscovered niches right from the word go. Instead, target a broad niche that is

not so competitive, and then find your own, unoccupied sub-‐niche within that

market.

• Evaluate your business idea – there are several ways you can measure the

profitability of a market. The key factors that you have to consider are:

o Are people buying this product / service like crazy? Find out what people

are buying through popular sites like Amazon, ClickBank, Ebay,

Commission Junction, 2Checkout and other similar websites.

o Find out the demand / supply ratios – how many people are searching for

items in this niche on the Internet (in popular search engines such as

Yahoo Search, Google and Msn Search) and compare that with how much



competition there is (the number of results for that search term in each

of the major search engines. Instead of doing the hard number crunching

work yourself, look through the resources section and use online tools

such as WordTracker to get your results.

o Find out how much people are spending on advertising in this market – A

great strategy to discover this is to analyze pay-‐per-‐click engines and

calculate what your competition is spending for each of your target

keywords.

Ø Business Model

Your business model should be designed to suit the niche that you are trying to

dominate. For best results you will always use a mixture of approaches, and it’s best to

understand that some tools such as email marketing (newsletters and ezines) apply to

any business model.

For example, online businesses generally fall into 3 categories:

• Sell products – Within this category you will find businesses that sell single

products (the popular mini-‐sites based on the Internet Marketing model),

affiliate businesses, online stores, and relevant to our Public Domain discussion,

content-‐rich niche websites that sell a mixture of own and affiliate products.

Public Domain products are ideal because they take very little time to prepare

and save you a lot of time when starting up an online business.

• Memberships – An excellent choice if you have a lot of quality content and plan

on adding to it regularly. The same is with providing templates (websites,

resumes, project management, any templates in general), software and access



to forums instead of providing content per se. Unless the ‘product’ is

continuously updated, you’d be better off marketing it a one-‐time sale.

However, membership websites are often more lucrative because the demands

on your time for updating your content are far less than releasing a new product.

Use your selected Public Domain work to start up a membership website, and

supplement your updates with more Public Domain information.

• Sell Services – Typical examples include search engine optimization experts,

copywriting experts, business consultants, real estate and of course, lawyers. No

matter what your profession, service selling is a popular choice, and Public

Domain information can be used to your advantage. For example, if you are a

business consultant, use Public Domain information to provide content on

making money, entrepreneurship and people management to prove to your

visitors that you are ‘an’ expert in your field, so that they can trust you and end

up hiring you. The same approach can work for other fields – copywriting, tax

help (government publications are public domain, remember?) and even self-‐

improvement (think seminars and Public Domain information).

Ø Market

If there is one bit of advice I can offer you, whether it be about marketing or business

success in general, it is a quote from Russell Crowe in Gladiator:

“On my mark, unleash hell.”

Yes, you might have heard one or two other marketers quoting this very same line. And

with good reason. That one line epitomizes the very core of what all marketing

programs teach you. Here’s a break down:



• Find your target – Pick a market that is favorable for approach. It doesn’t

have to be the perfect idea, just one that works on paper, and most

importantly, something that you know you can do while maintaining interest.

• Prepare your approach – Mark out the main spots – what sort of advertising

mediums can be used, what your budget is, what your exact strategy for each

medium is. No need to go into excruciating details, but you should know, for

example, your allocated monthly budget for your PPC campaign, your target

keywords and the expected cost-‐per-‐click for each keyword. This will at the

very least help you monitor your advertising and tune it based on the results.

• Intense marketing – There are two different approaches in this regard. Use

the first one if you can afford to spend a lot of money on traffic, use the

second if most of your advertising budget will be paid for by your business

even at the start.

§ All-‐out marketing, pulling out all the stops at once, complete

blanketing of your target market

§ Slow build-‐up, tackling different advertising mediums one by one,

building to crescendo effect where at the end, you replicate the effect

in the ‘all-‐out marketing’ technique.

Taken by itself, the term ‘unleash hell’ is also used to enshrine another valuable

business lesson:

If you have a product, or a business idea, or a service to sell, GET IT OUT THERE! Take

your business to the market first, worry about refining and managing later.



Essentially, don’t wait ten months (like I did) to find the perfect idea. Pick an idea that’s

good enough, and launch your business. If you are a resume writer and want to sell your

services online, throw up a website, put up your basic contact and payment information

and BEGIN PROMOTION.

I cannot stress this enough. Too often people wait too long until they have the ‘finished’

product before starting their marketing campaigns. You, a newcomer, shouldn’t waste

your time like that. Your product will be developed along the way through customer

interaction anyway. On the other hand, there is no way you’ll make any money without

traffic.

So go get that traffic, and ‘perfection’ will come in due time.

Ø Spot the trend, and ride it

When you are looking for a new business idea, use social and marketing trends to help

you out. For an extreme example, Internet Marketers seem to use every holiday, be it

1st January, 25th December, 4th of July or even April 1st, to offer special deals and

discounts in order to make a few more sales.

You can use the same strategy but come off looking good. How? Here’s the low-‐down

on spotting trends and profiting from them.

• Use seasons and times of the year to see when is the best time to launch your

business. For example, if you want to sell customized t-‐shirts, when do you think

it would be better to start? Summer? No. Start in winter so that you’re prepared

for the spring wardrobe change.



• Look to developing interests through international events (sports, social,

political, cultural and even economic) to use locally in your business. From

simple things like using your favorite soccer club’s recent success by offering

souvenirs and special discounts to elaborate business investments such as

sponsorships and partnerships with other businesses, it’s always important to

keep your business grounded in real-‐world events.

• Movie releases, books, public events and seasons tend to increase peoples’

interests in various topics. And what is the primary method for people to search

for information? The Internet! Cash in on trends by having the right ‘information’

ready in time, and then use that traffic any way you choose (hopefully to make a

lot of money). In the next section I’ll tell you some excellent ideas on using Public

Domain works to profit from trends.

Specific Money Generating PD Ideas

By now you should have at least a dozen business ideas storming in your head. In this

section, I’ll show you how to use those ideas and combine them with the Public Domain

to create instant products and in the end, instant businesses.

Ø Profit from trends

Remember Dan Brown’s ‘The Da Vinci Code’? The book was an instant success, and is a

guaranteed best seller. Ever since its release, interest in the book, and especially the

ideas and controversies it raises, has risen exponentially. Even back in April 2005, almost

a year after the book’s release, the term ‘da vinci code’ generated over 5000 searches

on Overture per day, and when you convert that number to Google (a rough estimate

puts Google searches to be at a ratio of 8:1 to that of Overture, but we’ll take a

conservative estimate of 5:1), you get almost 1 million searches per month. And this



number continues to be relatively constant, especially with the new movie coming out,

“Angels and Demons.” Currently the competition for the website is roughly twice as

much, but that is only due to the book’s popularity over the last 6 to 8 months.

So how could you profit from it? Simple; use the Public Domain to provide images and

articles on the topics discussed in the book (the Priory of Sion, the ‘sacred feminine’,

Leonardo Da Vinci and his paintings, to name a few) and use AdSense to raise income

from the website itself. With your content coming from the public domain, and your

traffic coming from the search engines and PPC engines (even today the cost-‐per-‐click

for keywords related to the book are between 10 to 25 cents), you also have the

opportunity to sell the Public Domain information in the form of a product – perhaps

you find an old treatise discussing Da Vinci’s treatment of Mona Lisa and The Last

Supper, or maybe you find an authentic history of the master artist.

Lessons?

Keep your eyes open for major search trends launched by movies and books that

prompt a massive interest in history, religion, geography or even science – it is quite

possible find such topics freely and heavily available in the public domain.

Ø Instant Information Products

The Public Domain has the power to provide you with instant products. Pick a niche,

evaluate its profitability, and use a Public Domain work to immediately launch your info-‐

product business. A stunning example of this is how you can use courses and books

directly from the early 20th century to re-‐package and sell instantly online. The value of

information in such books such as ‘The Secret of Wealth’ by Franklyn Hobbs is timeless

and easily worth your time and investment and there are many such books available on

the public domain.



Ø Membership websites

If you are looking to start a membership website that provides quality information on a

niche topic but do not want to invest too much in time and work (by writing the content

yourself or paying someone to write it), you can use Public Domain information to get

you started. Since starting membership websites traditionally need 2 to 3 months of

information before offering monthly-‐fee subscriptions, the work required is quite a lot

and if you can find Public Domain works to supplement your content, you may have hit

a potential goldmine.

Ø Create multiple delivery streams

This is a business maxim that Internet business gurus swear by. We have all heard about

the power of having multiple income streams, but that’s only half of the story. If you are

delivering products through just one medium (i.e. through info-‐products or just selling

services), you aren’t realizing the maximum potential of the income-‐generating abilities

of your business.

As flowery as that sounds, consider the impact of using an audio-‐course, memberships,

info-‐products and AdSense income on a single business venture instead of using just

AdSense on an ‘informational’ website. While such a business venture requires a lot

more work than just ‘set and forget’, you can still manage a great degree of automation.

The key is to maximize your business potential by using every possible method to profit

from your products.

Ø Expand quickly

An apparent contradiction, but in fact this is deeply inter-‐related to the previous point.

While you should attempt to maximize the potential of each business, you should start



by spreading your income base quickly by setting up 4-‐5 small online businesses and

focus on maximizing them later. With public domain, this approach is quite successful.

You can pick several Public Domain works, create different products for each of them

and after you have set up their individual websites, return to improve and diversify each

website. This will allow you to both generate multiple income streams and then

maximize the income potential of each stream within a short period of time. Imagine if

you have a site selling Public Domain-‐based content that makes you just $500 per

month and then multiply that site by 10…you’ll be making $5,000 per month! This is the

exact strategy I, and many others I know, use for generating successful income streams!

Ø Supplement your current business

So many people think of the Public Domain for starting a new business that they forget

the strongest benefit of using the Public Domain – instant content. If you already have a

business that can use supplementary content – search the Public Domain for possible

content. Not only can such new content be used to increase your AdSense income but it

can also ‘sell’ your other products and services by building your business reputation as

an expert.

Of course, it’s not always possible to find relevant content (information on the latest

microprocessor technology is unlikely to be in the Public Domain), but there are many

niches (dream interpretation is just one example) that have more or less timeless

appeal. If you operate a business that works in ‘timeless’ niches (a quick list is given later

in this chapter), the Public Domain can become a far better resource than any

ghostwriter you can ever hire!



Ø Profit from your hobbies

In any Internet Marketing basics course, the point is made time and time again that you

should choose your first business from within your own interests…areas that you’re

passionate about. Logic says that people share hobbies and interests, and if there are

enough people like you searching for information on these interests, you stand to make

some serious money.

This advice is both good and bad. While it is helpful to start a first business in a niche

that is your interest, it’s often the case that these niches are not very profitable – there

might be too much competition or not enough demand (or just not a ‘buying’ market).

On the other hand, hobbies such as bowling, playing poker, crochet patterns or even

architecture are excellent avenues for starting small public-‐domain-‐supported business

sites. By using Public Domain works that outline everything from playing tips to history

and immediately usable information (recipes for chocolate chip cookies, anyone?), you

can carve your own little niche and not only build yet another income stream, but enjoy

yourself while doing it as well.

Ø Answers to common problems

Another basic strategy is to list your daily-‐life problems – tax trouble, computer

maintenance in your office, a fear of public speaking, depression or any other personal,

professional and family troubles you may be experiencing. Once you have such a list,

turn them around into potential business ideas by finding out what people suffering

from the same problems are searching for online, and then provide them with solutions.

The Public Domain is an ideal resource for finding self-‐improvement advice, how-‐to

instruction manuals and learning courses. Whether you want to learn a new language or



improve your self-‐image, there are chances other people have the same fears and

desires, and are willing to pay for them as well.

Once you have a solid, profitable business plan for a common problem, turn it around by

using Public Domain resources to directly create a solution or use the information to

make a derivative work (expand the delivery mechanism or add some material yourself).

Note: Are you noticing a common trend here? Almost all possibilities with Public

Domain works require that you use the information as a ‘resource’. This is a critical

concept to understand. The Public Domain is not a business opportunity. It’s a crucial

resource for content and information, and if you can find the right business idea, you

can use Public Domain works to make money. But the Public Domain by itself will

rarely make you any money – you have to have a solid idea to start the process.

Ø Brainstorm

The rest of this chapter is dedicated to potential business opportunities that you can

launch with Public Domain works. Here I’m going to discuss a few popular categories

where the Public Domain is very strong, and show you how you can find your own niche

within and build a thriving money-‐making business out of it.

The core process here is to brainstorm – once you understand what the Public Domain is

about and get a clear idea of the sort of information available in the public domain, you

can then sit down and brainstorm the different sort of niches suitable for public-‐domain

driven businesses.

Here, instead of finding a business idea first and then finding the right Public Domain

resources, we will look at finding Public Domain works and creating businesses out of

them.



Ø History

History has always held a deep-‐seated interest for many people. Whether the interest is

topical (a la Da Vinci Code), or long-‐lasting, there is a lot of money to be made through

the public domain. The key here is to find the right target – you can either have

informational websites (the most common and easiest business model to set up) and

earn money through AdSense (this will cost you very little to set up, and earn you

recurring income for a long time to come) or create an informational product based on

any particular issue.

If you’re creating info-‐products for history-‐based niches, ensure that there is a lasting

demand for your product. Current events and trends are a great barometer of what

history the public is interested in. While there are always mainstay items like famous

authors and artists, topical history niches such as the Napoleonic Wars may not

generate that much interest (although you can possibly move laterally to selling war

memorablia, and use Public Domain information as content to attract visitors through

search engine).

Ø Religion & Philosophy

Religion is a sensitive topic for most people, and is bound to be controversial. That being

said, there are a lot of Public Domain works concerned with religion, and commentaries

on various faiths and critical issues in history and specific religions are very popular. As

with any business venture, take care to evaluate the profitability of a particular idea

before setting up a business, but in this case you can easily create both information sites

and info-‐products.



Philosophy has an equally important position in the public domain, and like religious

issues has a constant following of search engine traffic. The trick is, of course, to find the

right niche and plant your flag on it.

Ø The Arts

Interest in the Arts is potential goldmine, if only because of the almost ridiculous

amounts of money spent on paintings. From Sotheby to Louvre to backroom

agreements, there is definitely a lot of money involved in this niche.

The only problem is, how can you use the Public Domain to make the money train stop

at your doorstep? Simple. Build information packages on artists and their work and sell

them through your website. This is a hugely untapped niche – while there may be a lot

of competition in this area, many of these websites are old and not optimized for search

engines, meaning that with proper SEO and marketing you can easily gain good search

engine rankings.

Ø Music

Classical music has a dedicated following – but what’s even better for you as an

entrepreneur is the wealth of information ABOUT the musicians and their music in the

public domain. Use this information, target the classical buffs and voila-‐ you have

contact.

Ø Self-‐Improvement

This is a virtual no-‐brainer. Every person has a problem or the other with bad habits,

confidence, time management, people management and what not. Many of these

problems are some what time-‐less and there is a vast wealth of Public Domain works on



these subjects. Here, you have the freedom to create membership websites and special,

membership-‐only forums as people are willing to pay a lot to find solutions to their

problems.

The only problem is that this is a hotly contested niche, and that you will have to do one

of two things to make money here: Either find an unfilled niche, or use unorthodox

marketing methods to drive traffic to your website.

Most likely you’ll have to provide more than just Public Domain information to profit

from a long-‐term business commitment, but if you’re looking for just another income

stream, a quick-‐fire info-‐product on self-‐improvement can do wonders for your bottom

line.

Ø Government Publications

The U.S. government routinely releases information on taxes, health care and other

government policies into the public domain. If you are involved in providing consulting

services in any of these areas, using the Public Domain as an important resource for

your website will help build trust and more importantly, increase both your traffic AND

your conversion rates.

If anything, there are two important lessons you can take away from this second section

of the chapter (apart from the business ideas, of course):

The Public Domain is a resource – not a business itself. Use it as one of the supports in

your business, but using just the Public Domain won’t get you anywhere. Even if you

have to do something as simple as do some minor editing, repackage the product and

write a sales letter, you’ll still have to put in some effort and strategy into the business –

it’s not instant coffee, although in a lot of cases this is instant content.



There are two ways to make money from the Public Domain. You can have a business or

business idea and then use Public Domain works as a source of content, or you can

search the major categories of the Public Domain and brainstorm new business ideas.

Use both techniques to make money from the public domain.

Later in this book, we will take a detailed look at using Public Domain works to create all

types of products!



Copyright Made Easy

I know, I know, copyright laws are never easy. But hey, here’s what I figure: To use the

Public Domain, to profit from it, you just need to know a few facts. So if you don’t have

the time (and the patience) to delve into the details of the copyright laws affecting the

Public Domain, this chapter is just for you. No boring details about when or why the

copyright laws were enacted, just simple, basic facts that you need to know.

The Quick Copyright Guide

Here are some quick facts that you should know about the copyright laws applying to

the public domain.

Note: These laws apply to works published in the US. For unpublished works and for

works published outside the US, see the resources listed later on.

• Any works published (with or without copyright) before 1923 are in the public

domain.

• Any works copyrighted in 1923 or later (with their copyrights renewed in time)

will stay OUT of the Public Domain till 2018 or longer. This is due to a 20-‐year

copyright extension enacted in the US in 1998. Usually you can check on the

book itself the copyright date, and if a copyright is renewed, that date is also

placed on the book.

• Certain works copyrighted in 1923 or later may have already entered the Public

Domain because of certain legal constraints. The following types of works

o Works published in the US before 1989 without proper copyright notice

and



o Works published in the US before 1964 whose copyrights were not

renewed

• Works from 1923 or later that were originally published in countries outside the

US may still be copyrighted regardless of whether they were printed with proper

notice or renewed.

• Works that were never registered for copyright prior to 1978, and were never

published prior to 2003, are now in the Public Domain in the US if:

o The author(s) died more than 70 years ago before the most recent New

Year’s Day. For 2005, this means authors who died before 1935. For more

than one author, this applies to the last surviving author.

This is, I repeat, just a quick overview of the copyright law to help you understand what

you will be dealing with when venturing into the public domain. There are other people

far more talented than me who have written comprehensively on this matter – one such

resource is from the Cornell Copyright Center:

http://copyright.cornell.edu/resources/publicdomain.cfm

A detailed and comprehensive table that tells you how the copyright law and the Public

Domain applies to unpublished works, works published in the US and even works

published outside the U.S. A truly remarkable and useful resource to have for Public

Domain businesses.

The partial copyright on this document does not allow me to make this part of the e-‐

book itself, but trust me when I say this – this, and the next resource, are the ONLY two

guides you need to determining copyright issues.



Another brilliant (an understatement at best) resource is by the law firm Bromberg &

Sunstein:

http://sunsteinlaw.com/practices/copyright-‐portfolio-‐development/copyright-‐

pointers/copyright-‐flowchart

This is an excellent flowchart that can help you determine step-‐by-‐step whether a work

is in the Public Domain or not. As with all such resources, it also tells you when a

particular work, depending on its dates of creation, publication and copyright renewal,

will pass into the public domain.

I’ve also included a detailed, Step-‐by-‐Step guide aid you in verifying the copyright of the

Works you find, as well as how to determine and work with copyright issues if you live in

another country.



COPYRIGHT RESEARCH STEP-BY STEP

Step 1: Identify Potential Public Domain Work (This would include books, magazines and newspapers) Name of Work: _____________________________________________________

Publisher: _________________________________________________________

Publish Year: _______________________________________________________

Volume / Issue: _____________________________________________________

Step 2: Determine Copyright Status Copyright Status varies according to the Publish Year of the periodical.

a. If the Publish Year is before 1923: The WORK is in the Public Domain

b. If the Publish Year is 1923 – 1950: Go to Step 3

c. If the Publish Year is 1950 – 1963: Go to Step 4

Step 3: Publish Year of 1923 – 1950 Copyright needed renewed in 28th year from first publication

Books, Research Option One Checking Specific Works (1923 – 1950) Use “Copyright Renewal Database” at Stanford University http://collections.stanford.edu/copyrightrenewals/bin/search/simple

• Click on “Advanced Search” link

• Enter Book’s “Title” or “Author Name” in provided search form and click “Search.”

• If book is NOT listed, it’s in the Public Domain

• NOTE: I will often check variations of the author’s name (usually beginning with just the last name. Also, if the title begins with words like “the”, “a” or “an”, don’t include those



in the title name. For example, if you were searching for the title, “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” you would enter “Boy Who Cried Wolf” on the Title Search line!

Books, Research Option Two Checking Specific Works (1923 – 1950) Use “Catalog of Copyright Entries” records at UPENN http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/ Publish Year: _____________ + 28 years = Renewal Year: _____________

• Click on “Renewal Year” (i.e. 1971)

• Scroll down to “Renewals for Books” section

• Select correct page number of file that corresponds to the alphabetical list for Book Name (i.e. Page 1549 (Bradbury -‐-‐ Brooks, Walter R. (start))

• Check Book Title entries for BOTH Jan – Jun and Jul – Dec.

• Check Author Name entries for BOTH Jan – Jun and Jul – Dec.

• If book is listed, it’s still in copyright

• If book is NOT listed, it’s in the Public Domain

• NOTE: I will often check the year before and after the 28th renewal year to be safe!

Periodicals Publish Year: _____________ + 28 years = Renewal Year: _____________


• Scroll down to “Periodicals” section

• Select correct page number of file that corresponds to the alphabetical list for Periodical Name (i.e. Page 409 (Barron's (cont.) -‐ Blue Book Magazine (start))

• Check entries for BOTH Jan – Jun and Jul – Dec.

• If periodical (and periodical issue) is listed, it’s still in copyright

• If periodical is NOT listed, it’s in the Public Domain



• NOTE: I will often check the year before and after the 28th renewal year to be safe!

Checking Specific Periodical Articles (1923 – 1950) Periodical Articles can be renewed separate from the periodical, so it’s important to check them as well. Article Title: _________________________________ Author: _____________________ Publish Year: _____________ + 28 years = Renewal Year: _____________


• Scroll down to “Renewals for Books and Submissions to Periodicals” section

• Select correct page number of file that corresponds to the alphabetical list for Author’s Last Name (i.e. Page 780 (Buck, Pearl S (cont.) -‐ California. District Courts of Appeal (start))

Please note that links to the transcriptions of these pages at Gutenberg.org are available on the page.

• Check entries for BOTH Jan – Jun and Jul – Dec.

• If article is listed, it’s still in copyright

• If article is NOT listed, it’s in the Public Domain

NOTE CONCERNING 1950: If your periodical was published in 1950, you should research the periodical issues and article submissions at both the UPENN site AND the Copyright.gov site. It was during that year that records handling was changed and so the renewal could be listed at one place or the other.



Step 4: Publish Year of 1950 – 1963 Copyright needed renewed in 28th year from first publication Books and Periodicals Use the “Copyright Catalog” records at Copyright.gov http://www.copyright.gov/records All research data is referenced through one search database.

• Enter book title, periodical title or author name in “Search for” box

• Select “Title” or “Author” (depending on which you enter) in “Search by” box

• Click “Begin Search”

• Resort results by “Date Ascending”

• If book title or periodical issue is listed (Copyright Number will begin with “RE”) the work is still in copyright

• If the book title or periodical issue is NOT listed, it is in the Public Domain

Checking Specific Periodical Articles (1950 – 1963) Articles can be renewed separate from the periodical, so it’s important to check them as well. Article Title: _________________________________ Author: _____________________ Publish Year: _____________ + 28 years = Renewal Year: _____________

• Enter author name (last name first) in “Search for” box

• Select “Name” in “Search by” box

• Click “Begin Search”

• Resort results by “Date Ascending”

• If author name AND article name is listed (Copyright Number will begin with “RE”) it is still in copyright

• If author name AND article name is NOT listed, it is in the Public Domain



USING THE LINKS

In the next section, I have included several hundred new links to websites that present

works from the Public Domain. All these sites are new to this edition and were not

included in my first book, Public Domain Code Book, Volume 1. If you do not have a copy

of that book, I highly suggest that you pick up a copy as it includes over 280 additional

websites with Public Domain content.

I have once again categorized the links according to media type so that you can quickly

and easily find the type of content you are looking for.

After the Links section, I have included extensive product creation insights and

strategies to help you create new products from all the Public Domain works you’ll

discover! Good Luck!



Book Links Academy for Ancient Texts http://www.ancienttexts.org/ An excellent collection of ancient texts offered as study and/or reading material that are grouped by culture, country or religion. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Adams’ Ancient Texts http://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/textindx.html A small collection of mostly Latin and Greek texts, with most translated into English. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Ancient Literature http://www.zeroland.co.nz/ancient_literature.html A web directory of ancient literature and texts. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Bexley Council Collections http://www.bexleyarchives.org.uk/Calmview/ Collections of classics, standard works, old favorites and new writing which you can download straight to your PC. These links provide access to over 100,000 texts. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



Books Online http://www.fourmilab.ch/nav/topics/books.html An eclectic collection of books and catalogs available for download. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ California History http://www.books-‐about-‐california.com/ This web site is a personal library of Public Domain e-‐texts and pictures about California and the old West. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Classic Texts http://www.classictexts.net/ This “Library at Your Fingertips” presents in e-‐text form many of the books normally found in a scholar’s personal library, with sections devoted to theology, classics, history and English literature. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Classic Texts in Ethics http://ethics.sandiego.edu/resources/books/books.asp Many major works in the history of ethics are now available on-‐line in electronic versions, with file formats including ASCI or text files; RTF or Rich Text Format; and Adobe PDF. These files can easily be searched or downloaded, and take up relatively little room in proportion to the amount of text they contain. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



Classic Works in Herbal Medicine http://www.swsbm.com/ManualsOther/ManOther.html A collection of classic herbal texts by authors including John Uri Lloyd, Otto Mausert and Benjamin Colby. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Classical Authors Directory http://authorsdirectory.com/index.shtml The Classical Authors Directory offers a well-‐indexed collection of classical American authors from Jane Austen and William Blake to Jules Verne and Virginia Woolf. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Complete Works of Darwin http://darwin-‐online.org.uk/ This website is the largest collection of writings by and about Darwin ever published. It contains Darwin’s complete publications and the largest Darwin bibliography and manuscript catalogue ever published. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Electronic Books Collection http://www.lib.utexas.edu/books/etext.html The collections of the University of Texas Libraries contain more than seven million volumes and providing access to the latest electronic research materials, the library collects the products of human knowledge in all formats. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



ERIC Digests http://www.ericdigests.org ERIC Digests are short reports (1,000 -‐ 1,500 words) that are in the Public Domain on topics of prime current interest in education. There are a large variety of topics covered including teaching, learning, libraries, charter schools, special education, higher education, home schooling, and many more. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ FullBooks.com http://www.fullbooks.com/ FullBooks.com lives up to its name: They offer thousands of full-‐text free books. Great resource! Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Gruntose http://www.gruntose.com/ Gruntose is a rather eclectic website that features and interesting (and at time bizarre) collection of books, essays, information and more. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ History of Psychology Classics http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/topic.htm Classics in the History of Psychology is an effort to make the full texts of a large number of historically significant Public Domain documents from the scholarly literature of psychology and allied disciplines available on the World Wide Web. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



Liberty Library http://www.constitution.org/liberlib.htm The Liberty Library offers a list of the classic books and other works on constitutional government. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Lost, Forgotten Books http://reluctant-‐messenger.com/lost_forgotten_books.htm All of the texts offered on this site, at one time or another, were lost to the world until found within the last 120 year by travelers or archeologists. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Old Magazine Articles http://www.oldmagazinearticles.com/home.php OldMagazineArticles.com is a private undertaking and the effort of one old magazine enthusiast in particular who believes deeply that today’s readers of history can learn a good deal from the old periodicals. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Living Web Free Books http://www.thelivingweb.net/free_books.html Here is another online portal that presents free online digital books, including: Ancient Writings, Einstein, Tesla, Puharich, New Age, the Classics and more. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



Weaving, Textiles & Lace http://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/2006-‐09.html This is a digital archive of documents on Weaving, Textiles, Lace, and related subjects. Please note that some materials on this site may still be protected by copyright. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Wikibooks http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page Wikibooks, a Wikimedia project has a mission to create a free collection of open-‐content textbooks that anyone can edit. Since their founding, volunteers have written about 25,292 modules in a multitude of textbooks. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ World eBook Fair Collection http://worldebookfair.com/Collections.htm The World eBook Library Consortia Collection shelves more than 500,000 PDF eBooks in 100+ languages contained in 112 of the finest eBook and eDocument collections published on the Internet today. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



Media Links

Artwork Curtis Botanical Magazine (and others) http://specialcollections.nal.usda.gov William Curtis (1746-‐1799) was a trained pharmacist living in London, whose greater interest was the study of flora and insects. He maintained a large garden where he grew beautiful exotic plants, and began publishing the Curtis Botanical Magazine in 1787. This digital presentation represents most of the first 26 volumes that were published. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ From Old Books http://www.fromoldbooks.org/ This site contains over 1680 images scanned from more than 100 different old books, most with multiple high-‐resolution versions and many with text excerpts! They are mostly Public Domain (copyright-‐free, out of copyright) in Canada, and often in other countries as well. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ John Leech Sketch Archive http://www.john-‐leech-‐archive.org.uk/ From the first Punch magazine in 1841 until his death in the 1864 John Leech’s cartoons were a major feature. This is an online archive already containing over 600 chosen cartoons of his from Punch over the period. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



National Agriculture Special Collection http://www.nal.usda.gov/speccoll/imagegallery.shtml The links on this site lead to digitized selections from a variety of Special Collections’ rare books, nursery and seed trade catalogs, and manuscript collections. Each image is a digital reproduction of the original artwork or written text. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Open Clip Art Library http://www.openclipart.org This project aims to create an archive of clip art that can be used for free for any use. All graphics submitted to the project should be placed into the Public Domain according to the statement by the Creative Commons. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Perry-‐Castañeda Library Maps http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/index.html An extensive map collection hosted by the University of Texas. Of special note is their Historical Collection of maps. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ World Maps Collection http://ufdc.ufl.edu/maps World Map Collections is a joint project of several universities including the University of Florida’s Map & Imagery Library and the University Libraries’ Department of Special and Area Studies Collections, and are heavily weighted toward historic or antique maps. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



WWII Posters http://www.library.northwestern.edu/govinfo/collections/wwii-‐posters/ The Government and Geographic Information and Data Services Department at Northwestern University Library offers a comprehensive collection of over 300 posters issued by U.S. Federal agencies from the onset of war through 1945. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Photos Administration on Aging Photos http://www.acl.gov/NewsRoom/Multimedia/Index.aspx AoA is the Federal focal point and advocate agency for older persons and their concerns. In this role, AoA works to heighten awareness among other Federal agencies, organizations, groups, and the public about the valuable contributions that older Americans make to the Nation and alerts them to the needs of vulnerable older people. Here you will find their multimedia resources. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Backgrounds Archive http://www.backgroundsarchive.com/ Here you can download free tileable and desktop wallpapers and Myspace backgrounds (widescreen and regular resolutions). Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



Canadian Illustrated News http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/databases/cin/index-‐e.html The Canadian Illustrated News site is a selection of almost 4000 images of people, places and events across Canada and around the world taken from the popular 19th-‐century magazine. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Cascades Volcano Observatory http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Photo/framework.html The USGS collection of volcano photographs. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ CDC Image Library http://phil.cdc.gov/Phil/home.asp Much of the information critical to the communication of public health messages is pictorial rather than text-‐based. Created by a Working Group at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the PHIL offers an organized, universal electronic gateway to CDC’s pictures. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Creative Commons Content Directory https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Content_Directories Many of the listings in the Content Directories are organizations that provide services using Creative Commons licenses. For example, Flickr.com is a photo-‐sharing website that allows users to license their photos under Creative Commons licenses. Flickr hosts millions of CC-‐licensed photos on its site. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



Copyright-‐Free Photos http://www.copyrightfreephotos.com The copyright (royalty) free photos available on this site have been made available, free of charge, for any application as you require -‐ web design, graphics, backgrounds, printed images, desktop wallpaper & screensavers. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Edison Media Archive https://www.nps.gov/edis/learn/photosmultimedia/index.htm A collection of everything related to Edison, from inventions, to photographs, to writings on the great inventor, to just about anything in between. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ FEMA Photo Library http://www.fema.gov/media-‐library The FEMA on line Photo Library includes photos of Hurricanes, Tornadoes, Floods, Typhoons, Fires, Avalanches, Ice Storms, Blizzards, World Trade Center and Pentagon Terrorist Attacks, Earthquakes, and others. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Free Foto http://www.freefoto.com/ FreeFoto.com is made up of nearly 133,000 images with 183 sections organized into 3640 categories, and is the largest collection of free photographs on the Internet. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



Grand Canyon Nat’l Park https://www.nps.gov/aboutus/news/photosmultimedia.htm A nice collection of Public Domain photographs of, and related to, the Grand Canyon. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Great Lakes Image Collection http://www.epa.gov/glnpo/image/ The Great Lakes National Program Office image collection captures the magnitude and awesome beauty of the Great Lakes and its surroundings and helps to tell the story of our region and the ways in which the Lakes have impacted our daily lives. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Greg Goebel: In the Public Domain http://www.vectorsite.net/ This site contains a set of public-‐domain writings, illustrations and photographs on a range of subjects. All documents have been written by the author and are free for use in the public domain. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ NPS Historic Photograph Collection (Lighthouses) https://www.nps.gov/hfc/cfm/npsphoto.cfm The National Park Service Historic Photograph Collection is comprised of more than two million images with subjects including: Park architecture, Native American heritage, roads and transportation, scenic views, and much more. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



Images of the Northern Forest http://www.na.fs.fed.us/spfo/for_images/imagegall.htm Explore the “Images of Northern Forests” galleries. Many staff members enjoy photography, and have placed these images onto the website (and into the public domain) for your enjoyment. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Karen’s Whimsey http://karenswhimsy.com/public-‐domain-‐images/ On the these pages you will find hundreds of beautiful images gleaned from my collection of old books, magazines, and postcards. They are all from material printed prior to 1923 and are in the public domain. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Lightning Photos NWS http://www.nws.noaa.gov/os/lightning/photos.shtml Many photos on this page are NOT from government sites. You may download and use them at no charge but MUST credit the photographer. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Tornado Photographs http://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/torscans.htm Here are some tornado images which were scanned for SPC web use from the National Severe Storms Laboratory’s storm intercept slide archive. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



NARA Image Search http://www.archives.gov/research/start/online-‐tools.html Access the vast image collection of the National Archives and Records Administration. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ NASA Planetary Photojournal http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/ A huge collection of photographs related to our solar system and the universe and all the wonders it offers. Hosted by Jet Propulsion Laboratories. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ National Institutes of Health http://www.nih.gov/about/nihphotos.htm A links page that will direct you to the various photo collections related to the National Institutes of Health. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ National Library of Medicine http://wwwihm.nlm.nih.gov/ This collection provides access to the nearly 60,000 images in the prints and photograph collection of the History of Medicine Division (HMD) of the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), and includes portraits, pictures of institutions, caricatures, genre scenes, and graphic art in a variety of media, illustrating the social and historical aspects of medicine. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



National Science Foundation http://www.nsf.gov/news/mmg/ The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare and to secure the national defense. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Naval Research Lab http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/popular-‐images/ Popular images from the Naval Research Lab. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Open Photo Project http://openphoto.net/ A nice collection of free photographs with an open license. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ PhotoGraphic Libraries http://www.photographiclibraries.com/index.php The Photographic Library Directory is a unique resource that provides a broad range of visual solutions to enhance the creative process. Please note that not all photos are in the public domain. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



Prints & Photographs Online Collection http://www.loc.gov/pictures/ The collections of the Prints & Photographs Division include photographs, fine and popular prints and drawings, posters, and architectural and engineering drawings. While international in scope, the collections are particularly rich in materials produced in, or documenting the history of, the United States and the lives, interests and achievements of the American people. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Public Domain Photos http://www.public-‐domain-‐photos.com A collection of 5,000 photos and 8,000 illustrations that are in the public domain. You may use these images for any purpose, including commercial. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Smithsonian Images http://siarchives.si.edu/services/photograph-‐and-‐image-‐collections Browse or search through selected images from the Collections of the Office of Imaging and Photographic Services. Included are images from current exhibits, Smithsonian events and historic collections. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ State Department Photo Gallery http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/pix/ An image collection from the Office of Electronic Information and Publications. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



Training Reference Photos http://www.trainingreference.co.uk/free_pictures/index.html If you’re looking for pictures for your learning materials, courseware or presentations, Training Reference’s free to use collection of original images contains over 170 photographs, covering a wide range of subjects. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ US Census Bureau Photos https://www.census.gov/library/photos.html Broadcast and photo services for and related to the U.S. Census Bureau. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ US Customs Photo Gallery https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/photo-‐gallery Customs Border Patrol is one of the Department of Homeland Security’s largest and most complex components, with a priority mission of keeping terrorists and their weapons out of the U.S. They offer an extensive collection of photos related to that mission. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ US Navy Images http://www.history.navy.mil/our-‐collections/photography.html The Online Library is the Photographic Section’s readily accessible index to Naval and maritime history pictures. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



USDA Photos http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/usdahome?navid=OC_PHOTOGRAPHY USDA’s Online Photo Center provides more than 20,000 high-‐quality digital images, and it continues to expand. Images are organized by categories for easy access. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ US Forest Service http://www.fs.fed.us/photovideo/ Access thousands of copyright free wildlife, fish, wildflower and environmental education photographs, donated by Forest Service employees and their partners and volunteers. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ US Fish & Wildlife DLS http://digitalmedia.fws.gov The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s online digital media library. Presently, the library system contains the National Image Library-‐-‐the Service’s collection of Public Domain still photos. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ USAF Photos http://www.af.mil/News/Photos.aspx Photo library for the United States Air Force. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



U.S. Government Public Domain Images http://stellar-‐one.com/public/us_federal_government_public_domain_images.htm A collection of links to U.S. Government photographs that are in the public domain. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ USGS Multimedia https://www.usgs.gov/products/multimedia-‐gallery/images The USGS serves the Nation by providing reliable scientific information to describe and understand the Earth; minimize loss of life and property from natural disasters; manage water, biological, energy, and mineral resources; and enhance and protect our quality of life. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ U.S. Mint Image Library http://www.usmint.gov/pressroom/?action=photo Need of coins produced by the United States Mint product or event? Download high-‐resolution images from this website. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Visible Earth http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/ A catalog of NASA images and animations of our home planet. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



Volcanoes of Hawaii http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/gallery/ The images on this site illustrate the striking landscapes of Hawaiian volcanoes and the islands they’ve built in the past few million years. You’ll also find images of recent eruptions and the work that we do to improve our understanding of volcanoes and issue timely warnings when hazardous activity threatens people and property. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Wikimedia Commons Image Resources https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Free_media_resources/Photography A nice collection of free and Public Domain image resources links courtesy Wikimedia. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



Copyright Info Copyright Circulars & Factsheets http://www.copyright.gov/circs/index.html The circulars and factsheets provided here offer basic information about registration, fees, compulsory licenses, and other aspects of the copyright process. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Berne Convention http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/ The complete presentation of the articles of the Berne Convention. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Collection of National Copyright Laws http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-‐URL_ID=14076&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html Full texts of national copyright and related rights legislation of UNESCO Member States can now be accessed on the website of UNESCO’s Culture Sector. The collection currently comprises about 100 laws and is constantly being updated and completed. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



Copyright Law & Policy http://www.copyright.gov/laws/ The U.S. laws and policies concerning copyright. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Copyright Law in Australia http://www.copyright.org.au Australia’s laws and policies concerning copyright. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Copyright Search -‐ Books http://cocatalog.loc.gov Search copyright information for works registered and documents recorded by the U.S. Copyright Office since January 1, 1978. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



Copyright Website http://www.benedict.com/ This is the ultimate copyright portal. Endeavoring to provide real world, practical copyright information for over a decade. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Intellectual Property -‐ UK http://www.ipo.gov.uk/home.htm This is the official government body responsible for granting Intellectual Property (IP) rights in the United Kingdom. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Licensing Pages http://www.licensingpages.com Licensingpages is a world-‐class business resource for the brand licensing industry. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Right to Display PD Images http://englishhistory.net/tudor/art.html An introduction to copyright terms and a discussion of Bridgeman vs Corel. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



Wikipedia: Public Domain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain Wikipedia’s excellent collection of information on the Public Domain. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ World Intellectual Property Organization http://www.wipo.int/portal/en/ The Intellectual Property Digital Library Web site provides access to intellectual property data collections hosted by the World Intellectual Property Organization. Comments / Notes: ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________



Using Public Domain Works for

Product Development

As I shared earlier, using Public Domain content to help build your online or offline

business provides numerous opportunities for expanding your reach into virtually any

niche market. It makes so much sense to use the content in some form because it is

proven and has often been produced by those who are at the top of their game! It also

can explode your income in ways that you may not even be considering.

Public Domain resources are available from nearly every primary media category

including books, magazines, newspapers, government materials, photographs, artwork,

movies, audio recordings, ephemera and software. In this chapter, I take a look at a

number of different ways you can use Public Domain works to expand your online or

offline business. Many of these methods can be used in combination with others to

produce high-‐end packages, membership site offerings, physical products and much

more. With all the options for product creation I’ve included here, I feel quite certain

that you will find several that will fit your market, your skill set and your interest!

• Republish content as-‐is in print form

You can easily republish Public Domain books into print for using print-‐on-‐

demand technology. Scan the existing book pages to print as-‐is, or have the text

transcribed or converted into text using OCR.

Example: Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill has been republished dozens of

times by different individuals and companies.



• Republish content as-‐is as a downloadable e-‐book

Republishing Public Domain books as e-‐books uses the same basic techniques

used for producing print versions. Scan the existing book pages as-‐is, or have the

text transcribed or converted into text using OCR.

Example: Gutenberg.org is an online leader in moving Public Domain books into

electronic form.

• Republish content as-‐is along with other books on CD/DVD

If you have ever searched for books on eBay, you have no doubt seen collections

of books for sale on CD. While some vendors offer thousands of books on one CD

or DVD for a couple bucks, smart vendors are selling niche-‐driven collections for

higher prices.

Example: Many Ebay sellers offer CD’s or DVD’s with Public Domain book

collections.

• Use content to develop Study Course with workbook

Why not take that favorite Public Domain book and write questions or exercises

for the end of each chapter or for a separate workbook or study guide? This is an

excellent way to breathe new life into a classic book.

Example: A number of Public Domain self-‐help books such as As a Man Thinketh

by James Allen have been enhanced in this way with great success.

• Use portions of different books to create new thematic “collection” book

Using related or themed sections from a variety of Public Domain books is a

great way to produce fresh, new materials for sale. By drawing from a number of



titles, you increase the value of the collection and gain credibility from the

“masters.”

Example: The book Great Speeches by Native Americans published by Dover

Publications features a collection of speeches by Native American leaders that

were excerpted from a variety of Public Domain books.

• Update or rewrite material for new product

In can be much easier to write or develop a new book if you have an existing

foundation and Public Domain books can provide that for you. You can use this

method to create new products by:

a. Updating archaic or outdated language, facts or dates

b. Using the table of contents as an outline for developing your new book

c. Rewriting the existing text so that it reflects more of your own personality

Example: Sun Tsu’s Art of War has been rewritten into a number of excellent,

updated new books, including The Art of War for the 21st Century by Dan Lok.

• Use content to develop a How-‐to Course

There are many classic “how-‐to” courses that are available in the public domain.

I’ve found them on a wide variety of topics from how to speak in public to how

to prepare a deer hide to make leather. Many of these can easily be updated for

use as part of a high-‐end information product package.

Example: A number of individuals have used the book, The Master Key System by

Charles Haanel as an excellent, modern-‐day how-‐to course.



• Book-‐based How-‐to Courses or Training Classes on DVD

In the last example, we talked about using classic Public Domain “how-‐to”

courses to develop new, updated products. The best way to take this to the next

level is with video. By videotaping the processes outlined in the “how-‐to” book,

you add huge value to your new product. And with today’s digital technology, it

is becoming simple to step up to this next level of product.

Example: I recently helped a friend who is a massage therapist take a classic

book on Swedish Massage and develop it into an instruction video course.

• Use content to develop Mini-‐Course autoresponder

Finding and using a niche-‐focused Public Domain book as an autoresponder

series on your webpage can be a great way to draw traffic to you site, add value

to your message and build your mailing list. People love free stuff and using an

excellent resource like a Public Domain book can add credibility to you and your

product line.

Example: You could easily take a Public Domain book on horse grooming

techniques and use each chapter as a new message in your “Horse Care”

autoresponder series.

• Use content to develop Homeschooling curriculum or supplements

There is tremendous value for education to be found in many of the books

currently in the public domain. While you will not find information on the latest

fads or technologies, many books that were considered “ahead of their time” or

just plain “out there” are now providing foundations for some of today’s hottest

topics. There is also a high value in many of the more historically accurate

accounts of the past, compared to many of the “overviews” used in today’s

classrooms.



Example: A quick trip to an educational store will show you the value and

growing use of Public Domain books in the education marketplace—especially

when it comes to classic literature and historical texts.

• Use excerpts to make Quotes book

Quotes are a quick and powerful way to make or validate a point on your

website, in your book, when you speak, etc. Having a collection of niche-‐related

quotes can make for an extremely valuable and profitable resource, especially

because it saves time and effort for the researcher. The Public Domain is a

fantastic resource for not only making your own collection of quotes, but also for

rediscovering some powerful quote collections from the past.

Example: The self-‐help and business markets have seen (and have taken

advantage of) the benefit of using quotes. Here is a great example I used in “The

Public Domain Code Book”… “Books are the treasured wealth of the world and

the fit inheritance of generations and nations.” —Henry David Thoreau

• Record reading as an audio book

Using audio is a powerful way to create new products and caters to the busy

lifestyle that describes many people. By reading your favorite Public Domain

books, you are creating a higher value resource than by just offering the book

alone. Then, you can offer the files as podcasts, as downloadable MP3s or as

audio CDs…or all the above. If you have a computer and a microphone, you’re

set.

Example: Take the Public Domain books you are already selling and record them

to use as an upsell or as a new audio-‐based membership site.



• Use content as e-‐zine articles

It can be extremely challenging to write new content on an ongoing basis for

your e-‐zine. Public Domain content makes for an excellent supplement to your

existing or original content. You can also us the content to submit to article sites

to help drive traffic back to your primary sales page..

Example: The US Government offers millions of pages of content (all in the

Public Domain) that would make for excellent additions to your e-‐zine on a

broad variety of topics including real estate, health, credit and debt help and

other hot topics.

• Use content for blog postings

How many of you have all the time in the world to write ongoing, fresh content

for your blog. Imagine drawing from a relevant Public Domain resource, then

copying and pasting a few paragraphs at a time to provide your readers with the

content they’re looking for. Public Domain books also make an excellent

resource for those of you building “blogging empires” for Adsense revenue.

Example: How about taking a Public Domain recipe book and posting a new

recipe every day from it on your cooking blog? This would be a great way to

discover and provide fresh, “new” dishes for your readers to try on their own.

Plus it builds your blog as the source for great recipes (or craft ideas, tax tips,

real estate tricks, pet care ideas, success insights, etc.).

• Use excerpts along with images or video to create viral movies

With the growing popularity of YouTube, Google Video and other video-‐share

sites, the opportunities are nearly endless what can be done with Public Domain

in this media. Use clips from Public Domain movies or documentaries,



photographs, quotes, poems, etc. to make your own viral video to get traffic to

your site.

Example: One of the best examples I’ve seen of using Public Domain content in

viral movies is Morgan Westerman’s “The Interview With God”

(www.theinterviewwithgod.com) video. Based on a Public Domain poem,

Morgan’s flash movie generated over a million visitors to his site and spawned

an entire product line. Brilliant!

• Use excerpts or poem with machinima

Public Domain poems or excerpts can be used as movie script for making

machinima films (making films in 3d gaming or virtual world environments). The

films use “real” sets with real people (or at least, the avatars that represent

those people), and can make for some VERY interesting uses of today’s Web 2.0

technologies.

Example: One amazing example of machinima using Public Domain content is a

movie based on an anonymous Public Domain poem called, “Silver Bells and

Golden Spurs.” It is a story about an old-‐fashioned Western shootout in the

mining town of Golden Gulch. The entire movie was “filmed” on the website,

SecondLife.com. It’s truly an amazing testament to the creative genius possible

using the Public Domain.

• Use excerpts to combine with original material for a new print book or e-‐book

Let’s say you have a great idea for a book on a specific subject but not enough

content to fill the entire book yourself. Why not find Public Domain books that

are related to the subject you are writing about, and then include chapter

excerpts from the Public Domain books to compliment your writing. This

approach accomplishes two important goals…it helps you “write” your book, and



it places you in the company of the other authors. This will help validate you as

an author as well.

Example: A book written on alternative forms of energy could include chapters

excerpted from government publications, early Public Domain books and original

writing by you on the subject.

• Use content for wiki sites

Content collaboration online is rapidly growing in popularity. This organic

method of information archiving brings together people from all over the world

to share their wealth of information with everyone else. Public Domain content

provides a perfect way to add excellent content to existing wiki sites, or to start

your own wiki site. For example, you could begin your own wiki site for pet

information, using Public Domain content as the foundation for the site. Then, as

people edit, update and build upon that foundation, the content expands to

meet a need in the pet community. That means more traffic for your site and an

ever-‐growing wealth of collaborative information on your subject.

Example: Most people who deal with information online have no doubt heard of

Wikipedia, perhaps the most popular wiki site online. Studying the Wikipedia site

will help provide you with further ideas on how you can build your own wiki

empire using Public Domain content.

• Use content for web pages along with Adsense

Public Domain books make great content for building websites with Adsense ads

included. Using a template based software like Word to Web Page, you can

easily turn a 300-‐page Public Domain Word document into a 300-‐page custom

website in about 5 minutes.



Example: Create a website built around your Public Domain niche-‐related book,

like a book on dog training, and then also offer the complete e-‐book for sale as

well.

• Use collection of PD books to create a membership site

Using Public Domain books to build a membership is a very smart approach to

providing great content for your subscribers. It will save them from having to do

all the extra work often necessary when searching for good Public Domain

content and will enable them to expand their product base quickly.

Example: Several membership sites (such as The Lost Files) have been built

around this idea, and for good reason—it’s smart business.

• Use poems or quotes to create posters

We’ve all seen posters with funny or inspirational sayings on them…many of

those quotes come from the Public Domain. With sites like CafePress and Zazzle,

printing them has never been easier. But don’t overlook conventional printing!

You can print 1,000 18” X 24” full-‐color posters for around $500. Not bad

considering you can sell them for $10 to $20 or more each.

Example: Every scripture verse quoted from the King James Bible and included

on any type of poster is from the Public Domain. “Be still and know that I am

God.”

• Use referenced authors and books to discover “new” PD materials

This is a very clever research trick that occurred to me one day while reading a

book that was in the Public Domain. I noticed that the author kept referring to

other books and authors. Then it hit me…those other books would have to be in

the Public Domain as well.



Example: Find a book in your niche, then, as you read through it, write down

every other book or author mentioned in that book. Chances are highly likely

that you will uncover even more books related to your niche.

• Use poems or quotes to create t-‐shirts or other CaféPress-‐type products

Websites like CafePress and Zazzle make it super easy to create physical

products of all types using Public Domain works. Zazzle especially has great

examples of others using this very strategy.

Example: Find some quotes you like and type them out in your program of

choice. Upload the designs to CafePress and then sell the product on eBay.

When someone purchases your product, place the order with CafePress (at your

discount of course) and have it shipped directly to your customer as a gift (no

packing slips that way).

• Use PD books as bonuses

Any time you can add value to an existing product to help your conversion rates,

do it. Bonuses are often the method of choice for adding that value. Using Public

Domain books as bonuses to your other products adds value inexpensively.

Example: I recently offered a collection of Public Domain books as a free bonus

for anyone who purchased a product I was selling as an affiliate. I made a LOT of

sales for that product…and it cost me nothing to add value.

• Use PD books as upsells, one-‐time offers or backend offers

Public Domain materials are perfect for add-‐on products because it takes much

less effort to create a product from them than to create a product from scratch.



Example: Take a Public Domain book that is niche-‐related to the main product

you are selling and offer it as a one-‐time offer for $29 or similar amount.

Guaranteed you’ll increase your bottom line.

• Use newspaper content as resource guide (Obits, ads, articles, etc.)

Old Newspapers are a huge source for potential content because there are so

many papers available from the past and many were printed weekly, or even

daily in some cases. Look for consistent entries that were included in every

paper, like obituaries, birth announcements, ongoing columns, etc.

Example: Gather all the birth announcements and obituaries listed in your paper

of your choice. Resources like this are very popular with genealogy researchers.

• Collect ads as a print or e-‐book reference guide (magazines)

Advertising has existed as long as magazines have. There is real value in pulling

together ads from old magazines based on year, theme, artist, brand, etc.

Example: Collects ads that feature classic train routes and create a reference

guide from them.

• Republish ads on CD/DVD (magazines)

If you have access to large numbers of ads from several related magazines,

scanning and offering them on CD or DVD could make a great resource to sell on

eBay or through your Yahoo store.

Example: Harper’s Bazaar was America’s first fashion magazine, debuting in

1867. Offering collections of all the ads from those early magazine issues would

serve as an interesting survey of the changes in American fashion.



• Collect covers as a print or e-‐book reference guide (magazines)

Many of the more popular early magazines often published artwork created by

some of the most famous artists of the day, from Currier and Ives to Norman

Rockwell. Many of these prized images have been forgotten or lost to today’s

general public.

Example: Offer a printed reference collection of magazine covers by artist. Some

good starting places for research are included below:

http://www.artcadeonline.com/memories/covers.asp

http://www.philsp.com/

http://www.magazineart.org/

• Republish covers on CD/DVD (magazines)

Offering magazine covers on CD or DVD can serve as a reference collection for

art enthusiasts or source material for graphic designers.

Example: Offer images on disc by theme, by year, by artist, etc.

• Print ads as posters (magazines)

Old magazine ads make great posters for the nostalgic at heart, and with the

advent of wide-‐format inkjet printers, it’s extremely easy to reproduce them. I’ve

purchased them myself.

Example: Offer popular ads as posters, unframed, framed, in limited edition

counts, etc. on eBay, online specialty stores and more.

• Print covers as posters (magazines)

As with the magazine ads, magazine covers make great posters as well.



Example: Offer covers as art deco posters, unframed, framed, in limited edition

counts, etc. on eBay, online specialty stores and more.

• Create a movie or television script from a Public Domain novel, story, or play

Public Domain books, movies and plays provide wonderful source material for

creating a new movie or television script based on those existing stories.

Creating a new, modern version of play or musical from an original piece not

only provides you with a foundation to build on for your script, but it also gives

unlimited artistic freedom to shape it into your own vision for the story.

Example: The blockbuster movie, “300” is a great example of writer and director

taking a story from the Public Domain—Herodotus’ retelling of the battle of

Thermopylae in his “Histories, Book VII”—and shaping it into a new, compelling

rendition using their own artistic freedoms and creativity together with today’s

movie-‐making technologies.

• Create an animated film from a Public Domain novel, story, or play

There is a huge market for animated films, whether they are hand-‐drawn

creations, 3-‐D computer rendered, claymation or puppet-‐based. Because of the

constant demand for new stories, Public Domain works can provide a wealth of

source material that is nearly inexhaustible.

Example: Many of Walt Disney’s famous cartoons are based on fairy tales from

the Public Domain including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella,

Pinocchio, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Alice in Wonderland, and The Jungle

Book.



• Perform a Public Domain play on stage or at a dinner theater

There is a wealth of plays available in the Public Domain that span hundreds of

years of great story-‐telling. By using Public Domain plays, you can avoid the need

to pay royalties while maintaining the ability to adapt the play to your own

needs or creative ideas.

Example: Romeo and Juliet is a great example of a Public Domain play that has

been acted out on stages around the world in many different forms, from

presentations of it in its original form to modern-‐day adaptations.

• Sell Old-‐Time Radio Programs as downloads or on CD

Before television invaded the world’s households, radio was the source for news

and entertainment. Often referred to as the Golden Age of Radio, or Old-‐time

Radio, thousands of programs and commercials went out across the airwaves

and into the homes of millions. Many of these entertaining programs are now in

the Public Domain.

Example: Offer a collection of Old-‐time Radio programs, collected by year,

program title or performer, such as Orson Welles’ “Mercury Theatre” series or

programs by the ever-‐popular Jack Benny.

• Sell historic speeches from U.S. Presidents, and other public figures as

downloads or on CD

Nearly everything produced by the Federal Government is in the Public Domain,

including all the speeches made by the President. These speeches offer us a

snapshot, a glimpse into the life of America at that time. These speeches present

a unique “cause and effect” insight that perhaps we can learn from and better

ourselves as a nation. Of course, as the saying goes, “History repeats itself.”



Example: Put together a website that offers every speech by a U.S. President in

streaming format. Then offer MP3 downloads or CD’s for sale.

• Create a database of Public Domain sheet music and sell as downloads or on

CD

While many musical performances are NOT in the Public Domain, a lot of sheet

music IS available. Offering a database of available songs in sheet music form to

performers, songwriters and composers categorized by genre would provide a

valuable service to those who are constantly on the lookout for new material.

Example: An easy idea would be to collect all the Public Domain choral sheet

music together in one database or website.

• Create a documentary using Public Domain photographs, art and video footage

Creating content for a documentary can be a daunting task. By including content

from the Public Domain, you save valuable time and also add value to your

documentary by “collaborating” with many of the great photographers, artists

and directors from the past.

Example: Create a documentary about fashion in the Roaring Twenties based

solely on magazine covers, ads and illustrations…all from the Public Domain.

• Host a film festival to show Public Domain films

There are thousands of films now in the Public Domain, many of which today’s

generation have never seen. Offering Public Domain films in a public format

brings those classics back to life, without having to worry about public showing

limitations associated with copyrighted films.



Example: Host a cartoon film festival to screen Public Domain cartoons, but also

provide the opportunity for budding animators to show their talents as well.

• Sell Public Domain films on DVD

Many of the films that exist in the Public Domain have never been released in

the DVD format. By releasing them in this fashion, you make them available to a

new generation of customers. Also, with today’s digital technologies, updating

the color and sound of these classics is a fairly simple process.

Example: Put together a collection of Bruce Lee classics or revive a documentary

series of related Public Domain books for a great, theme-‐based product.

• Sell Public Domain films as downloads for iPods

Not only will the thousands of Public Domain films transfer well to DVD, but you

can also offer them as digital download for playback on video iPods.

Example: Offer the films through a membership site where subscribers gain

access to a new collection of films each month. Alternatively, you could list all

the films and charge a “price per download” fee like iTunes.

• Use Public Domain Magazine articles to create new print magazines

You can easily find a number of Public Domain magazines related to your niche.

Collect the best articles and re-‐publish in a new magazine with new pictures and

other content.

Example: History buffs love stories related to their era of history. Create a

monthly magazine of republished articles about WWII. Nothing has changed

about WWII in the past 50 or so years, so the magazine content will still be

relevant.



Innovation and Creativity:

The Keys to Product Creation Success

Innovation and creation play a powerful role in creating successful products. To wake up

in the morning with a brand new product idea and to be able to honestly say that you

have so many ideas and not enough time to create them all is a great feeling indeed. It’s

also very profitable, as you can imagine. Thankfully, this creative idea generation

process can be learned, practiced and mastered to the point of producing at least one

new idea a day. The best news of all is that this process can be put to use in almost any

type of business you can imagine.

To tap into this “power” of innovation and creativity, all you need is the ability to

observe, listen and pay attention to what’s going on around you, as well as the ability to

think laterally. It’s not a complicated process, and one that you can definitely learn. I’m

going to teach you how to use this simple method beginning today, and before you

know it, you’ll be able to come up with as many ideas you need for creating as many

products as you want, whenever and however often you wish to do so.

Getting Creative

The lifeblood of our business is to be able to create valuable products from the

resources we have at hand, and then turn them into something that is commercially

viable that can be sold to people or businesses all over the world. The vast treasure

trove of the Public Domain presents a tremendous opportunity for nearly unlimited

resources. All that remains is for us to apply creativity and innovation to those resources

to create hybrid products we can be proud of and that are very profitable for us.

The problem is that most people don't know how to do this properly, or effectively. I

meet people nearly every day (including some close friends) who tell me they wish they



could start their own business. My usual reaction is to ask them what’s stopping them.

Often, their response is that they don't know what they would sell. This can be a huge

problem until you learn how to tap into creativity and understand how simple it really

can be to create quality products. My goal with this section is to ensure that you have

no problem coming up with ideas for new and exciting products based on Public Domain

resources.

Write Down Everything!

The first step toward successful creativity and innovation is to write everything down—

every idea that comes to you—no matter how brilliant or insignificant it may seem.

Never rule anything out. If you have never journaled before, now would be a great time

to begin. Go to Walmart or Target and purchase a journal or one of those cheap ruled

note pads. I would also highly recommend getting a marker board for your office if you

have space for one. These two places are where you'll put your ideas: the good, the bad,

and the downright crazy. No matter what it is, every time you come up with something,

write it in your journal and on your marker board. Create a working product name, and

write a short excerpt on what the product is and what it's going to do for the person

that buys it. I would also recommend that you ALWAYS date the entry. Including the

date can help you keep a proper perspective and timeline of the product ideas that

come to you. I do this EVERY day. I have several journals and a couple large (4 foot by 4

foot) marker boards in my office FULL of ideas, strategies and new products.

Getting the Ideas Flowing

Alright…let’s get some ideas flowing and look at exactly how to create some products.

There are a number of effective methods you can use when creating products from

Public Domain resources. Let’s look at a few of these methods to prime your idea pump.

The first and probably most widely used product creation method is the “Improvement

Factor.” I like to refer to this as “Hybrid Product Creation Method.” This is where you



take Public Domain works (books, photos, illustrations, etc.) and mix them together with

your own creativity and technology to create a hybrid product. It’s kind of like the old

wedding axiom, “Something old, something new….” When working with images, this

approach can take on a wide variety of forms, from modifying images to create a line of

greeting cards to using Public Domain photos along with music and poetry to create an

inspirational video. You’re taking something old, mixing it with something new to create

a brand-‐new product idea. Of course, not all things in the Public Domain are old. Many

of the images and illustrations offered on government websites are actually current, and

I share quite a few excellent government websites you can go to for finding these

images later in this book.

Problems & Solutions

Let’s look at another approach for effective product creation. We all have problems

right? And products and services are often offered to help us solve those problems. Now

the problems we are solving can take on a lot of forms. Most “problems” can be

summed up with one of ten descriptions, and if we can solve one or more of those

“needs” that all people have in one form or another, we can often achieve success in

our product creation. Think about it, at one time or another, everyone (including you

and I) wants or needs one or more of the following, nearly all the time. They (you and I)

want to:

• Save Time

• Save Effort

• Avoid Pain

• Save Money

• Make Money

• Be Loved

• Achieve Success

• Achieve Happiness



• Receive Recognition

• Be Entertained

Within these ten motivations, there is a lot of latitude for creating products that will

address one or more of these trigger points. Let me give a few examples. One of my

personal favorite products that I’ve created in the past year was a video based on a

Public Domain poem that also included Public Domain and royalty-‐free photographs

that were keyed to the lines of the poem. The video is titled The Power of One and you

can watch it for free here:

http://www.spiritualpublishing.com

It’s also on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQLj_JcaZcM). Over the

course of the past two years, over 116,000 people have watched that video on YouTube

(with it now averaging a few thousand views a week), and many commented how it

made them feel loved or special. It filled a need. I have even had it shown publicly a

number of times for special gatherings.

Another great example of using Public Domain images to solve a problem or meet a

need is evident in another project I created that was based on illustrations that

demonstrated how to build a model airplane. The images came from a magazine that is



in the Public Domain. How-‐to products are a great example of problem-‐solving ideas

you can incorporate in your product creation approach.

Never Dismiss Anything

Now, let me open your mind a little bit with something that I really think is the key to

mastering this process. I do not ever want you to dismiss an idea that you come up with.

No matter how wacky or crazy it seems, no matter why you think it won't work. Just put

it in that journal for now. I'll tell you why. Ever had a sudden idea about anything that

you think “Hey! Wow, I just had this great idea” then you say something along the lines

of, “Oh, oh no. Never mind, that won’t work because of {insert problem here}.”

This is what blocked me when I first started trying to master this, and I was wondering

why I wasn't coming up with any ideas to put in my journal. It's simple, and it's natural.

If you come up with an idea and instantly start finding problems with it, you'll dismiss it.

This will get you nowhere. Open your mind a little, and don't start dismissing things on a

whim because they seem impractical or even impossible at first glance. Don’t allow your

knee-‐jerk responses stop you! I can’t emphasize this enough if you find yourself thinking

some of the following responses when a new idea comes, that’s a sure indication that

you’re on the right path. Here are some toxic excuses that may try to derail your efforts

at first:

• It’s impractical

• It’s too hard

• Someone else already did it

• I don’t have the right software

• I don’t have the right skills

• I don’t have time

• I don’t have money

• On and on…



I have had ALL those thoughts at one time or another, and honestly, if I had listened to

all of them (I did many times), you probably wouldn’t be reading these e-‐book from me

right now. I’d still be doing what I hated because I HAD to, rather than work on my own

projects that I love and enjoy!

We'll talk more about this later, but let me tell you, I have a concept journal…several of

them…just like yours, and at least one of them goes with me everywhere. Some ideas,

when I wrote them down initially, were impractical, there was no market for some of

them, some I couldn't afford, and some just needed large numbers of customers to pull

off effectively. Today, as I type this, I can tell you that, months, and in a few cases, years

later, many of those ideas came to fruition and went on to make me a lot of money.

Things can change quickly. Always keep an open mind, and don't start placing these

limits on yourself before you start. Once we remove those limits, the ideas will start

flowing. Start recording them. One of them may well be the next big thing in your field

of expertise.

Don’t Let This Happen to You

Did you ever have a “brilliant” idea come to you that was so amazing, so incredible, so

“this is going to make me a fortune” that you figured you would NEVER forget it? Of

course, you DID forget it if you didn’t write it down, didn’t you? Yeah, me too! I usually

get a lot of my best ideas in the morning when I first wake up. I’ve lost many cool ideas

between the time of waking up and getting out of the shower, just because I didn’t take

the time to write them down while the ideas were fresh. I figured that I would never

forget such a great idea, and I was often wrong. That doesn’t happen now. I write down

and date EVERYTHING. I will even have dreams about product ideas sometimes, so it’s

important to me to capture them as soon as I can, because some of them are actually

quite different. Let me give you a rather strange example of what I mean.



The idea for my popular product, Tony’s Public Domain Magazine Secrets came from an

unusual experience related to a dream I had where I interviewed Dr. Joe Vitale about

the Public Domain. The ideas Joe shared in the dream were Public Domain strategies I

had not considered before then. I was so blown away by what Joe shared in the dream

interview that I decided to see if I could recreate the same experience while awake. I

wrote the “Joe” dream down and then hopped into the shower.

While I was in the shower, I set the stage in my mind to interview another marketing

mentor of mine, Jim Edwards. I pictured myself asking Jim if there was anything

connected to the Public Domain that I should consider pursuing from a product creation

perspective, and then I waited for a response. In this mental exercise, Jim responded by

telling me that I needed to research Public Domain magazines. I had not considered

magazines much before then, so, when I got out of the shower, I wrote that idea in my

journal as well. Of course, I promptly forgot all the “dream” ideas within the next day.

Over a year later, I remembered that experience and proceeded to dig out the journal

where the ideas were recorded. Those entries served as the inspiration behind creating

one of my favorite and most popular products. Yes, it’s a strange approach to product

creation, but you also cannot argue with success! I made thousands of dollars from that

“interview” with Jim (and also from the one with Dr. Vitale as well). The truth is that just

because an idea may appear useless (or crazy) at the time you first receive it doesn’t

mean it that it will not become a viable product at a future date. In case you’re curious,

here is a scan of that “magazine” journal entry. You’ll also notice the reference to

newspapers as well. Jim told me about that one too…



The second reason you need to write every idea down is to give you time to examine

the idea to see if this is going to be successful. During this period of time, you will

consider ways to improve, change or make your idea better. My marker boards (and

journals) sit right next to my desk, and I will often look over at what’s written there

throughout the day. Sometimes, new strategies will come to me that could make one of

the product ideas work effectively or differently. I’ve had a few occasions where new

ideas will come to me concerning a product written on the marker board, and it will

suddenly become more than just an “idea” and take on the form of a viable product.

Other times, new product ideas based on an original idea will come together. It’s safe to

say that spending some meditation time on a concept is worthwhile if it turns an idea

from a place of little promise into a full-‐blown successful product. Because markets

change—and they often change quickly—a seemingly profitable idea that you couldn’t

execute six months ago for whatever reason may suddenly come together now and

become a huge hit for you.



So, if you haven’t gotten the message yet—keep everything—no matter how ridiculous

or far out the idea might be. Look at your journals and markers boards regularly, then

change and adapt them as new ideas come to you to make them workable in the future

when you’re able to invest time and energy into them.

Evaluating Your Ideas

Hopefully, if you’ve taken everything into account so far, you’ll find that ideas are

already starting to flow. Granted they may be a little crazy, or you may not think they’re

viable right now, but either way, it's kind of like writing. It’s hard to start, but once you

settle into the idea of bringing new concepts to the front of your mind, and exploring

them, you'll see that they will begin to flow and you'll never run out of ideas for new

products.

Don’t underestimate this process. You have already started a very powerful process just

by giving substance to EVERY one of your ideas. That’s important. Like I shared earlier,

the number one reason people often give for not starting up their own business, is that

they don’t know what to sell. You now have taken a great step in the right direction, and

it’s a huge step.

Before we move on, I want to share one more short section about product creation. In

this section, you'll learn how to decipher whether or not your products are worth selling

in relation to the market you’re in and the people that will be buying from you. This

understanding is very important if you don't want to spend a ton of cash on a project,

only to find out half way through that it isn't going to work.

Remember in the previous section, we created your new idea journal, and I advised you

write everything down? Now that you have some ideas down, let’s take a look at WHY

I’ve encouraged you to keep everything written down. I’ll also share a personal example

of how I made a huge mistake by not following this advice back in the early days of my



marketing. Once you have an idea for a “great” product, you have to take an honest

look at whether or not the product is viable, meaning, will it succeed in the marketplace

or in the niche you’re in. There are a few simple questions you need to ask yourself

when determining whether to take your project to the next step.

Question 1 -‐ Does the Product Help Solve A Problem?

If you put into practice what we’ve already talked about, then you’ll most likely be able

to answer this one with a solid “Yes.” The most important question you'll ever ask

yourself about your products is simple. Does it solve a problem? Does it help the buyer

avoid pain, save money, save time, make money, etc.?

Although this seems like an obvious question you would ask yourself at the beginning of

the product creation process, you’d be surprised how many entrepreneurs ask this

question late in the process, if at all. There is a tendency for those who do not consider

this question to create a product “they” love, and then try to convince others that they

should love it too. The problem is that the potential buyer seldom does. This results in a

LOT of lost time, effort and money that could have been prevented by asking this simple

question at the beginning of the product creation process.

Question 2 -‐ Is There a Market for My Product?

When considering this question, you also need to consider the related question, “Can I

reach that market?” Face it, if there's no market for your product, or you have no way to

reach them, then no one is going to find out about your product, and you simply won't

sell any.

To make sure there is a good market for a product I’m thinking about creating, I will

often check out many of the following sites.



Google Trends https://www.google.com/trends/

To begin with, I check out the hottest search trends at Google Trends. If I am targeting

the US market, I’ll click on “United States,” otherwise I’ll another country where

appropriate. At this point I am just looking for ideas in the niche I want to create my

product in. If I see that a particular topic is hot, I’ll make a note of it and look at more

targeted sub-‐niches later on at more specialized sites (which I’ll show you shortly).

Terapeak http://terapeak.com

Terapeak helps you to navigate e-‐commerce, revealing how products perform and how

shoppers behave online. They make sense of some of the biggest data sets around to

tell you about trends and selling opportunities that matter right now.

Nexalogy http://nexalogy.com

Free apps within HootSuite…The NexaMe stream in the app offers a visual way to gain

insights about the topics and people in your Twitter timeline. The Nexalogy Search

stream enables you to dig deeper into a hashtag or search term.

Now that I have identified some potential sub-‐niches to work with, I want to see how

much of a market there is there.

Just because a sub-‐niche is popular doesn’t mean people spend money on it.

Amazon http://www.amazon.com

Amazon is a great place to see what currently exists for any given sub-‐niche. Chances

are, the more books there are written on that subject, the more that market spends on

those topics.



Question Three -‐ How Can I Create a Quality Product?

Creating a quality is so important with the flood of products available in any market, so

you will want to plan on producing your product at the highest level of quality.

Fortunately, there are a lot of quality software and production sources for creating high-‐

quality products at extremely reasonable prices.

Armed with the answers to these three questions, together with the creative ideas that

you record in your journal, you should be ready to create one successful Public Domain-‐

based product after another.



Product Creation Outline

• Step One: Research Market

• Step Two: Determine and Choose Your Niche

• Step Three: Find Content (Public Domain, PLR, Interviews, Written, etc.)

• Step Four: Prepare and Format Text Content

• Step Five: Prepare and Format Image Content (if applicable)

• Step Six: Insert Images into Text (if applicable)

• Step Seven: Create Cover

• Step Eight: Insert Cover into Document

• Step Nine: Add Legal Notice, Copyright Information, Resource Box, TOC, etc.

• Step Ten: Create Book PDF

• Step Eleven: Create Webpage Graphics

• Step Twelve: Create Salesletter Webpage

• Step Thirteen: Write Sales Copy

• Step Fourteen: Order Button

• Step Fifteen: Opt-‐in Page

• Step Sixteen: Thank-‐you Page / Download Page

• Step Seventeen: Choose and Set-‐up Hosting

• Step Eighteen: Choose and Setup a Domain Name

• Step Nineteen: Uploading Everything to Server

• Step Twenty: Test Everything!

• Step Twenty-‐One: Drive Traffic

• Step Twenty-‐Two: Do It Again



The Public Domain in the UK and Other

Countries

The copyright laws vary from country to country, so space will not permit me to share all

the copyright scenarios for each country around the world. I would highly recommend

that you familiarize yourself with the copyright laws that govern intellectual property

rights in your own country. While I am not a copyright attorney who can help you

navigate through the tangled, and sometimes, confusing web of international copyright

law, I will share with you what I’ve learned and understand to be true. As an example,

I’ll share how this usage of Public Domain works from the United States would be

viewed in the UK, and how the copyright laws of the UK affect its own works (books,

photographs, films, audios, etc.).

In the UK, the copyright laws work differently than those in the United States. The

general rule of thumb concerning copyright for literary works is that the copyright

expires 70 years after the death of the author or creator of the work. So if a work was

published in 1930 in the UK, and the author died in 1934, the work would have passed

into the Public Domain in the UK in 2004. However if the author of the same work did

not die until 1948, the work would not pass into the Public Domain until 2018. There are

some exceptions, such as, when more than one person is listed as author or creator of

the work. In that case, the length of the copyright is determined as 70 years after the

death of the longest lived of those individuals. So if a work was written by two authors

who collaborated together, and one author died in 1934 and the other died in 1948, the

copyright would remain in effect until 2018, seventy years from the death of the

remaining author.

There is an excellent guide online that has been compiling the names of authors and

their works who died in each year since 1700. This guide currently catalogs over 113,000



authors, and can be used to determine whose copyrights expire(d) each New Year in

past and future years. You can access this guide, not only for the authors of books, but

for magazines and other literary works as well. Here is the web address:

http://www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/abyod/abyod.htm

If you are living in the UK, but wonder about using works from the United States that are

in the Public Domain there, there are a few simple tips to keep in mind.

1) The rule of the shorter term, also called the comparison of terms, is a provision

in international copyright treaties that allows participating countries to limit the

duration of copyright they grant to foreign works to the copyright term a work is

granted in its country of origin. What that means is that many works that are

now in the Public Domain in the United States will also be in the Public Domain

in the foreign countries who follow the rule of shorter term. This rule is

especially important regarding the copyright of works published in the United

States between the years of 1923 and 1964 but were not renewed. Works

published BEFORE 1923 are already in the Public Domain.

For every country that follows the rule of the shorter term, works that are in the

Public Domain in the United States should ALSO be in the Public Domain in those

countries as well, provided the copyright was NOT renewed in the 28th year after

the original publication date. However, there is an exception to this rule in the

UK. The United Kingdom followed the rule of the shorter term before 1956, but

didn’t follow it during the years, 1956-‐1996. Then in 1996, the UK began to

follow it again. So what does that mean to individuals in the UK? Simply this…

books, magazines, journals and periodicals (as well as other literary and visual

works) that were published in the United States during 1923 through 1928 and

did NOT have their copyrights renewed in their 28th year (the latter being 1956)

are NOW in the Public Domain in the UK as well. Works that were published in



the United States between the years of 1929 and 1963 whose copyrights were

not renewed, must follow the UK copyright laws in effect during that time,

meaning the life of the author plus 70 years. So as of this current year, 2008, any

book published in the United States from the time period of 1929-‐1963, and the

copyright was NOT renewed in the United States, is in the Public Domain in the

UK, IF the author(s) died before 1938.

2) Selling in the United States. A number of savvy internet marketers who are

based in the UK have been using a simple method to get around this US-‐UK

copyright dilemma. The “secret” is simply this: Keep all the elements of your

Public Domain-‐based products based in the United States. The way you would

accomplish that is to have your website set up as a .com and hosted on a server

in the United States. Also, use a United States-‐based payment processor (like

Clickbank or PayDotCom). You’ll also want to make sure you mention that your

product is in the Public Domain in the United States and that copyright

restrictions may apply in other countries. Adding a line or two to your disclaimer

should take care of it. By taking this approach, you can avoid most of the

copyright issues mentioned above entirely. Of course the safest bet of all when

using works from the United States is to stick with content published before

1923 (or before 1928 if the copyright wasn’t renewed). Then, thanks to the rule

of the shorter term, your content will definitely be in the Public Domain and no

further actions should be necessary.

3) A Few Exceptions. There are a few exceptions to the copyright rules shared

above (you knew it, right?) that can affect those in the UK (and other countries).

I’m not going to go into a lot of detail with them, but I do want to point them out

to you. These exceptions involve works that are in the Public Domain in the

United States but were written by non-‐US citizens. There are two primary

examples to consider here:



a. Was the author a non-‐US citizen? If the work was first published in the

United States and now in the Public Domain in the United States, but the

author was a citizen of another country, the copyright laws of the country

where the author maintained citizenship apply (author’s life + 70 years in

many cases) for that country.

b. Was the work published in a country other than the US first? If the work

was first published in another country and then later published in the

United States, the copyright laws of the first country apply (author’s life +

70 years in many cases).

The following is a fairly complete, up-‐to-‐date list of the copyright rules for various

countries around the world. These tables summarise the conditions a work must meet

in order to be safely considered public domain.



Not public domain

Conditions Date PD

unpublished works created before 1978 and published 1977–2003 2048–2073

Public domain

Corporate authorship 'Corporate authorship' refers to works written for hire or in the name of a corporation.

Date of publication Conditions Public domain Template

none. unpublished Works created 120+ years ago (1887) none.

1923 through 1977

• published outside the US and copyright in its home country

works created 120+ years ago (1887) or published 95+ years ago (1912), whichever is earliest.

none.

1978–1 March 1989

• no notice, but subsequent registration

• or with notice

works created 120+ years ago (1887) or published 95+ years ago (1912), whichever is earliest.

none.

After 1 March 1989 none.

works created 120+ years ago (1887) or published over 95+ years ago (1912), whichever is earliest.

none.



Unpublished works An unpublished work is one that has never been published in any form, or which was first published after 2003 but created before 1935.

Note for the European Union: If a previously unpublished work is published first time ("editio princeps") later than 70 years after the death of the author, then it is no more Public Domain but it is granted a copyright for 25 years (Council Directive 93/98/EEC)

Type of work What is public domain Template

• Most works (except those below) • or created before 1978 and

published after 2002 works of authors who died 70+ years ago (1937)

{{PD-‐old-‐70}}

• anonymous or pseudonymous • or author's date of death unknown Works created 120+ years ago

(1887) {{PD-‐old}}

Published in the United States

Date of publication

Condition[3] What is public domain Template

Before 1923 none. all works. {{PD-‐1923}}

1923–1963 with notice, no renewal[b] all works. {{PD-‐US-‐no-‐renewal}}

1923–1963 with notice and renewal[b] Works published 95+ years ago (1912) none.

1923–1977 no copyright notice all works. {{PD-‐US-‐no-‐notice}}

1964–1977 with notice Works published 95+ years ago (1912) none.



1978–1 March 1989

no notice or subsequent registration all works. none.

1978–1 March 1989

• no notice, but subsequent registration

• or with notice

works of authors who died 70+ years ago (1937) none.

After 1 March 1989 none.

works of authors who died 70+ years ago (1937)

Any time

prepared by an on-‐duty officer or employee of the United States Federal Government

all works. {{PD-‐USGov}}

Any time official documents of the United Nations[4]

Official records, UN documents issued with a UN symbol, and not-‐for-‐sale public information materials designed primarily to inform the public about United Nations activities

{{PD-‐UN}}

Published outside the United States Note: Foreign works published after 1923 are likely to be still under copyright in the US because of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, even if they briefly entered Public Domain before the agreement[5]. Only unambiguous conditions are listed below.

Date of publication Condition What is public domain Template

Before 1 July 1909 none. all works. none.

1 July 1909–1922

in compliance with US formalities all works. none.

1923–1977 Public Domain in its home country as of 1 January 1996 all works. {{PD-‐

1996}}



After 1 January 1978 copyright in its home country works by authors who

died 95+ years ago (1912)

Published in Greater China

Condition What is public domain Template

Works ineligible for copyright in Mainland China

Laws; regulations; resolutions, decisions and orders of State organs; other documents of a legislative, administrative or judicial nature; and their official translations.

{{PD-‐CN}}

Official works of Macao

Official works, in particular the texts of treaties, laws and regulations and those of reports or decisions by authorities of any kind, and translations thereof.

{{PD-‐MO}}

Works ineligible for copyright in Taiwan

The constitution, acts, regulations, official documents (including proclamations, text of speeches, news releases, and other documents prepared by civil servants in the course of carrying out their duties), and their translations and compilations by central or local government agencies.

{{PD-‐TW}}



Miscellaneous

Condition What is public domain Template

No creative content Some works (vague) {{PD-‐ineligible}}

Copyright released by holder All works {{PD-‐release}}

Public manifesto Works where research has uncovered no copyright

{{PD-‐manifesto}}

Copyright terms by country These tables outline the estimated length of time of copyright per country[6][7][8]. Laws regarding anonymous works, corporate-‐authored works, or non-‐literary works vary per country. This is not intended to be used as a legal guideline since it cannot reflect the complexity of the copyright laws in effect at any one time and since copyright laws are changing continuously; this section simply provides a useful summary as part of a more in-‐depth research.

Country Copyright length

Albania life + 70

Algeria life + 50

Andorra life + 70

Angola life + 50

Argentina life + 70

Armenia life + 50

Aruba unknown

Australia life + 50 if author died before 1955, otherwise life + 70

Austria life + 70

Azerbaijan life + 50

Bahrain life + 50

Bangladesh life + 50



Barbados life + 50

Belarus life + 50

Belgium life + 70

Belize life + 50

Benin life + 50

Bhutan life + 50

Bolivia life + 50

Bosnia and Herzegovina life + 70

Brazil

• life + 70 for known authors[9] • first publication + 70 for anonymous or pseudonymous

works (only if the author don't makes his identity known before the expiry)[10]

• first publication + 70 for audiovisual and photographic works[11], phonograms and transmission for the broadcasts of broadcasting organizations[12]

• texts of treaties or conventions, laws, decrees, regulations, judicial decisions and other official enactments shall be excluded from copyright protection[13]

Brunei life + 50

Bulgaria life + 70

Burkina Faso life + 50

Burundi life + 50

Cambodia life + 50

Cameroon life + 50

Canada life + 50

Cape Verde life + 50

Chile life + 50

China life + 50

Colombia life + 80

Costa Rica life + 70

Cote d'Ivoire life + 99

Croatia Life + 70



Cuba life + 50

Czech Republic life + 70

Denmark life + 70

Djibouti life + 25

Dominica life + 70

Dominican Republic

life + 50

Ecuador life + 70

Egypt life + 50

El Salvador life + 50

Estonia life + 70

European Union life + 70

Fiji life + 50

Finland life + 70

France life + 70

Georgia life + 50

Germany life + 70

Ghana life + 70

Greece life + 70

Guatemala life + 75

Honduras life + 75

Hong Kong life + 50

Hungary life + 70

Iceland life + 70

India life + 60 for literary or musical works or artistic works, publication + 60 for others[14][15].

Indonesia life + 50

Iran life + 30

Iraq life + 50 (imposed by occupying provisional authority)

Ireland life + 70

Israel life + 70

Italy life + 70

Jamaica life + 50



Japan life + 50 (life + 70 years for motion pictures)

Jordan life + 50

Kazakhstan life + 50

Kenya life + 50

Korea (South) life + 50

Kuwait life + 50

Kyrgyzstan life + 50

Latvia life + 70

Lebanon life + 50

Libya life + 25, with 50-‐year minimum (as of 1968; may have changed since)

Liechtenstein life + 70

Lithuania life + 70

Luxembourg life + 70

Macao life + 50

Madagascar life + 70

Malaysia life + 50

Maldives none

Mali life + 50

Malta life + 70

Marshal Islands none

Mauritius life + 50

Mexico life + 100

Moldova life + 50

Mongolia life + 50

Montenegro life + 70

Morocco life + 50

Namibia life + 50

The Netherlands life + 70

New Zealand life + 50

Nicaragua life + 70

Niger life + 50



Nigeria Life + 70

Norway life + 70

Oman life + 50

Pakistan life + 50

Palau life + 50

Panama life + 50

Papua New Guinea life + 50

Paraguay life + 70

Peru life + 70

Philippines life + 50

Poland Life + 70

Qatar life + 50

Romania life + 70

Russia life + 70 (life + 50 for works whose copyright expired before July 28, 2004)[16]

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines life + 50

Samoa Life + 75

Saudi Arabia life + 50

Serbia life + 70

Seychelles life + 25

Singapore life + 70

Slovakia life + 70

Slovenia life + 70

Solomon Islands life + 50

South Africa life + 50

Spain life + 70

Sudan life + 50

Swaziland life + 50

Sweden life + 70

Switzerland life + 70

Syria life + 50



Taiwan life + 50

Tajikistan life + 50

Tanzania life + 50

Thailand life + 50

Togo life + 50

Tonga life + 50

Trinidad and Tobago

life + 50

Tunisia life + 50

Turkey life + 70

United Arab Emirates life + 50

United Kingdom life + 70

United States of America

expired for works published before 1923; 28 or 95 years for works copyrighted 1923-‐1963; 95 years for works copyrighted 1964-‐1977; thereafter life+70.

Uruguay life + 50

Uzbekistan life + 50

Venezuela life + 60

Vietnam life + 50

Yemen life + 30

Zambia life + 50

Zimbabwe life + 50



Notes

Footnotes

• ^a These works have copyright terms extending 70 years beyond the author's life, or until 31 December 2047 (whichever is greater).

• ^b The United States Copyright renewal records search engine is a useful tool for determining renewal status.

References

1. The criteria tables are primarily derived from the Cornell Copyright Information Center's Public

Domain chart, which is copyrighted by Peter Hirtle and released under the Creative Commons

Attribution-‐NonCommercial License 2.0.

2. Copyright durations, Bromberg and Sunstein, LLP

3. Circular 15a from the United States Copyright Office

4. As Section 7 of the United States Headquarters Agreement for the United Nations, Public Law 80-‐357

applies the United States laws to the United Nations Headquarters, works published there are

copyrighted in the same way as other works published in the United States.

5. Highlights of Copyright Amendments Contained in the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA).

Circular 38b (Portable Document Format), Library of Congress Copyright Office

6. How Can I Tell Whether a Book Can Go Online?, Online Books Page

7. Summary of copyright terms The Online Books Page

8. Collection of National Copyright Laws, United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural

Organisation

9. Law No. 9610 of February 19, 1998, on Copyright and Neighboring Rights, article 41





14. A Hand Book of Copyright Law, Government of India Ministry of Human Resource Development

15. Copyright in India: Law & Procedure, Ezine Articles

16. copyright.ru (Russian)



Appendix One

Google Books Research Tricks

For Finding Great Public Domain Content

I thought I’d share a few Google Books (http://books.google.com) research gems with

you today, especially considering the amazing response I received concerning my

Google ban.

Whenever you use Google Books to research or locate Public Domain books to use for

your product creation, there are a few tips you need to keep in mind. First, when you

type in your search keyword(s) and have results returned you will ALWAYS want to

make sure that only “Full View Only” books are showing. You choose this setting by

clicking on the drop-‐down menu next to the “Showing” label just under the Search Box

and choose, “Full View Only.” This will filter the search results to show “primarily” those

works which are in the Public Domain (there will be a few exceptions).

Once you locate a book you’re interesting in downloading, you can do so very easily.

Let’s use the example shown above…the first result to be shown based on the keyword

“periodicals.” The entry for the book reads as follows:



A Catalogue of Scientific and Technical Periodicals, (1665 to 1882 ...

by Henry Carrington Bolton -‐ Science -‐ 1887 -‐ 773 pages

5,105 titles, including titles of some periodicals established in 1883 (p. 601-‐615)

When I click on the highlighted link (the book’s title), Google Books returns the result

shown on the next page:

Now I want you to notice a few things about this page. First (1), you have the

opportunity to browse through the entire book, which is a good thing. That way you can

determine whether the book is what you are looking for, content-‐wise. Second (2), you

can read the table of contents, which, again, can be very helpful. But here is what I

REALLY want to point out. You can download (3) the book from this page as well. This is

the method I used to download all the books I mentioned in the e-‐mail I sent out about

Google banning my download capabilities. These are the exact simple steps you can use

to find and download ANY books from Google Books.

(3) Download Book HERE

(1) Book Preview

(2) Review Table of Contents HERE



You can also learn more about the book, along with finding related titles and more, by

clicking on the “About this book” tab, located at the top left of the page.

The next trick I want to show you involves some specific keywords and keyword phrases

you’ll want to test at Google Books (these will also work at Live Books). It stands to

reason that some of the best Public Domain content we could find and use for product

creation would be ready-‐made courses or “how-‐to” books, right? Well, I decided to find

out what would happen if I experimented with those keywords a little, and the results

were pretty cool. I found some great content. So you might be wondering why I would

tell you how to find this content if it’s so great. Why not just use the content myself?

Simple…I’ve already found MORE content than I’ll be able to use in my lifetime…literally.

I could drop out of the Internet Marketing scene completely for the rest of my days and



still keep a staff of people very busy for years to come. So why be greedy?! Plus, I really

DO want to see you succeed! So with that said, here we go….

You’ll notice in the screen image below that I have typed in the keyword phrase “how

to” course. I typed it in very specifically to limit my results, and still produced 3,180

results. As I began to dig through the results, I discovered some pretty cool possibilities

for content, like the first entry, “How to Do Business by Letter and Training Course in

Conversational English.”

Also under “how to” course, I found the following books:

• The Children: How to Study Them: A Course of Lectures

• How to Understand Music: A Concise Course in Musical Intelligence and Taste

• Mastery of Speech: A Course in Eight Parts

• How to Acquire and Strengthen Will-‐power

• Indian Basketry, and How to Make Indian and Other Baskets

With the keyword phrase, “how to study,” I found the following books:



• Wild Life at Home: How to Study and Photograph it

• How to Study Plants

• How to Study the Bible

• A Brief Course in the Teaching Process

• How to Use Your Mind: A Psychology of Study

You should also try the following keyword phrases:

• “a course in”

• “how to master”

• “how to learn”

• “lessons in”

• “lessons on”

• “handbook of”

• “manual on”

• “study of”

I think you get the idea. Just with what I shared above, you should be busy for a VERY

long time. These keyword phrases and ones related or similar to them will lead you

through a very effective research process. You can also enter niche specific keywords

along with many of these phrases, such as, “how to” massage or “study of” massage.

As your results are returned, you’ll also want to watch for “Subject” suggestions in the

results. These are category classifications created by Google to assign to related

subjects. The following page shows an example from results returned from the keyword

phrase, “how to” massage:



When you see these Subject Categories and click on them, they will show you all the

book entries that are tagged as a part of that category. This can be a really quick way to

find additional, related materials.

Finally, I want to include an excerpt from a blog post I made a while back that addresses

some related research strategies for Google Books. These strategies are worth

repeating, so here you go…

When working specifically with Google Books, I’ve found that there are two ways to

speed up the search process, especially if my keyword(s) returned thousands of

results—Google’s “Subject” feature and “Intitle” feature. (NOTE: Anytime you are

looking for Public Domain books on Google Books, ALWAYS make sure that your results

ONLY include “100% Viewable” books.)

Google’s “Subject” feature enables you to search for books based on their subject

matter, kind of like general topics or broad niches. Here is the way this works: in the

search dialog box, type in the word “search:” with a colon and then the subject you

want to search for in quotes…no spaces. Here is an example: subject:”dogs”. The results



you’ll receive are the books related to your subject…in this case, “dogs.” In using this

feature to find books, or more correctly, lists of books that are in the Public Domain, I’ve

identified several keyword combinations with the “Subject” feature that can work

extremely well in helping you find what you’re after. Here is the list I use for my own

research:

Searches Using Google’s “Subject” Feature:

• subject:”Best books”

• subject:”Catalogs, Library”

• subject:”Catalogs, Booksellers”

• subject:”Bibliography”

• subject:”Broadsides”

• subject:”Collectors and collecting”

• subject:”Periodicals”

• subject:”Newspapers”

• subject:”Publishers and publishing”

• subject:”Indexes”

• subject:”American periodicals”

• subject:”Press”

The results you’ll receive will vary, but using the examples above, you will discover

millions of “new” books that you never knew existed before. You can also use this

feature together with other keywords to define your search even further. For example,

conducting a search using the following search string—subject:”Periodicals” dogs—will

return results for only those periodicals that include the keyword “dog.”

Google’s “Intitle” feature enables you to search for books based on keywords in their

title. For example, a search using the search string—intitle:Dogs—would only return

results that included the keyword “dogs” in the title of the work. This refinement can be

very handy in refining your search for specific types of books. For finding listings of



books that I know could include the type of information I’m after, I use the following as

a part of my own research:

Searches Using Google’s “Intitle” Feature:

• intitle:Catalog

• intitle:Magazine

• intitle:Newspaper

• intitle:Guide

• intitle:Periodical

As with the “Subject” feature, using keywords along with the “Intitle” feature will limit

your results to those titles that include the keyword(s) in the text of the work. For

example, conducting a search with the search string—intitle:magazine dog—would

return results that had the keyword “Magazine” in the title and the keyword “dog” in

the text of the work.

I hope this has opened up some new research possibilities for you. Since “Content is

King”, finding that content quickly and easily is an extremely important skill to have at

your disposal. With this search strategy, you now have one more valuable “tool” in your

Product Creation Toolbox!



Appendix Two

Find the Experts!

Over the past few months, I have been testing some new Public Domain research

strategies that have been providing me with some pretty amazing results. I stumbled

onto these strategies almost by accident while researching content for a niche project I

was working on. These are not difficult strategies but are extremely simple and can be

incorporated into what you’re already doing to find good Public Domain content.

When you hear the methods I’ve been using, you may think that they’re very obvious

and nothing new at all, but I’m going to show you some specific keywords that you have

probably not considered using before with your Public Domain research. And it’s these

keywords that have been revealing the amazing content I’ve been finding!

The research strategy I’ve been testing centers around finding and identifying the

early experts who led the niche markets you’re interested in creating products for. I

mean think about it, if you want the best writing on a particular subject, you know that

it’s smartest to talk to the experts, right? So then, it makes perfect sense to carry that

idea over into Public Domain research. The trick, of course, is figuring out how to

identify those experts from 40 to 80 years ago. And that’s where good keyword

research comes in using the keywords I’ve identified during my testing process.

Finding the Experts

There are primarily four groups of experts I’ve identified that you really want to give

your focus and attention to with this type of research.

1. The best experts in a given field of expertise are the ones who are the innovators…the

ones who are setting new trends or developing and testing new ideas. Just like today,



these leaders of the past are the ones you want to find because it’s likely that many of

them wrote books.

2. The second type of experts to identify are those who created controversy in their field

of expertise. Very often, experts that create controversy or propose controversial ideas

are those who are on the cutting edge of new ways of thinking about solutions to the

problems of their day. They are often ridiculed for their ideas and work at first, and in

some cases are even outcasts. But time often reveals the brilliance of their work…which

is why you want to find their work!

3. A “not so obvious” type of expert that you may consider looking for are those experts

who celebrities and sports figures looked to or endorsed for their expertise in a given

field. Who did Hollywood turn to when it needed help in the niche market your creating

products for? Who were the Gurus to the stars and sports figures?

4. The last type of expert you want to look for are those who wrote the best-‐selling non-‐

fiction books of the day. This seems like an obvious choice that is often overlooked. For

example, The New York Times best-‐seller list has been ongoing since April 1942, so it’s a

great place to research for your niche-‐specific experts. Here’s a website to start your

search for NYT Non-‐Fiction: http://www.hawes.com/no1_nf_d.htm

Important Keywords to Use With Your Research

Below is a list of expert-‐related keywords I’ve assemble during my own research that

will aid you in finding leaders and experts in your niche. You will find that not all the

keywords will apply in every niche market so choose the ones that fit best. What I

usually do is go to Google or other search engine and simply type in the name of the

niche I’m researching (like “Horse Training”) and one of the keywords from below

(“Horse Training Pioneer” for example). I have also found that Wikipedia

(http://www.wikipedia.org) can be very helpful with this method of research as well!



Here is the list:

• Pioneer

• Avante-‐Garde

• Expert

• Experimental

• Experimented

• Original

• Developer

• Explorer

• Founder

• Founded

• Innovator

• Innovation

• Leader

• Leading

• Leadership

• Discover

• Discovery

• Established

• Originated

• Originator

• Creator

• Created

• Contributor

• Contributed

• Trendsetter

• Controversial

• Controversy

• Endorsed

• Endorsement

• Outcast

• Hidden

• Top Secret

• Research

• Experimental

• Collaborated

• Cutting-‐Edge

• Foremost

• Authority

• Specialist

• Specialized

• Frontrunner

• Best-‐Selling

• Consultant

• Trainer


©2009 The Public Domain Expert. -‐ 127 -‐ www.publicdomainprofitcenters.com

Other Sources for Expert Content

Popular authors almost always contributed to magazines, so find their articles!

This will take a little more research in some cases, but the payoff can be worth it.

I’ve found some amazing magazine articles in the Public Domain by authors

whose books are not out of copyright. So it can be a way to access expert

content when it’s not available in book form. To method you can use to find

magazine articles written by experts (once you’ve identified the expert) is to go

to Google, type in the expert’s name and “bibliography.” In some cases, you will

find listings for your author that not only include the books they’ve written, but

magazine articles as well!

Radio was also extremely important and popular before the 1960’s. It’s not

uncommon to find that experts shared their wisdom on the radio (just like

today). Transcribing those classic recordings can provide you with expert content

that others may not even consider. Don’t overlook it! Speaking of audio

recordings…I’ve also found that in some niches, leaders in the field also offered

audio, and in some cases, video recordings of their expertise which are now in

the Public Domain. Perhaps the best place online to find this type of content is

Archive.org (http://www.archive.org).

Other Helpful Websites

In addition to using the search engines and Wikipedia for your expert research,

I’ve also found two other information sites that sometimes offer excellent

research leads and content from experts that are in the Public Domain. A great

way to begin your research on both these sites is to conduct a search either by

niche name or by year (1964 and earlier and the primary copyright expired years

of interest)!

InfoPlease: http://www.infoplease.com


©2009 The Public Domain Expert. -‐ 128 -‐ www.publicdomainprofitcenters.com

Answers.com: http://www.answers.com

In Conclusion

When you consider the fact that there are over 85 million or more books in the

Public Domain and only 2 -‐3 million are available online right now, there remains

a LOT of content to be found. I have said now for years that, “You can’t find what

you don’t know to look for!” And now I’ve peeled back yet another layer of the

Public Domain “onion” to aid you in your quest for the best content available for

your information products. It doesn’t matter what you do in selling information

products, you are ALWAYS going to need content…and the proven content of the

Public Domain is perhaps the smartest choice you can make for finding quality

content quickly and cheaply!

Public Domain Profit Centers - Amazon S3 · Public Domain Profit Centers ©2016&Tony&Laidig&&&&&!""9"!&&&&&PublicDomainUniversity.com& PublicDomain4is4notprotected4by4copyrightlaw

Documents