Public Domain

Should you hire a lawyer to certify a Public Domain Work?

2008-02-13T02:25:00.000-08:00

Whenever you want to use a public domain work in your business, you should consider
getting the work certified by the copyright office. The next question, then, is whether you should hire a lawyer to do so..

There is a lot of ‘research’ work and copyright checks that you can carry out yourself (or pay someone to carry them out for you) without having to go through legal hassles.

In the end, you will only need a lawyer if you violate the copyright law. Even then, there are certain grey areas where the law is not so clear, and your own interpretation might be at odds with the court’s interpretation, thus putting you in hot water.

So take the situation case by case. If you are sued, you will definitely need a lawyer. Apart from that, the best bet is to stick to guaranteed public domain works. If you can verify with certainty that a work’s copyright has not been renewed (provided the work was published before 1964), then you can safely consider it public domain. Similarly, if something was published without a copyright notice before 1978, it is in the public domain as well.

The only glitch comes when you launch your own derivative work of another copyrighted
work or a work whose status you cannot determine through research. There is also a
problem if you work with unpublished works. In these situations, it is best to hold a
counseling session with an intellectual property lawyer before taking any definitive
business steps.

Many people get discouraged by high attorney costs. On the other hand, you have to
weigh all your costs (research, copyright checks, attorney fees, production, marketing, etc) against your expected profits and then decide whether it is worth the investment or not. If you find a killer niche which can easily bring you a high monthly income, maybe spending a few hundred dollars to protect yourself from litigation isn’t that bad after all.

Copyright issues only arise for works that are unpublished and works published after 1922. I’d suggest that you start off with pre-1923 published works even if they bring in smaller profits (the idea is to build multiple income streams). Then, once you have a constant stream of income, you can make bigger investments and move into the unpublished and post 1922 works.

And of course, avoid copying trademarks for commercial purposes. Even if you
significantly change it, chances are that you will be slapped with a lawsuit faster than you can say: “Do I need a lawyer?”

Specific Money Generating Public Domain Ideas

2008-02-13T02:23:00.000-08:00

If you’ve been trying to build a business online for awhile, you probably have at least a dozen business ideas storming in your head. Let’s discuss how to use those ideas and combine them with the public domain to create instant products and in the end, instant businesses.

One way to do so is to use public domain material to 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 it’s release, interest in the book, and especially the ideas and controversies it raises, has risen exponentially.

Even in April 2005, almost an entire 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.

When the movie was about to be released, daily searches were up to 13,224, or 396,724
searches each month!

This number has been constant for the last few years and most likely was a lot higher
when the book was released. 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.

But 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.

The lesson here is to 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.

Starting a Business using Public Domain Products Based on The Arts, Music, and Religion

2008-02-13T02:22:00.001-08:00

There are many potential business opportunities that you can launch with public domain works. Religion/Philosophy, The Arts, and Music are some of the popular categories where the public domain is very strong, where 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. But, you'll need to make sure that the right market exists for any of these topics before you start running with the idea!

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.

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.

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.

Starting a Business using Public Domain Products Based on Government Publications

2008-02-13T02:21:00.000-08:00

There are many potential business opportunities that you can launch with public domain works. Government publications are one of the popular categories where the public domain is very strong, where 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. But, you'll need to make sure that the right market exists for any of these topics before you start running with the idea!

The US 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.

There are two important lessons when working with the public domain, though:

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.

Starting a Business using Public Domain Products Based on History

2008-02-13T02:20:00.001-08:00

There are many potential business opportunities that you can launch with public domain works. History is one of the popular categories where the public domain is very strong, where 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. But, you'll need to make sure that the right market exists for any of these topics before you start running with the idea!

History is one such category where public domain materials are readily available.

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).

Starting a Business using Public Domain Products Based on Self Improvement

2008-02-13T02:18:00.000-08:00

There are many potential business opportunities that you can launch with public domain works. Self improvement is one of the popular categories where the public domain is very strong, where 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. But, you'll need to make sure that the right market exists for any of these topics before you start running with the idea!

The self improvement market 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.

The Competition in Public Domain

2008-02-13T02:17:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the abundance of online scams such as the ‘get-rich-quick’ schemes prevalent
on the Internet, people seem to have forgotten that while there may be a thousand and
one ways to make money, there are always a few core principles that invariably apply
whenever you’re talking about building a business or an alternate income stream.

Do yourself a favor – forget about getting rich overnight.

Let’s look at the ‘competition’ factor in the public domain.

From what you’ve learned so far, you should know that ‘competition’ itself is not a
byproduct 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 market like Internet Marketing, you’re bound to be lost in
the crowd.

Instead, if you choose a less-known but profitable market (a hobby like poker is well-
known but it’s fairly well saturated while 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. All that
and more is covered elsewhere in this course.

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.

The Public Domain Checklist

2008-02-13T02:16:00.000-08:00

All that you have to do is to follow simple steps and you can easily be on your way to your
first online business using a public domain product:

1.Find a profitable niche
2.Find a quality public domain work
3.Create your e-book
4.Purchase hosting and domain name
5.Create your website
6.Market your product!

That’s it. The only part this is somewhat difficult is finding the idea – after that, everything is just a set of tasks that need to be done in every business, and as such, there are countless free tools and strategies that you can use to gain an edge.

The only other tricky part can be finding a quality public domain work. But there’s even a new software product that even makes this part a breeze. It's called "Public Domain Explorer". You can get it at:

http://www.publicdomainexplorer.com

Here's how it works. You simply login to the software, enter your keywords (after you've researched your market of course!) and wait a few minutes. You'll be presented with a list of hard copy books available for sale at used book sellers all over the internet. Your job is simply to find the best quality book in the results for the best price and purchase it.

Once you have that book in hand, you can either scan it yourself or hire someone to scan it for you. Again, you can go to the outsourcing sites and locate someone who can do this. In the long run, it will still be cheaper for you than hiring a ghostwriter and it will save critical time as well.

When you’re done, simply put together a quick website and begin marketing your new
product! It’s literally that easy to profit from the public domain.

The Public Domain Business

2008-02-13T02:14:00.000-08:00

The public domain is a very powerful resource. Since everyone 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.

It is possible that the public – the people buying your products -- now has 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.

Think again. Is it that bad a deal, really?

It is the same situation many brick and mortar businesses (or, 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. Look at the internet marketing niche for example. If that’s not
an over saturated niche, I don’t know what is. Yet, many marketers are making hefty
seven figure annual incomes selling info products to that target market.

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 bummer. With more sellers and less buyers, prices will fall and profits will vanish.

So what’s an honest guy going to do?

Follow solid business advice. Don’t move into a market that’s already too saturated unless:

* You have considerable experience in running a business
* You have a special advantage in that market AND
* You already have multiple streams of income to fall back on in case this deal
goes bad.

Instead,

* 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. Building a business from public domain works is not too different from
building any other business, whether it’s online or high street.