Create Profitable Information Products from Freely Available Public Domain Works

Yanik Sil­ver describes an excit­ing way to cre­ate con­tent for your infor­ma­tion prod­uct that I had not thought much about until read­ing his book, Moon­light­ing on the Inter­net: 5 World-Class Experts Reveal Proven Ways to Make Extra Cash.  He rec­om­mends cash­ing in on infor­ma­tion in the Pub­lic Domain, that is, infor­ma­tion that is free to use in any form with­out any­one for­bid­ding it with a copy­right.

(Check with a lawyer to con­firm the pub­lic domain sta­tus of any prod­uct you decide to use — espe­cially if you plan to make money from it.   Copy­right law varies in each coun­try, so ver­ify your laws if you live out­side the United States).

He describes how he cre­ated prod­ucts he sells for thou­sands of dol­lars per month from infor­ma­tion in the pub­lic domain.  Where did he find this pub­lic domain infor­ma­tion and how was he sure what he used was not copyrighted?

To answer that ques­tion we have to under­stand cur­rent U.S. Copy­right law.  Here is what is in the pub­lic domain:

1. Facts, fig­ures, ideas, titles, etc. — Works granted or donated to the pub­lic domain.  Some copy­right hold­ers explic­itly donate their work to the pub­lic domain.  Yanik cites the exam­ple of P.T. Barnum’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy that the author donated to the pub­lic domain when he wrote it.
2. Work of the U.S. gov­ern­ment or agents.  Nearly all Fed­eral works are in the pub­lic domain and some state pub­li­ca­tions are also.  There is a lot of use­ful infor­ma­tion out there that can be used, for example:

• firstgov.gov
• gpoaccess.gov
• pueblo.gsa.gov
• Okla­homa State’s BrowseTopics
• access.gpo.gov
• google.com/unclesam

3. For­merly copy­righted works that have fallen into pub­lic domain for a vari­ety of rea­sons. Here is a chart from the U.S. Copy­right Office that is help­ful.  Check out this comic book that explains the con­cepts in an enter­tain­ing way.

Once a work is in the pub­lic domain, you can use it any way you want.  Here are some ways:

1. Re-title the work
2. Cut/paste parts of it
3. Use one chap­ter and insert it into your infor­ma­tion product
4. use the ideas and reword it

If you make sig­nif­i­cant mod­i­fi­ca­tions to it, you can also re-copyright it.  How that for a great idea for cre­at­ing your own infor­ma­tion prod­uct to earn money?

I highly rec­om­mend Yanik’s book and web­sites for more information:

Book:

Moon­light­ing on the Inter­net: 5 World-Class Experts Reveal Proven Ways to Make Extra Cash

Web­sites:

• Pub­lic Domain Riches
• Instant Sales Letters
• Instant Inter­net Profits
• Auto Respon­der Magic
• Mil­lion Dol­lar Emails
• Instant Mar­ket­ing Toolbox

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