Public Domain Alchemy:

Turning Public Domain Content Into Pure Gold, Part 3
by Ramon Ross

We have established that using Public Domain content to help build your online or offline business provides numerous opportunities for expanding your reach into virtually any niche market out there. It also can explode your income in ways that you may not even be considering. There are numerous ways to use or repurpose this material into products that will add to your bottom line.

In this series, we have examined 10 ways you can use public domain books to develop new products. Here are five more ideas:

• 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!

You can learn additional ways to turn Public Domain content into pure gold here: The Public Domain Code Book