Public domain information is “one of the most exciting things for people running an information marketing business, especially those just getting started,” says Information Marketing master, Yanik Silver. Public domain offers a nearly endless source of content and a way for people to legally ‘steal’ an information product.
Public domain materials can include, ideas, facts, works granted or donated to the public, government material, software/freeware and even formerly copyrighted materials.
Copyrighted materials that are now in the public domain are materials printed in the U.S. before 1923 and those printed between 1923 and 1963 if the copyright was not renewed in the 28th year, which describes approximately 85% of all copyrighted materials. This wide net allows information marketers to catch some real gems.
Places to find public domain materials include: libraries, used book stories, aliberis.com, firstgov.gov and google.com/unclesam.
Public domain materials can be used as the basis of an information marketing business or used as supplementary materials to other products you already have. You can also take the basic public domain materials and then create derivative products from it that you can use to feed search engines, upsells, sell on Ebay, email autoresponders, websites, podcasts and many other sections of your marketing venture.
Case in point – a student of Yanik Silver’s public domain program had a passion for wrestling. He found a public domain wrestling manual originally written in 1911. He copied it and started selling hard copies of the manual for $50. Then he took each of the lessons illustrated in the manual and created a step-by-step video series and is selling the videos. He now makes a six figure income off of his wrestling information business.
Another example is Rebecca Find, working with an early 20th century book called “The Science of Getting Rich. She created a website, recorded the book, broke the book into sections and built an e-class around it and has monetized this one book in a variety of different ways.
Before getting started with any public domain material it is advisable to seek some legal counsel or at a bare minimum do your own due diligence. Ways you can check it yourself is copyright.gov to search for any book after 1950 or to simply work with an attorney.
The bottom line is that you can use public domain materials in so many ways and you can very quickly get your information business up and running. The extent to where you take it from there is limited only by your imagination.
Thanks for taking your time out and reading this content.
