Public Domain Business
The Public Domain Business
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.
How can you use public domain works?
There are countless ways that you can make money with public domain works. Let me just suggest a few to give you an idea of the possibilities:
* 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 bake a cake, 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.
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.
So how are some ways you can use public domain works for your business???
Use Public Domain 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.
* 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 off the same information.
* 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 raises the value of what you’re selling.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. There 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.
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 eBook 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
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.
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