Public Domain Magazine Secrets 1 © 2008 the Public Domain Expert Tony’S Public Domain Magazine Secrets

Public Domain Magazine Secrets 1 © 2008 The Public Domain Expert Tony’s Public Domain Magazine Secrets Tony’s Secret Strategies for Finding and Using Public Domain Magazines to Create Great Info Products By Tony Laidig www.publicdomainblog.com www.thepublicdomainexpert.com www.tonysyardsale.com Public Domain Magazine Secrets 2 © 2008 The Public Domain Expert LEGAL NOTICE © 2008 – Tony Laidig. All rights reserved. The Publisher has strived to be as accurate and complete as possible in the creation of this report, notwithstanding the fact that he does not warrant or represent at any time that the contents within are accurate due to the rapidly changing nature of the Internet. While all attempts have been made to verify information provided in this publication, the Publisher assumes no responsibility for errors, omissions, or contrary interpretation of the subject matter herein. Any perceived slights of specific persons, peoples, or organizations are unintentional. In practical advice books, like anything else in life, there are no guarantees of income made. Readers are cautioned to reply on their own judgment about their individual circumstances to act accordingly. This book is not intended for use as a source of legal, business, accounting or financial advice. All readers are advised to seek services of competent professionals in legal, business, accounting, and finance field. You are encouraged to print this book for easy reading. This is NOT a free e-book. It is for personal use only. It cannot be given away in any form and cannot be sold or offered as a bonus. Public Domain Magazine Secrets 3 © 2008 The Public Domain Expert Tony’s Secret Strategies for Public Domain Magazines If you have ever attempted to create your own information products, then you have no doubt faced the challenge of producing the content. We need content for our products, content for our blogs, content for our e-zines, content for our autoresponders, content for our Squidoo lenses, content for our articles…I think you get the picture…we NEED content and LOTS of it! When you get right down to it, content only comes one of three ways. You can: Write it, Buy it or Borrow it. Writing your own e-book, articles or blog entries can be very rewarding. I enjoy writing almost as much as I enjoy graphic design, but writing your own content can also be an extremely frustrating process as well. Sitting there staring at a blank computer screen is NOT my idea of a good time. When the ideas are flowing, writing your own content is great. When the well dries up, it totally sucks! Of course, if you don’t enjoy writing, then you have a problem. Another popular approach to obtaining content is to buy it, and you have a few options. Your first option is to hire a ghostwriter to write the content for you. Now I’ve worked with quite a few ghostwriters over the years—both good and bad— and one thing seems consistent with most of them…they’re not cheap. Of course, a great ghostwriter is worth their weight in gold and will usually cost you that much, and to go with a lesser known writer can be risky. Even with having friends who are writers, this is not my first choice (it’s not my second or third either). Your second option for purchasing content is to use PLR (private label rights) content. This is content that someone hired a ghostwriter to write for the purpose of selling it without rights. This can be a great option for finding content for your niche, but beware…not all PLR content is created equal. There’s a lot of crap out Public Domain Magazine Secrets 4 © 2008 The Public Domain Expert there! Now I buy a lot of PLR content and have made some decent money from it. There’s just one problem that bugs me about it…I’m never the only one using it! A thousand other people may own the same content. Some will make changes to it, if they’re smart, but most will pass the content on as-is, and before you know it, it’s relegated to giveaways, bonuses and dime sales. Finally, we have the option to borrow our content. This is one of my favorite options. What I mean by “borrow” is that we take what someone else has written or produced…a work whose copyright has expired and is in the Public Domain…and we create a new hybrid product. Public Domain content provides a vast treasure trove of books, articles, artwork, photographs, videos, audios, sheet music, software and more…and it’s all available for us to use freely for any purpose we choose—legally! One of the most overlooked sources of great content from the Public Domain is magazines. There are literally hundreds of thousands of magazines (each with many more issues) that are in the Public Domain. While many of these magazines are not currently available in digital form, some digitizing initiatives, such as Google Books and Live Search Books, are beginning to include certain magazines as a part of their scanning priorities. You can probably think of quite a few info product creators who are using ghostwriters, PLR content and even Public Domain books for their content, but I bet you can’t name five people (probably not even one) who are using content from Public Domain magazines…and THAT’S what makes it sweet! It’s a largely untapped goldmine! There are a few reasons why using magazine content is potentially so attractive over other forms of available content: 1) Magazine articles and stories offer content in bite-sized chunks. Where a book will offer hundreds of pages of content to have to wade through, Public Domain Magazine Secrets 5 © 2008 The Public Domain Expert magazine articles and stories are usually no more than 500 to 2,000 words, making it perfect for building webpages. 2) Public Domain magazines are almost completely untapped as a resource for content. They’re off the radar, so to speak, and that offers great opportunity to the one who finds magazines relevant to their niche. 3) Magazines offer a wealth of info-product opportunities because, in addition to the stories and articles, you also have the covers, ads, illustrations and more to create additional or related products from. Where to Find the Magazines Working with magazine content is often a three-step process. You have to: 1) Identify magazines that may have the content you need 2) Find copies of the magazines you identify 3) Capture the content The first challenge is to find magazines that are relevant to your niche. This takes some research, but there are some excellent resources available to help you. Following is a list of the best resources for identifying magazines that may have the content you’re searching for: • A History of American Magazines, Volume 1, 1741-1850 by Frank Luther Mott • A History of American Magazines, Volume II, 1850-1865 by Frank Luther Mott • A History of American Magazines, Volume III, 1865-1885 by Frank Luther Mott Public Domain Magazine Secrets 6 © 2008 The Public Domain Expert • A History of American Magazines, Volume IV, 1885-1905 by Frank Luther Mott • A History of American Magazines, Volume V, 1905-1930 by Frank Luther Mott • Old Magazines: Identification & Value Guide by Richard E. Clear, David T. Alexander • Old Magazines with Year 2003 Price Guide • Collectible Magazines: Identification and Price Guide by David K. Henkel • The Classic Era of American Pulp Magazines by Peter Haining Most of these reference books are available for sale on Amazon.com, but are also available in many local libraries (remember those?). While searching for magazine content, you will also want to take advantage of magazine indexes as well. These are publications that reference topics and authors that have been published by many of the popular magazines. This information is extremely helpful, especially if you are looking for writings by a specific author or for specific niche topics. Here is a listing of the best known and most popular indexes: • Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature • Poole’s Index to Periodical Literature • American Periodicals, 1741-1900 • American Periodicals, 18th century • American Periodicals, 1850-1900, Civil War and Reconstruction • International Index to Periodicals (1920-1955) • Cumulated Magazine Subject Index, 1907-1949 • Nineteenth Century Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature, 1890-1899 • Literary Index to American Magazines, 1850-1900 • Comprehensive Index to English-Language Little Magazines, 1890-1970 Public Domain Magazine Secrets 7 © 2008 The Public Domain Expert Please note that a number of the above indexes can be found at Google Books (books.google.com) and LiveSearch Books (books.live.com). Here is an excerpt from Poole’s Index to Periodical Literature - 1882 Supplement: Once you’ve identified a number of magazines that may have great content for your niche, the next step is to locate those magazine issues. I would always begin by searching online, just because you never know what people are scanning to get online…and that available content increases daily. Head over to Google and type in the title of the magazine you’re searching for. You may find what you’re looking for quickly. I would also recommend search Wikipedia.org. I’ve had quite a bit of success with finding magazine content online thanks to Wikipedia. Also, don’t forget about eBay…I’ve purchased a ton of Public Domain magazines through eBay. It’s simply the largest place to find nearly anything in the world. Lastly, you may want to consider WorldCat (www.worldcat.org).

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