Found a treasure trove of public domain but am not sure what to do with it??

Great input you all. Thanks very much!

Yeah..if you use the content as is...for sure it might be a dead giveaway but I have been told that I am an excellent writer and would enjoy rewriting much of it or rather condensing it into some really interesting articles.

On everything from trains that had car wheels to airplanes that picked up and dropped off airplanes. House related stuff. Marketing related stuff. On and on.

I can pick and chose what niche material I want to copy and use.

The only thing that seems like a downside is the fact that the material is public domain (I don't know if that applies if I rewrite a great deal of it and add my original style to it). Anyone coming to my site can...well...just copy it and away they go. In other words I have scanned it and put it up and voila...someone can come along and just run off with my hard work.

Don't know how to avoid that.

Carlos

Hi Debra,

I can remove the video link if you want Debra.

I just spend the past hour browsing through a ton of pre-1923 magazines. Lots of stuff in there.

Among the things I found that might make some interesting blog posts or otherwise...

- 100 string games with detailed explanations.
- a series examining various chess moves and games.
- some mini-articles where various persons expounded a bit on interesting topics like one lady who wrote about the seeming ridiculousness of men who dedicate books to their "wonderful" wives when in fact the wives were probably pestering them to get over their book.
- all manner of wildlife descriptions.
- one magazine was very interesting to me in particular...it was for Confederate veterans of the Civil War and had all kinds of interesting articles in it related to the Confederate side of things like the history of the Confederate battle flag.
- one article was about the latest in fashion beach wear for ladies. You know...the bathing suits that looked more like pajamas and that were all black and puffy like.

There was lots more. I imagine a lot of this has never made it on to the Internet and if I scanned it...it would be absolutely unique on the internet at least.

But...I was somewhat discouraged in that most of what I saw really would not make very good content today. It was way too long. Dealing with a whole host of topics that are no longer of interest to the modern reader. Hardly any photos or pictures in a lot of it. Mostly words and more words.

People did a lot of reading in the olden days and could afford to sit comfortably by a fireplace and read I guess.

Oh...another magazine had a whole series, in short article format on the Presidency. The veto power of the Presidency, etc.. Dealing with one aspect of the Presidency per article. Of course some of that has changed since these articles were written so I would have to carefully edit what is said but for the most part it seemed pretty accurate.

And there was also one on how to capture a Grizzly Bear...and...well...like I said there was lots.

The other thing that was discouraging is that I would have to take time to scan it all in. A very labor intensive process without any guarantee of success in being able to use it to drive traffic to websites.

Perhaps I should focus on public domain stuff that is found online already but the thing with that is that very little of it is absolutely unique on the internet. I mean it's there already right? Also everyone and their next door neighbor looking at making money from public domain stuff is scouring it and looking to use it so there is more competition.

I'm going to have to re-think this. It may not be worthwhile for me to venture into using public domain stuff. I don't know.

At the very least it is an excellent source of ideas and keywords that might prove popular today in some variation. Not to mention that it is highly entertaining to read a lot of this stuff.

Carlos

Really? I earned about $1,000 a month with adsense for about 3 years until my server crashed and I lost all the data. It was all re-published content from prweb and other article and pr sites.

Yep - many publishers have created Kindle books from public domain. That isn't a money maker.

I disagree with the not making money with Adsense... Public domain is just content... and content can always be "SEO'd".

You just have to be smarter than a 5th grader.

Selling books from Amazon Createspace is just one of the many ways you can add a revenue stream to your business.

You guys (and gals) have been a great encouragement to me. To keep looking at this.

It is so difficult to find the time to really dig into this as a potential money making method over the Internet. My entire career is oriented around doing just that. No other career or occupation will satisfy me as I want to eventually be able to make a living, over the Internet, from my home country in South America.

I tried Adsense once and didn't make a penny. I did tons of keyword research, asked lots of questions, even created my own content management system (WordPress is a pain and just gets in my way...I am a web developer when not working on internet business ideas) and created 7 different sites with it. Most of them got very high in the rankings (position 2, 5 and so on) at Google. But some of these were duds even though Google's keyword tool showed the numbers (I've since come to realize that it's keyword tool is way innacurate and that putting out a limited Adwords campaign is much better for gauging the true potential of a keyword phrase).

I really like something your co-worker (?) said at your site Debra. About how to keyword brainstorm. Simple really. But sometimes it helps to start from scratch and get back to the basics so that is what I will do today if I get the chance.

Keyword brainstorm. Then do a little Google keyword Tooling around followed by looking at the top ten sites that show up for a phrase followed by a limited Adwords campaign after which I will chose a couple and go from there.

I just don't want another time draining experience that doesn't pan out because the foundation (i.e. keyword phrase selection based on just Google Keyword Tool) was no good.

Seems to me that Adsense is a difficult way to make a living. You have to create like 50 sites to get a couple that really pan out. In the long run that's worth it mind you but who'se got the time to go build 50 sites? I sure don't. At least not at this point in time.

Carlos

Debra...I live in the U.S. by the way but dont' want to say where lest 100 Warrior members go showing up at my Public Domain secret location stash LOL.

Carlos

Anybody know of a good way to scan public domain content into a form that is usable online?

I think the term is OCR software but is there a free alternative that is any good and usable under Linux (I can't even remember the last time I booted into Microsoft Windows)? I suppose I can always scan in under Windows XP and then read the scanned result through Linux when I am done but that's a hassle.

Is OCR software good enough to where one does not have to do any spelling correction?

Does it scan in the words in such a way that you end up with text content as opposed to a PDF or other form that is not editable directly?

Will OCR software scan in images? At decent quality?

Does anyone know if libraries have objections to large scale scanning and copying of their material that has become public domain?

Any additional input anyone cares to give me on any of the above would be appreciated.

Carlos

Interesting. I'll have to see if I can find out how that was done. The ads are absolutely fascinating in the glimpse that they give of a bygone era.

I love reading through them and I imagine others might like to also.

Ads I can get. Tons of them. No need to go digging for content that fits keywords that are popular today. Might be worth looking into.

Carlos

Interesting idea. I have a bulk photo printer so this may be something I can use.

Great link Debra! Thanks. I didn't know you could do that.

I think many of the photos will still come out less than usable though. If I enlarge the copy online so as to be able to scan the text in properly (or at least give it the best chance of being scanned in correctly) the photos will become unusable.

I'll have to play around and see if I can scan the copy in at normal size such tha the photos continue to be usable.

But...the best thing will be if I can scan at whatever resolution I care to scan at from original source material.

By the way since you have been so generous in providing this info let me provide a tip of my own for those who might not know how to search at Google Books....

To search for something in Popular Mechanics for example...do an advance search first putting in the date range prior to Dec, 1922 (you don't have to fill in the from data...just leave that date blank).

Then when the search completes look in the search box. You will see something like this...

"military tanks intitleopular intitle:Mechanics"

The military tanks is what you are searching for...the rest is the title of the magazine.

If I want stuff on gardening I just change the search in the search box to....

"gardening intitleopular intitle:Mechanics"

And so forth.

Carlos

That's a good question Debra. I guess I am giving people more credit than I should for being like me LOL.

You see, all modesty aside, I am very good at doing research and uncovering details.

Not that I am perfect in such but I know how to search for things and I have a sharp mind that can usually pick up descrepencies in a web site between how a person might write in an introductory part and an article such that the article was probably not written by them. Many would be internet marketers are real sloppy and leave tell tale signs of where some of their material comes from.

I once tracked down a whole series of web sites as coming from the same template source when I simply entered some of the text in the privacy policy of one web site into Google and found a whole boatload of other web sites that had copied the template. In other words the marketers who put those together...well...left the privacy policy intact and did not bother to change it at all LOL.

I've had people steal web site content before where they didn't even bother to change some of the internal links in the text I wrote such that by looking at my access log I was able to track them down.

Most marketers don't think of such details and leave footprints all over. While I haven't done much by way of looking at sites that might be using PD material I imagine many simply copy and paste right out of sources whose content can be easily searched to determine if the material came from said source.

Of course your question implies an interesting point. Namely that if I scan in material which is simply not found online...well...I guess the short answer is that they won't be able to tell where my material came from! And with a copyright on the web site as a whole they won't be able to tell that I am not claiming copyright on the PD content but rather on the rest of my site. They will just assume no doubt that my copyright applies to my entire site, content and all.

Still...I don't think I will find much such material though as my own source repository has mostly popular magazines or works which are likely to have been scanned in and be found somewhere online.

I suppose the best thing is to simply rewrite public domain content and post that with my own legitimate copyright. Since I intend to create a whole boatload of sites containing no more than 5 or 6 pages of content at first, to see which one's rise to the top or near the top before I focus on making the sites better, I suppose rewriting PD content won't be too much of a pain.

I was just curious what you all thought overall about someone coming along and just copying your PD content. I guess there is no way to avoid that risk though. Not if the PD content is copied as is.

Carlos