Thats the history lesson out of the way! Now take a look at these stunning images representing the iconography of the Capetians then read on for some VERY interesting info about where I got these images from:

These images are part of a larger set of 197 which I compiled onto CD for an eBay product. Check it out HERE. The great thing for me and the interesting point here is that I got these very high quality images for free from a little known website. There are a number of these type of sites online where you can download images like this and loads of others for free but I have never seen them talked about in any public domain guide out there (and I’ve probably read them all!).  If you are following the $50 A Day Auction Challenge (available HERE) and would like me to add a video to the members area showing you were to find these sites and amazing free downloads, leave a comment here and I may put one up if enough people
request it).

   
   
(If you click on any of the thumbnails you will see larger images. These images are reduced in size from the originals as they were so large [massive 300 - 400 pixels an inch] I couldnt upload them here).

Will this new eBay product sell well? I have no idea, but think about this. It cost me NOTHING to create it and took me an about an hour to put the eBay listing together. Now I can forget about it  and just wait for the sales to come in.

My profit on this CD will be about £6 (approx $9.30). Lets say I only sell 2 copies of it per month:
£6 x 2 = £12. Over a year 12 x £12 = £144 (approx $225).

The interesting part is, using my “secret sites” I could, if I put the work in probably come up with 10 of these new eBay products in just the space of a weekend.

Assuming the same low number of sales, thats £144 x 10 = £1440 (approx $2240) added to my income in return for 1 weekends work! Think about it – if your boss said to you “work this weekend and you can have a raise on your salary of $2240, forever” would you do it? And remember that is based on the very low assumption of selling just 2 copies of each item per month. You could easily exceed this and you’d probably hit lucky with a couple that would do between 5 and 10 a month.

THAT is the power of the public domain folks and if you want to learn everything I know about it, click  HERE.

Although these images would make good prints, as they were originally postcards, this got me to thinking that there would be no reason why you couldn’t reprint them at their original size and sell them in sets. Online or supermarket photolab printing is dirt cheap these days – 6×4 prints cost literally pennies and you could sell a set of (say) ten “repro vintage postcard prints” for $5 -$10 no problem. Just an idea…

There are over 600 postcard images on the Visipix site. Here’s some more I liked:

Merry Christmas etc etc to everyone (dont like christmas, in case you didn’t guess!) and I shall return with many posts in the new year!

Cyril Goldie

P J Billinghurst

J J Waugh

Henry Ospovat

A K Womrath (left), Henry Ospovat (right)

R Anning Bell (left) H Nelson (right)

All of these amazing images are in the public domain which got me to thinking they could be the basis for excellent designs for any purpose you wanted. I’m sure they could be adapted and would look great on a t-shirt, bag or other merch. If you have a Cafepress store and are looking for new designs, this type of thing would be perfect.

This is just one example of how you can easily use / adapt public domain materials for your own use / profit. To demonstrate how easy it is, I had a go at photoshopping an old bookplate to make a logo for my eBay business & blog (bear in mind, my photoshop skills are virtually non-existant!).

Heres the original:

And my photoshop effort!

I’m sure you get the idea! All that needs to be done is to edit out the name of the book owner and insert your own apt phrase or whatever.

Until next time

P.S. This week I’m giving away a free pdf of the 1898 edition of the Studio from which most of these bookplates are taken to my subscribers. If you would like to receive freebies such as this in the future enter your name and e-mail in the subscription sign up box at the top of this page.

These 2 posters are my favorites. The artist is Thomas Fasche – I find it interesting that posters produced, basically for war propaganda can have such artistic merit. These have a beautiful Art Nouveau style.

Many of the posters feature medieval imagry (valiant knights etc. representing the glory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) :

I collected 15 ‘Kriegsanleihe’ posters in all, click HERE to see them all on Flickr.

Or click HERE to download all 15.

The prints and Photographs Online Catalog is a rich source of public domain images (1000′s available) which could be used for product creation (image cd’s, prints etc) although you need to be careful as not all images on here are in the public domain.

The images I have posted here are small, JPEG’s but also available, are the uncompressed archival TIFF versions. These are massive image files (up to 60, 70 MB!) with crazy resolutions (1200 dpi).  Even if you have a fast modern pc , it is going to struggle with images of this size. If you are patient however and can work with them in photoshop or whatever (I used Fireworks) you can get them down to a 300 dpi approx 1 MB image which is more workable and perfect for making prints. I think these would look stunning and would sell really well on Ebay.

The advantage of these are:

• You can display many images in the same space as one
• They are easy to create
• They’re free
• They look cool!

I had a go at it on Photobucket – its practically foolproof. All you do is choose your images and select a style for yourshow, click save and it is done. Photobucket generates a direct link (ie a web page) for your show and a code which you paste in to the html of you eBay listing / blog / site or wherever. This one features illustrations from vintage children’s books. These illustrations are some of my all time favourites – they exemplify the brilliance of the ‘Golden Age‘ illustrators for me and I think they look really effective in this slideshow:

Where do you get all this stuff from?

How on earth did the idea for that come to you?

You must know a lot about all of these subjects right?

(click here to see the range of products I’m currently selling)

If you’ve taken a look, I think you’ll agree that, whilst there are some themes running through there, its a pretty diverse selection. This is important because, of course, if you want to make money, you want to appeal to as diverse a range of potential customers as possible. Herein lies the beauty of ‘information products’ – the range of possible subject matter is practically limitless, everybody is interested in something.

Back to the list of questions, I actually dont always know a great deal about the subject matter of the e-books I sell. Some I am interested in, some I am not. This is where Google is your friend! If you have an idea for a public domain product but you don’t know much about it, you must do a little research – if you don’t it will really come accross in your sales pitch as “I know nothing about this – I’m just trying to make some cash selling this stuff“. Wikipedia is always a good place to start.

So how do I get the ideas? Often, it will be by accident – I will be looking for something online and just happen to come upon something else, unconnected.  Other times you need to think like a library – think of a book shop – think of hobbies and interests friends have. Once you think of basic subject areas other niche interests will quickly become apparent

Example:

ART & DESIGN—–> Architecture——>Architectural Drawing—–>House Design—–>Interior Design—–> Building Plans—–>Antique Furniture ——->Carpentry——>Wooden Toys etc etc etc

Think this way and you’ll soon end up with ideas. I have a notepad by my computer and every time I get an idea for a product I write it down & I have pages of products in there that I have yet to produce.

Other sources of ideas are to look on the web page of a museum or large library – look for a subject index which can be browsed and just scan for ideas. A site I like to look on is:

http://www.digitalbookindex.org/_search/search011t-rev.asp

This site indexes digital books all over the web. I dont actually use it to obtain many e-books but I love its amazing index page – theres literally hundreds of ideas on there. So get creative, there are thousands of freely available public domain books, images, movies, photos and music that you can make money from.

Is this misleading?

There is a school of thought that, providing these images (especially if they look realistic) is not exactly playing ball as, after all, its not actually a picture of a product that your customer will be receiving.

In my opinion, if you are selling a download, I think its fair game – anyone buying a download – providing the description is accurate should realise that they’re not going to be getting a software box, a DVD or a soft cover book dropping through the post (although you do get the odd one!). Originally, the purpose of these images was to give your buyer some sort of feel for a ‘product’ when they were buying a download and that is why I initially used them. However, since eBay banned downloads, is it still fair to use the images? I think so PROVIDING that you include a disclaimer. Wherever I use an image to promote my ebook cd’s I always put a caption underneath reading ‘picure for illustration purposes only’, then at the foot of the listing  I always state the following in large bold text

‘SOFTWARE BOX PICTURE IS FOR ILLUSTRATION PURPOSES ONLY. NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF ACTUAL PACKAGING. NO SOFTWARE BOX IS AVAILABLE’

Do this and you will be fine – you get the odd moaner…..”wheres my box?” but this is a tiny minority and they do make your listing sooo much better. So; how to create the images. Basically there are 2 ways, either you can do it from scratch using Photoshop, GIMP (free alternative), Fireworks or similar, which, if you are a wizz using such programs is no problem. If however, like me, you have neither the skill, inclination or time to do this, there are several programs out ther that will do the job for you based on your simple 2D images. One which I use and can strongly recommend is ‘Box Shot 3d’. This really is an amazing peice of software. Here’s some ‘boxes I created using it:

Anatomy Illustration

Illustrated Children's Books

Gurdjieff & the Fourth Way

I think they look really cool. Basically all you have to do is create 3 designs – front, side and top, load these images into the program, set your parameters for size, lighting, angles, background, quality etc, and click ‘render’ and it will create the ‘box’ for you – the results are VERY impressive and realistic. The designs for these were created in Word and Paint – nothing more believe it or not – just make a rectangle, fill it with a texture, add some images and word-art and thats it. You can also create images of books, DVD cases, CD cases etc.

You can check it out here: http://www.boxshot3d.com/

Heres some examples:
ILLUMINATION of BOOKS
OCCULT LIBRARY
CHICAGO VINTAGE

I hope you’ll agree they look quite impressive. All of those templates / graphics are freely available from Auctiva. If you are not already signed up to use their services I strongly recommend that you do so – www.auctiva.com . In order to use one of the many Auctiva auction templates available, you have to actually complete your entire eBay listing from Auctiva’s site and list it to eBay from there. This is really no problem as most of the features are exactly the same as in eBay – it just looks a little different – also you have the option to incorporate Auctiva’s cool scrolling ‘gallery’ at the foot of your listing.

One thing I dont like about listing via Auctiva is that you have to use their incorporated checkout system. For many people this wont be a big deal as, basically all it does is send the buyer on to PayPal , however it will not allow you to specify immediate payment with Buy It Now listings (which I always have). A tip to overcome this when relisting is to do it straight thru eBay. If you have listed something via Auctive, the listing has come to an end, you dont have to go thru Auctiva to relist. All you need to do is go to eBay and click relist as normal – your Auctiva template will still be included in your listing and you can access all the eBay features you want (like immediate payment)

If you are selling ebooks, one great marketing tool which always brings in buyers is a cool visual – a mock up of a real book or a software box. In my next post I’m going to be telling you how I produce these images with really professional results without photoshop and little or no skill with graphics and so on.