I often get asked where I get my ideas for subject areas for the public domain products I sell on eBay. Questions I always get asked when I show them what I’m selling are:

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.