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 doesn'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.

* 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.

Some people say that because the information in the public domain is limited, there's no point in going after the 'public domain riches'. In fact, there has never been a better time to start. What you should concentrate on is to find new ways to market old ideas.

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.

* 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.