If you're not familiar with the term “public domain”, it refers to written works that are free to use without paying any type of royalties. You can publish these works, brand them and even reworked into to new materials (also called “derivative works”). Finding public domain works on specific topics can be a challenge, but once you get your hands on some, they can be indispensable for your online business.

Bundle Ebooks into a Package: Take a few ebooks on a specific topic and bundle them into a package for sale. For example, you may find various public domain ebooks about starting and running a home based business. You can set up a bundle of these ebooks to sell as a package to increase the revenue that can be generated instead of just offering one e-book at a time.

Create an Ecourse: It's only natural that people who are interested in purchasing e-books from you are actively seeking a learning experience. Why not take the public domain e-books you find and create an e-course that can be distributed via an automatic email series for those who opt in? You will not only get the subscribers to keep coming back to your website to increase traffic, but if they like the e-course they will be more likely to purchase the products you recommend and even refer their friends.

Product Bonuses: Use public domain ebooks as bonuses/extras for a product you are already selling. If you're selling a downloadable product, just add the bonus to the download page. If you're selling a mail order product, you can publish printed copies or just give your customers a link to download the product while they wait for the mail to arrive.

Grow your Subscription List: Find a public domain ebook that is on a relevant topic to your mailing and give it as a gift to those who subscribes. If you offer an ebook with tremendous value and show how your potential subscribers will benefit, it might give them more incentive to sign up.

Rework into New Formats: Public domain e-books are readily available for whatever you want to use them for. People like to consume information in many different ways. You can put content into audio recordings, videos…whatever your audience likes. You can sell these new formats, offer them as gifts or just post them on your website to draw in traffic.

There are so many opportunities to use the public domain in your own online business. Much of the work is already done for you, so whether you publish the content as is, add your own spin to your unique audience or add the ebooks into another collection – there is much you can do take advantage of this ready-made resource.