I recently had a question regarding my article, A Hidden Treasure Trove Of Public Domain Japanese Woodblock Prints And Drawings.

It really is a good question and I want to share my answer here in case you find yourself asking the same thing…

“My question is if you know about these Japanese paintings all your readers know and others. How do you become unique and make money? If there is 2500 I am sure your readers have view all. So how do we make money? I am confused.”

Fran

Hi Fran,

I guess I’m confused myself.

What’s there to be confused about?

The very first opening sentence of the article spelled out a few ways to make money with these prints…

“How would you like private access to a secret vault filled with more than 2500 stunningly beautiful Japanese paintings and drawings that you can do anything you want with including using them to create framed art, posters, clothing, and more?”

Sure, I know about them…

You know about them…

The over 5,000 readers of this blog know about them.

But really…so what?

The last time I heard there were like 6.8 billion people on this planet.

For the enterprising person with an open mind and a strong desire to manifest money, the possibilities for profiting from these images (or any other Public Domain content for that matter) are as numerous as the amount of prints in this collection.

I had a friend a few years back that used these paintings to create framed prints which he marketed and sold to Japanese restaurants all over the country through mail order catalogs. He found that many restaurants were happy to pay for these prints because they very much desired the authentic Japanese cultural atmosphere that these prints help to provide.

You don’t have to get that elaborate of course, these make great prints to make available for sale on eBay, Etsy, Amazon and all sorts of other sales venues.

You can profit from them indirectly as well ~ I’ve even used some of these images to design book covers, both digital and print.

Here’s one example of a cover I used one of the images from this collection to design a year or so ago…

There are so many wonderfully creative things you can do with these images!

But, back to your question specifically…

The first thing you have to understand is the reality that 99.9% of people that read this article won’t do anything with what I’ve shared. Sure, they’ll daydream about it for about 30 seconds but ultimately they won’t do what most people unfortunately fail to do ~ take action.

I’m sorry if that sounds terrible but it’s a simple truth.

The second thing that you have to get over is this poverty mindset you’ve placed yourself in ~ you’re limiting yourself big time and probably don’t even realize it. I know this from discussions we’ve had in the past.

You seem to be stuck on the fact that because a resource is “free”, nobody else will want to pay you for a product you create using material from that resource (which just isn’t true)…

…or that perhaps by my sharing this resource with thousands of readers on this blog, too many people will know about it now and that you’ll be “crowded” out of any opportunity you may have of doing something with these images yourself.

Again, this couldn’t be farther from the truth.

This is poverty thinking.

Let’s face it ~ we’re just small potatoes here. On this blog we cater to a small sub-section of entrepreneurs looking to make a buck with products of their own…

There’s a whole big world out there and it’s full of people that wouldn’t give a rat’s rear end about this collection of Japanese prints even if they did know about it.

But…

…there’s also a big population of people out there that would love and appreciate these prints that would have not a single solitary clue what to do with them even if you stamped the URL on their forehead.

And there’s nothing wrong with that ~ they could care less about the Public Domain, they’re not entreprenuers, they’re not publishers or product creators…

It’s these people that would happily pay you for a framed print version of one of their favorite prints from this collection and…you can and SHOULD be paid for the effort you have made into converting these images into a quality physical product.

Never equate the cost of obtaining these materials at their source (in this case, free) with their ultimate potential for monetary value.

There is ALWAYS an opportunity to convert free and low-cost goods of any sort (Public Domain or otherwise) into nice, new forms of revenue as long as you are providing something of value to your customers in return.

In this case, even if you just take the unimaginative (yet still very much valid) route of product creation and use these images to produce physical prints, there’s still a supreme exchange of value there ~ you simply provide a high-quality print and your customer goes home with a beautiful 18th century Japanese woodblock print reproduction that they proudly hang in their living room and it becomes the focal point of many casual, couch-side conversations and a small source of pleasure for them for many years to come.

And what could possibly be wrong with that?

And hey, sometimes it’s not really about being unique ~ the concept of picking up a phone and having pizza conveniently delivered to your home was certainly nothing new when John “Papa John” Schnatter started Papa John’s pizza roughly 25 years ago and look at where he is now ~ sometimes, all it takes is a little “twist” and the cojones to step up and make something happen despite what others will say to try and hold you back.

Our job is here on the Public Domain Treasure Hunter Blog is to point out these resources, share them with you, and hopefully provide inspiration to do something wonderful with them ~ your job (should you accept this mission) is to take the ball and run with it, do whatever pleases you and provides a new source of profit at the same time.

My challenge to you is to stop looking at this collection (and others like it) and only seeing a resource that can’t possibly be worth anything because you have access to it for free…

Instead, get out a pen and a piece of paper and start brainstorming all of the various ways you can spin off these images into new products (either directly or indirectly) that people would gladly pay you money for ~ you may even surprise yourself!

About The Author:

Logan Andrew is an online entrepreneur, information publisher, and author that has been using Public Domain material to create profitable products and businesses since 2001. He is also co-author of "The Public Domain Treasure Hunter's Survival Kit" available here. For more info Logan, click here.

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