Today I received an email from someone querying a postcard I had listed on eBay and which featured men standing outside a shop in a small village close to where I live. This man did not want to buy the postcard, it’s already been bid up to sixty dollars and still has five days to go before the auction ends. And I’m very confident that one postcard which cost me just a few cents will fetch one hundred dollars or more on eBay.

Because so many people are bidding and ten more people are watching the item on eBay, the implication is the postcard is probably very rare, possibly unique, and that is why the email I received today has set me thinking about a brand new business opportunity to start on eBay.

The postcard is a real photographic type and I have a feeling it was commissioned by the shop owner whose premises are depicted in the picture and who is also standing outside the shop with three other men who are all identified on the reverse.

If it is rare, if it is unique, that means whoever wins my auction will be one of few people or even the solitary owner of the view depicted on my postcard.

And that of course leaves ten or more people still possibly wanting to own that postcard.

But do they want to own the postcard itself or do they, like the man who emailed me today, merely want access to the view itself, for family history purposes, for instance, or to display in their homes or business premises?

I have a feeling at least half of those people currently viewing and actually bidding on my card are keen on the view itself, not the postcard as a potentially one-off collectible.

And that is the reason the man who emailed me enquired about how much I’d charge to create a high quality jpeg of the view to send to him on CD.

And there’s the basis of a range of new products I’ll soon be adding to my eBay shop, namely reproduction items from the public domain which I will present and sell on CD.

I’ve had the question asked many times about creating jpegs for various photographs and postcards, also prints and maps I had listed for sale on eBay but I’ve never got round to establishing this new business idea despite the fact I know several people who only sell public domain items on eBay – and do very well indeed.

I spent more than two hours this morning researching other people selling items created from public domain originals and discovered several selling multiple copies of the same products and obviously generating regular profits from one item that may take a day or less to create from its original version.

These are the ten most popular products I discovered with repeat sales potential:

* Television Cartoons, especially with double figure episodes on each CD.

* Classic Films, notably war and action films.

* Vintage Views and Maps, notably busy street scenes of smaller villages and towns, maps from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which have been reproduced on parchment with boundaries subsequently hand coloured.

* Antiquarian Books, especially historical accounts of smaller villages and towns which appeal to genealogists and local historians. Trade directories from the early 1800s onwards are particularly popular.

* Dog Books, of which I noticed several people selling CDs containing ten or more early texts relating to specific breeds.

* Craftwork Plans and Patterns, notably crochet and woodwork.

* Classic Vintage Comics, especially with full production runs on each CD.

* Sheet Music, usually with a minimum of ten items on one CD.

* Stories, mainly from well-known historical authors such as Mark Twain, Arthur Conan Doyle, the Bronte Sisters, and so on, usually with ten or more books on each CD and sometimes offered in sets of four CDs all with different contents.

* Audio Books, on lots of different subjects, including self-improvement, sports, hobbies, pastimes.

Now let me give you a few tips for making this business idea work for you, starting right away:

* I spotted several people selling their CDs and audio tapes with conventional auction listings and sometimes generating double figure prices and multiple bidders. This is not only a good way to determine the optimum price people are most likely to pay for Buy It Now versions of your products, but it also gives potential for several Second Chance Offers from every listing.

* Look for additional ways to sell items you reproduce mainly for promoting on eBay. This means you can maximise profits from whatever item you buy from the public domain at boot sales, auctions, flea markets, and so on. For example, a book I bought the other day, costing ten cents, and called ‘The Darlington Saturday Holiday Guide’ was published in the late 1800s and details around one hundred places within two or three hours travelling distance of Darlington. I will use that book as source material for a site I have planned to make money from people visiting the north east and needing hotel accommodation. So I will create a simple web page for each of the one hundred or so places featured in the book, I’ll do it almost word for word, then I will add affiliate links for hotels willing to pay me a share on whatever bookings emanate from my site. Easy!

Then I will scan the book into a ‘Word’ document, I’ll add a few illustrations from vintage postcards depicting places featured in the book, and I’ll convert the whole lot to pdf format and sell it in my eBay shop. Finally, I will sell the book itself on eBay and expect to make at least ten dollars on my tiny ten cents investment.

* If someone asks for copies of something you have listed already on eBay you should not offer to sell that item outside of eBay. Not only is selling outside of eBay against the rules and could get you banned from the site, but you’re also neglecting other potential buyers for your reproduction copy. The best way to promote your product is to tell your enquirer you will list the copied item on eBay, with a Buy It Now price, which he is free to accept or decline. Then, rather than list just one item for your buyer, you list two or three instead. BUT YOU MUST NOT LIST YOUR COPIED ITEM until the auction ends for the original item or you’ll deter some people from placing high bids for the original.

* The best products to copy are those attracting plenty of bidders and viewers and a high finishing price and from personal experience I don’t think it’s a good idea to copy and list an item attracting just two or three bidders and a low finishing price. Instead opt to copy anything attracting three bidders or more and a final selling price of thirty dollars plus.

If you’ve already written an e-book, you can easily turn it into a printed book. And you don’t even have to spend money up-front.

Let’s face it. For some topics, it’s better to hold a real book in your hands than to read on-screen, or to print out yourself. If your book contains a large number of pages, you should offer a printed version as well.

Most people cringe at the thought of publishing a book. And it’s true. Prior to the Internet, this was a costly affair.

Luckily, this situation has changed over the last few years. Now, with services like Lulu and CreateSpace, you can do ‘print-on-demand’, and just sit back and wait for your royalties to arrive.

Which is the better of the two services?

There are pros and cons for both.

Selling Your Printed Book on Lulu

When you are selling your printed book on Lulu, you simply have to upload a PDF-file, and either upload your own cover, or use one of their designs. The whole process is very easy.

You have to link a PayPal account to your Lulu account, and each month they’ll send you the sum of money you’ve earned.

You fix the price of the book yourself, and you can either decide the end price, or you can choose the sum you want to make from the book. In this case, Lulu will then add their fees and the price for the printing.

Your customer pays the full price (plus the additions) directly to Lulu.

Unfortunately, you do not get to know those who bought your book, and Lulu doesn’t have as large a window to the world as do the biggest online book store of them all: Amazon.

Selling Your Printed Book with CreateSpace

If you choose CreateSpace, you have to do a lot more paper work, especially if you live outside the US.

Your share of the book’s end price is smaller than if you sell your book on Lulu, but you do have one big advantage.

CreateSpace is a daughter company of Amazon, so if you choose to let them do the ‘print-on-demand’, your book will be sold directly from Amazon. Thus, your changes of selling many more copies have just been substantially raised.

CreateSpace doesn’t use PayPal, but will pay your earnings directly into your bank account.

Personally, I use both services. Some books I find to be a better fit on Lulu (Danish and French books, for instance) and others make me more money by using CreateSpace.

This is a short straight to the point guide on one simple technique anyone can adopt to make fast internet cash. With some simple research you can find a topic that has plenty of interest and more importantly, plenty of unanswered questions and then create a quick product that answers the questions, promote it to the masses and begin to earn cash online.

How To Find a Niche and Create a Product

This is not as hard as you may think. To begin with you would be better off creating a simple instructional, or how to, guide about a subject you are familiar with or something you can easily research and learn.

A good practice would be to join a community forum that deals with your chosen subject and see what people are asking questions about, or check a site like Yahoo Answers and look to see if anyone is asking specific questions about anything from your chosen niche. If you can then create a product that can answer their questions, or fulfill a need you are instantly on to a winner and ready to make fast internet cash.

Once you have found some questions in a specific field and on a topic you either know or can easily learn, you need to create your product.

What you will need to create is a simple EBook. You can do this by writing the book in your favourite text editor and then converting it to PDF format using one of the many free PDF converters available online.

If you have done your research well and have a list of questions in hand, all you have to do is answer each specific question one by one. Make each answer a separate chapter. Ideally, you are looking to create a book about 50-100 pages in length.

Once you have your new PDF, you now need to promote it if you hope to earn cash online.

Promoting and Selling Your PDF EBook

The easiest method by far is to join an affiliate merchant network like ClickBank or Commission Junction. You can either Google either of those or search for “selling a digital product” (an EBook is a digital product). You need to sign up as a merchant and then you can upload your book.

The idea of joining a site like this is that you will be getting other people to sell your product for you. They are known as affiliate marketers and will promote your product for a commission of the sale price.

You will need to decide on a price, of course you need to make reasonable money but you will also need to be competitive, there may be plenty of competition depending on what subject you have selected. You also need to bear in mind that you will need to pay commission and attract affiliate marketers. The easiest way to do this is supply a quality EBook and offer high commission; I would suggest 75% to start with. Check out a few similar products on the network you choose and set your price accordingly.

That is all there is to it, now you just have to sit back and wait for the affiliate marketers to begin promoting your product, ringing up the sales and making you fast internet cash.