Tech Library

Books, Productivity, and Design

Ad example

Resources

How to Download an Embedded Video from a Website

by Leave a Comment

There are many websites that offer online free learning but not every site makes them available to be downloaded for offline or future reference.

In this guidepost, we will see how to download an embedded video from a website using the inspect element feature (Chrome Developer Tools). We don’t need to use any software, or Chrome Extension – with a few simple steps you will have your favorite video downloaded to your local computer.

Now, this won’t work on websites that are intentionally streaming videos for commercial reasons, such as tutorials, Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube, etc. More often than not, such websites encrypt or protect their videos for obvious reasons, as that’s their business model.

So, please protect copyright policies and don’t abuse this feature and use only for your personal and educational purposes.

I created a short video to show this technique rather than telling how to do.

Here’s how, watch it here:

A Guide to Publishing Public Domain Books on Kindle (2021)

by Leave a Comment

Last updated: April 5, 2021

Table of Contents

Introduction

This is a living article which means I will keep updating this page for new and fresh content often.

So, please bookmark !!

How to Publish Public Domain Books on Amazon Kindle

You can see a lot of resourceful links here, to:

  • public domain books, and audio books,
  • tips, and techniques to correctly edit public domain books so that your KDP Account doesn’t get warned or banned,
  • how to check for copyrights,
  • how to set up your public domain book in your KDP eBook setup process, and more information like that with screenshots and details.

Just bookmark this page and keep visiting it often.

Don’t forget to allow push notifications for this website – that will help you get notified whenever this gets updated, so that you need not even remember to bookmark or keep visiting often to check for fresh content – your browser will do that job for you.

(Please also remember to visit my Gumroad page to download some of my free guides)

Alright, now let’s get right into the business of publishing public domain eBooks that gets loved by people:

What is Public Domain?

Public Domain is a platform on which any articles, books, images, media, or any content that are made freely accessible to the general public to consume, edit, or make commercial usage possible.

Amazon KDP has been allowing and regularizing the publishing of Public Domain books on its Kindle platform, to allow creators to add-value to the existing old classics, and also make some money on the side doing it.

Here are some of the sources of Public Domain books:

How to use Google to find public domain books

Google is arguably the top most used search engine that provides quality results. If you are looking to find good public domain books that are eligible to be republished without much fuss, then in this short video I explain some techniques you could use to find good quality public domain books that could be re-published on Kindle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqBglWhhmH0

How to know and choose which Public Domain book to publish?

Choosing a public domain book determines its success and more downloads and thus more sales and profits.

https://youtu.be/uQaV6Td1G2Y

Not just that, adding more value to it is what makes it stand out from the competition, as there are so many books by the same title on Amazon Kindle eBooks’ store.

How to differentiate public domain books and how to add more value?

The following video takes a stab at that, so your readers can get more out of the old classics. There is also a checklist given in the video description, when you watch it directly on YouTube (see for the link in the video description).

https://youtu.be/JAlhetOkTqg

How to annotate, illustrate public domain books

In this video we will see some key insights and tips on how to annotate, illustrate public domain books. Make sure you watch it till the end because we go over starting from basics of what these really mean and how to get them done for your Kindle eBooks so that they sell well for you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGYhqwXYE_c

Best practices

Finally, here are some best practices you can follow to ensure your book is accepted by the Amazon KDP team. If you have any questions, please feel free to comment below.

Also, if you haven’t already, don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel.

 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VdBmWXB_9s

Download Free Stock Images for Commercial Use without Watermark

by 1 Comment

In this guide, we’ll see 25 websites through which we can download Free Stock Images For Commercial Use Without Watermark.

With this abundance you can have a never ending supply of images and designs for your blog posts, social media posts, within your YouTube videos and video thumbnails – the options are limitless especially if you are a digital content creator.

These websites will help you explore a unique way to create something to make your messages rich with visually appealing treats for your users.

Meanwhile, don’t forget to watch this as a video – subscribe to my channel, and hit on the notification bell icon to be notified of future video uploads, so that you don’t miss them.

TL;DR

  1. Little Visuals https://littlevisuals.co/
    This is one of the websites that is easily close to the heart. And that’s because Little Visuals began as a passion project for Nic Jackson (https://twitter.com/nicjackson?lang=en) but Nic is not among us now – he passed away in November 2013. His family has ensured that all of the images he has taken will remain available and free for commercial use through this website. You can use them anyway you want – and this is a reason enough to credit Nic for his works. The site has a very humble collection but with stunning images. Do give them a try!
  1. Photo creator from icons8. I know you came here to find a list of websites that readily lets you download free stock photos for youtube or for any other commercial use. But here’s something different. Photocreator lets you CREATE your OWN stock photos with swappable properties and faces, instead of providing readymade ones. Here’s how to use it. Simply choose a setting, pick a model – you can also choose to use models with swappable faces, so you can change expressions, hairstyle, and so on.
    Now, this is from icons8 and their ask is pretty straight-forward. Use it for free, but link to icons8. https://icons8.com/license
    https://icons8.com/creator/dashboard
  2. Jay Mantri – https://jaymantri.com/ – as the home page greeting says – Jay Mantri offers us free pics with which we can create magic. Once you are here, simply choose the image and click on the ‘download’ link, to open the image in a new tab where you can right click and save the image to your computer. If you really like the image and want it in a high resolution for printing purposes, you could purchase it for as little as a dollar.
  3. Blush https://blush.design/ – if you are in the designing side of things, you would have already noticed a surge in the use of illustrations on the internet. Blush has gone a step ahead and given this freedom to us to not only provide the illustrations but also customize them to some extent. Just create a free account, search for illustrations, customize them to change background colors, objects, and boom. It’s ready to download and use. They also offer a Figma and Sketch plugin apart from their web app.
  1. Pixy – https://pixy.org/
    Pixy offers high quality free stock images that you can use anywhere. You can choose a specific category from their drop-down menu. What’s unique with Pixy is their ability to provide plac eholder images that we can make use of in our blog posts and websites. Images on Pixy are released under Creative Commons CC0 license. You are free to adapt and use them for commercial purposes without attributing the original author or source. Of course, that’s appreciated but not required.
  1. CC Search – https://search.creativecommons.org/
    CC Search is a tool that allows openly licensed and public domain works to be discovered and used by everyone. Their simple to use interface is not to be under estimated because they currently provide more than 300 million images. They also have a search syntax guide if you want to do some advanced queries with search operators. Bonus tip: CC Search also comes in the form of a browser extension. https://opensource.creativecommons.org/ccsearch-browser-extension/
  2. Duotone from ShapeFactory – https://duotone.shapefactory.co/
    If you are a content creator – especially a blogger or a YouTuber, here’s a unique one that goes a step further in your Featured image or Video Thumbnail design. Duotone offers a way for us to search Unsplash and mask it with a transparent dual color tone that can match your brand colors. Simple choose the set of colors you want, and you get not just a free image but a pleasant dual tone colored image that matches your brand.
  1. RawPixel – https://www.rawpixel.com/category/53/public-domain
    RawPixel has a unique artwork collection. Not just the photos but they also provide a wide variety of graphic illustrations. Navigate through their tabbed categories to find your required illustration that comes with the CC0 License. These are free for personal and commercial use with no attribution required.
  2. SVG Silh – https://svgsilh.com/
    SVG Silh – For those who wanted vector graphics, this website is a boon. Not just SVG images, but also PNG formats can be downloaded for free. Their categories span across a huge collection with tagged links provided along with the number of images available within the specific category.

Bonus tip: in this list of websites, there are some that not just offers images, but also free video footages to download and use without any restrictions. See if you can identify any of those, and let us know in the comments below.

  1. IM FREE – http://www.imcreator.com/free
    Im creator’s free section has a decent collection of not just curated images but also a lot of other free web design resources, ALL for commercial use! This website sometimes may require attribution to the creator, and when that’s required you will see it near the download button.
  2. Flickr https://www.flickr.com/
    Flickr in my opinion is the best so far in terms of the number of images and varieties available. After searching for your image, filter the results using their drop-down to navigate across different types of options such as ‘All creative commons’, ‘Commercial use allowed’, ‘Modifications allowed’, and so on…
  3. Smithsonian Open Access – Smithsonian Open Access offers millions of images that can be used right now, without any permission. They provide 2D and 3D digital items through their collections with many more to come. This includes images and data from across their 19 museums, 9 research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo.
    Smithsonian Open Access assets designated as CC0 for commercial purposes can be used without any attribution or permission. Although they offer copyright-free resources, they do have a detailed FAQ section that’s important to read first before using any of their images which may answer and help you to comply with their requirements.
    https://www.si.edu/openaccess
    https://www.si.edu/openaccess/faq
  1. FreePhotos.cc https://freephotos.cc/
    While stock photos enhance the message you want to convey, free ones ensure you don’t burn down your savings. FreePhotos.cc is one such website in our list that helps you with stunning images. These are again curated from different sources using APIs, but I must admit that their taste in curation and collection is elegant and quite minimalistic in its aesthetics.
  2. Free range stock https://freerangestock.com/
    Now this website provides both photos and illustrations and are available under a different kind of license called Equalicense. This license is slightly different from the CC0 license or public domain where a common sense licensing term is included https://www.equalicense.com/license-faq. You’ll have to create a free account before downloading creatives from the Free Range stock website, and it just takes a minute to do so. Once done, not just downloading, but we also get a choice to further edit it using the free Pixlr online editor.
  3. Photo Everywhere http://photoeverywhere.co.uk/
    Photo Everywhere is a collection of high resolution Travel Stock Images that offers more than 4000 photos. These are all free to use and ready for instant download. Their photos are really cool, and of high quality and context that can be used in a variety of projects. All their photos are neatly organized by locations categorized into the West, the UK, and the East – their complete collection is shown on a World Map with clickable links.
  4. AltPhotos https://altphotos.com/
    All images on ALTPHOTOS are released under Creative Commons CC0 License. It means you may download, modify, distribute and use them free for anything you like, even for commercial purposes. Their license details are clearly shown in the individual image pages, so you can quickly check them before downloading. E.g. https://altphotos.com/photo/brick-wall-with-metal-doors-3471/
  5. Pik Wizard https://pikwizard.com/
    They have a stunning library of over 1 million stock images and videos. All royalty-free and safe for commercial use, with no attribution required. They have a standard license with more details given in their licensing page.
  1. Pexels https://www.pexels.com/
    All photos and videos on Pexels can be downloaded and used for free. My most favorite section in Pexels is their Popular collections area, which can be found from the Discover tab – it has all the latest and trending topics listed.

Attribution is not required. Giving credit to the photographer or Pexels is not necessary but always appreciated. You can modify the photos and videos from Pexels. Be creative and edit them as you like. That’s pretty much it. A quite straight-forward and simple license. https://www.pexels.com/license/

Time for a Bonus tip: If you are a creator from India, Pexels provides a section dedicated where hundreds of images are available in the Indian context. Just visit pexels.com/search/indian/.

  1. UI Faces https://uifaces.co/
    Now, this one is a little different, in a sense that it offers random people’s face images as Avatars for your design mockups. Care should be taken to properly filter your sources of these images before they are used. I would choose Unsplash or Pexels to ensure the Avatars chosen are good to use for commercial purposes too. You could also check an individual photo by clicking on it and verifying its license.
  2. Morgue File https://morguefile.com/photos
    Morguefile is a free photo archive for creatives, by creatives. The photos have been contributed by a wide range of creatives from around the world, ranging from amateur photo hobbyists to professionals and all photos found in the Morguefile archive are free for you to download and re-use in your work, be it commercial or not.
  3. Picspree – https://picspree.com/en
    By now you’d got a hang of what I’m going to say. Yea… you can discover and download beautiful royalty free images, stock photos, illustrations, and vectors – all free here for personal and commercial use. Again, they have a neat User Interface, built-in with organized categories of images. Just be cautious to watch out for premium images listed in-between the search results in here as they are sponsored or paid ones. And you know the drill, remember to check their license information first, before using the content given here.
  4. Burst from Shopify https://burst.shopify.com/
    The next on our list is Burst from Shopify. Now, you might know shopify as an ecommerce platform to create online stores, but they are also highly business-friendly folks. Apart from their other tools, they also provide high quality free images to use for commercial purposes through Burst. When you visit the Burst’s page, remember to check the exclusive Video backgrounds section for some cool backgrounds to use for your Zoom video calls.
  5. Stock Snap https://stocksnap.io/
    At StockSnap you can navigate through awesome collections of high-resolution photos by using the Categories menu or simply go over all their photos in one go. These are CC0 licensed, so you can use them even in commercial projects.
  6. New Old Stock https://nos.twnsnd.co/
    If you are still watching this video, here’s a great one – just for you. This one is a real hidden gem among this list. This website provides vintage photos from the public archives with all the richness of old, noisy, cracky, and grainy looks. Dig deep with this stealthily placed search icon and find your cravings satisfied. These are genuinely vintage collections because when I searched for car, I got these beauties (give some gap) and when I searched for computer – here’s what I get. See, that’s what I am talking about!
  7. Visual Hunt https://visualhunt.com/
    We already have a big list of websites that give us fantastic photos and images so far. Now, how about getting closer to your brand colors and search for free public domain images that matches your specific color requirements! Get to VisualHunt.com and you’ll fall in love with it instantly. Simply click on these colors and find images that matches it. You can also filter by licenses here – where you could specifically choose for Commercial use or Public Domain.

Time for the bonus tip: at least a 25% of the websites mentioned in this video offers API capabilities. In fact, I had mentioned about one of the websites earlier which uses API. If you happened to be a developer and know what I am talking about, you can easily create tools on top of these websites to offer something related to images, to give back to the creative community.

Most free images available on the internet are either in the public domain or are offered through a Creative Commons license:

Public domain is that area in which the creative works are available for the community at large, unprotected by copyright or patent, which means you and I can make use of these works to amplify our messages.

That being said, some common sense rules still apply – because your peace of mind, reputation, and your finances are more important than rushing on your photo requirements hastily now and getting into expensive legal battles later.

Remember while using free images:

a) Images and Videos depicting identifiable persons may not be used for pornographic, unlawful or other immoral purposes, or in a way that can give a bad name to people, or to imply endorsement of products and services by those persons, brands, organisations, etc.

b) Almost all these websites have an ‘About’ page, a ‘Terms of Use’ or ‘Terms of Service’ page along with privacy, iability, and boundaries of usage. Spend a few minutes checking them out before you use their images because your peace of mind, reputation, and your finances are more important than rushing on your photo requirements.

c) If you want more guidance on attributions, check the links given in the description. (add them to the blog post: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Best_practices_for_attribution)

d) Visit the official CC0 license page to learn more about the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license. https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ and in general about the CC Licenses. https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/

Whenever you see a CC0 License: Here’s what you can do:

  • Download the image file
  • Publish, revise, copy, alter, and share that image
  • Use the image (as-is or as you’ve altered it), in both personal and commercial contexts.
  • You don’t even need to attribute the image to the creator. However, even though it’s not required, it’s a way of Saying Thanks to include an appropriate attribution. It’s a nice thing to do.
    Check the license information specific to the websites listed here.

Here’s what you cannot do:

  • You cannot use these images to imply any kind of endorsement on the part of the image creator or any person or product depicted in the image.
  • You can’t pass the image or the photographer as a direct stamp of approval for you, your company, or your products or services.
  • Finally, you cannot sue or claim any kind of liability against the person who created the image on any kind of theory of warranty or guarantee in the image.

To reiterate, most of these websites won’t allow us to re-sell them for a price. These are just to use in your projects, videos, websites but may not to sell them directly. Just make sure you read each of these websites policies on how to use them without getting into any trouble.

That’s all for this guide, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

The Best Free Annotation Tool for Presenters

by Leave a Comment

If you’re into presentations or teaching something through screen sharing online with others, you know you cannot annotate, highlight nor zoom into the screen while presenting.

This is possible in some presentation software like Microsoft PowerPoint to some extent but not without showing the audience what you are actually doing in front of them.

But here’s what’s possible after you read this guide post / watch this video:

  • You could draw,
  • write directly on the screen,
  • highlight directly over most desktop applications including the presentation software and web pages.

Here’s how to get them done.

Just head on to this website which is from Microsoft and download the ZoomIt software.

Once the zip file gets downloaded click on it to open it – this only contains the exe file and is a portable file – you only need to double-click to use it.

This exe file opens up an options dialog box. Just go through this video demo for a detailed walk-through of how to make use of all these options to suit your situation.

In case you are in the Teaching profession or in any training Department within your company then this is a very useful tool to keep handy.

Sell More Books – 7 Incredible Insights for Authors

by Leave a Comment

Nothing is more pathetic than working hard on your book and publishing it only to find out that no one is interested in it.

In this article, we will see 7 important mindset shifts to help you sell more books and earn better from your writing. Although these are best principles for Authors who write their own books, some concepts can also help if you are re-publishing a public domain book.

Research Before You Write

If you want to sell books, then we need to understand from the very beginning that sales is directly proportional to the number of people who will be interested in whatever you want to write.

Studying the market even before you write, and doing some research on keywords, surveying what people in your field really want – will all go a long way when you finish writing and start selling. In fact, these could pave the way to sell your books even before you start writing. KDP also has ‘pre-order’ sales options available to its authors.

This way, we can distinctly divide the entire process into three parts:

  1. Research
  2. Write
  3. Promote

All these three steps are important and go hand-in-hand to ensure you sell more books.

Tools such as Publisher Rocket help in finding approximately how many people have bought similar titles in your genre, what is the typical download count per a period, and more such useful metrics for you to decide.

Another treasure trove is the book reviews, ratings, and comments section for similar titles that others have written. – You can easily find what your potential audience have loved and hated from their comments and then use that intel to enhance your writing exponentially.

If you are interested in learning more tactics, I highly recommend reading Pat Flynn’s ‘Will it fly‘ book – I will provide the link below so you can give it a shot.

Download a mind map version of this article.

Importance of platform awareness

Having different versions of the books you’ve written is great, but if you are just starting out, focus only on your Kindle version.

More books are sold on Kindle than in print!

This way you can first focus on establishing a place for yourself in the world of writing. After you see some traction in your ebook sales, you can move on to publishing them in print editions.

Not just that, there are more avenues in the eBook world and Kindle is not the end – we have leanpub, Kobo, Google Play Books, Smashwords, iBooks and so on so you can cater to different types of people.

They are all people reading ebooks but the devices they carry in their hands are different and you are losing out on lot of money if you don’t tap into that diversity.

That’s why it’s all the more important to be platform aware and start focusing on the eBook market in your first month of selling eBooks before you exhaust all the options and then step into the print versions.

Understanding the technical side of ebooks

A simple shift in the mindset regarding the technologies we use to self-publish takes you really far in making the work you do to stand out from your competition.

An eBook is really just a web page, written in HTML. Learning some basics of HTML and CSS can really help in formatting the ebooks the way you want. If not nothing, consider using the services offered by professionals who charge very less in platforms like upwork or fiverr. They are experts in using HTML, CSS who can format your ebook the way you want with all the designs and formatting specifics.

Expect Less

Your first published book is no-doubt a bestseller in your family circles, but it will not be a super-hit out in the world from day one onward.

There are exceptions and I will consider myself lucky if it happens to me. If you are just beginning to write and sell books as an author, then try writing something short but valuable for your target audience and learn all the technicalities involved in self-publishing your first book.

Publish more often applying the knowledge you’ve gained from the first book. Unlike olden days where people used typewriters to type their manuscript, and publishers who used big printing press machines, writing books need not take years with hand-held gadgets, cloud based apps, and self-publishing resources available for free these days.

Learn this business, forget the expectations, gain the experience and eventually you will ride on easily with increased revenue because this is all just science and the process works the same way for everyone.

Connecting with readers

Some authors just share their ideas in their books and leave it at that. The book stands in isolation without any action items for the readers, so they just move on after reading and you have lost a potential fan because there is no way to connect with you for them.

As an author, connecting to your readers is an important opportunity to ensure they also read your next book. CTAs or Call to action inside your books are vital to building a following for your works.

Turning that into a loyal following group depends on your consistency in engaging the audience with what they ask for. Here are some ideas that could bring your readers to know you better and get closer to you.

  1. Introduction page – where you can tell more about yourself,
  2. Contact page – Creating and linking to your website and other social media channels.
  3. Offering a supplement to your current book and letting them sign up for your Newsletters or other free accompanying downloads called as Lead Magnets.
  4. Creating a Facebook community and making it exclusive access to your followers.
  5. Doing an AMA or “Ask Me Anything” chat sessions on Twitter, Reddit, or Gitter (https://gitter.im)

Delivery Costs

Size of the eBook increases delivery costs from Amazon, thus leading to lesser royalties.

This is something that all the authors who are self-publishing using Amazon to be aware of.

I created a dedicated video to address this issue and how you can resolve it. The primary culprit is the images you use in the eBook and in this other video, you’ll learn how to compress them effectively without losing the quality. Links are provided in the description below.

Content Seeding

The core principle here is repurposing the content you’ve already written. Almost every book you write can take another birth of its own as a podcast, blog article, video, a slideshow, a course, a checklist (for non-fiction works), an infographic, or any other mini PDF that can be created out of the original work you wrote first.

No book should be left in isolation and must be reborn in one or many of these forms.

Bonus Tip to Sell More Books:

sell more books

For all those of you who are still reading, I have a bonus tip. Well, it’s actually a no-brainer but not EVERYONE realizes it. So, I thought I will share it, anyway.

Hyperlinked Table of contents:

In case your books don’t have this, it’s time you edit and re upload your eBooks after creating a table of contents – and if you already have the TOC on your eBooks, then pat yourself on your back. This is because TOC section provides a great reader’s experience on eBooks. Some don’t use it and some misuse it by placing it at the end of their eBooks – this not only is a poor reading experience but also makes Amazon think that you are cheating its algorithm by letting the system think that the reader has fully read your book by reaching the end of the eBook. This is usually manipulated to tap into the KENP page read count related royalties. So, use the TOC within the starting sections only and use it to link to your main chapter and sub-chapter headings. Again, I have another video which talks about creating Table of Contents.

So, those were some pointers to keep in mind on your writing journey. I hope this was useful and let me know if you have any problems or questions on Amazon KDP below.

Cheers and good luck!

Arun