A question I get asked a lot is how to come up with enough content to create a product or a line of products and services that can generate passive income. Often, when I dig a little deeper with the questioner, I find that they are sitting on a veritable content goldmine.

One person told me about having a file cabinet full of print newsletters he had produced for more than five years. Another had been putting out an email newsletter for at least as long. Others have told me about writing a column for their association newsletter or local newspaper, or having a collection of teleseminars they produced and recorded, or books they have written (published or unpublished), etc.

Beyond that, there are many other sources of content they-and you-may have overlooked. Consider these possibilities:

Handouts from seminars and speeches. Do you ever give out an outline, notes or other resources when you speak? Those may be usable as-is as blog posts, articles, tip sheets, checklists and more, or they may be easily expanded to a longer form special report, ebook, booklet or other item you can sell.

Workbooks. Many presenters go beyond simple handouts and have workbooks with articles, exercises, resources and other valuable information. In many cases, these workbooks may be useful even to people who can not attend the workshop. Or, they can be slightly revised or expanded to stand alone, apart from the workshop.

Forum posts and emails. Do you ever answer questions posed by others in forums or via email? Your answers (with any proprietary client data removed, of course) can be converted to blog posts or articles. Or assemble several of them to create an ebook, booklet or book.

Recordings of presentations and interviews. If you have recordings of yourself speaking, interviewing someone or being interviewed, you may be able to sell the recordings as audio products, or have them transcribed to create a book, ebook or other print or electronic text such as articles and blog posts. If there is someone else involved (e.g., interviewer or interviewee) get their permission before using the material.

PowerPoint presentations. You may be able to offer those PowerPoint presentations you created for a speech or workshop as a product, or you can narrate the slideshow and offer the entire presentation on CD or online.

Stuff on your hard drive that you started but never finished. Do you have projects you started but didn’t finish? Most of us do. In fact, I was recently looking through files on an old computer and ran across a couple I had forgotten about. Even if the project isn’t fully realized as originally intended, it may take very little to turn it into one or more saleable products. For example, the five chapters you wrote for your book on relationship issues might make five very strong special reports. And you can probably make more money selling the chapters as special reports than you would if you finished and published the whole book!

Public domain works. Do you have some old books in your library on which the copyright has expired? Once you have verified that the works are in the public domain, you may use them any way you wish. You can republish them as books or ebooks, slice them into special reports, articles and blog posts, produce audio products, create new derivative works and more. And all without having to write the content yourself.

These are just a few of the ways you can capitalize on content you have already created. When you start looking, you will be amazed at what you have already created.

For specific how-to on turning your content into cash, you need Cash Content Formula. Not only do you get hundreds of ideas of how to monetize your content, you get detailed how-to and hands-on help through monthly coaching calls and more. Learn more, and get a free one-hour audio about ways you can profit from your content, at http://www.CashContentFormula.com/