---
title: 'How to Copy Pictures and Make Money for Free by Selling Them Legally'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=gRzzgNY-Mug'
video_id: 'gRzzgNY-Mug'
date: 2026-07-28
duration_sec: 745
---

# How to Copy Pictures and Make Money for Free by Selling Them Legally

> Source: [How to Copy Pictures and Make Money for Free by Selling Them Legally](https://youtube.com/watch?v=gRzzgNY-Mug)

## Summary

This video explains how to legally sell public domain images of famous paintings for profit through print-on-demand platforms like Redbubble. The creator demonstrates step-by-step how to find copyright-free images, upload them, and optimize listings to earn commissions. It also touches on advanced strategies like editing images in Canva and finding recently expired works to reduce competition.

### Key Points

- **Introduction to Selling Famous Paintings** [00:02] — The Mona Lisa is used as an example to show that images of famous paintings can be legally and ethically sold online once their copyright expires.
- **Copyright Duration and Public Domain** [01:44] — Copyright lasts for 70 years after the artist's death. After that, works enter the public domain, meaning zero copyright and free use for any purpose, including selling.
- **Best Sources for Public Domain Images** [02:24] — Three recommended websites: Wikipedia, Rawpixel, and Freeimages.com. Rawpixel is highlighted for its user-friendly interface and curated collections.
- **Selling on Redbubble (Step-by-Step)** [03:32] — Create an account on Redbubble, upload the public domain image, add a title (e.g., 'Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night HD'), tags, and description. Configure product types, focusing on prints, cards, posters, framed art, and canvases.
- **Print-on-Demand Business Model Explained** [06:29] — Redbubble prints the image on products, ships them, and pays a commission on the markup. The creator advises keeping default markup or lowering it slightly to undercut competitors.
- **Redbubble Traffic and Potential Sales** [07:53] — Redbubble receives 30 million monthly visitors, providing organic traffic to new listings. Simple uploads can generate sales without additional marketing.
- **Strategies to Multiply Earnings** [08:08] — Two methods: (1) promote listings via Instagram or Pinterest accounts, (2) edit images using free tools like Canva to create unique variants. Editing can involve filters, brightness/contrast adjustments, or photogenic effects.
- **Finding Newly Expired Public Domain Works** [10:46] — Search Google for 'art added to public domain in [year]' to find recently expired works with less competition. Being early can lead to higher sales.

### Conclusion

Selling public domain images on print-on-demand platforms is a legitimate way to earn passive income, but for a full-time income, the creator recommends high-ticket affiliate marketing, which he claims has been more profitable for him.

## Transcript

is the painting of the mona lisa well it's a picture of the painting of the mona lisa and this is probably the most famous painting of all time painted by probably the most famous painter of all time leonardo da vinci now something you
probably don't know because i just found this out myself but we can legally and ethically steal this picture of the mona lisa sell it and make money and i know that sounds like way too good to be true but i promise you
this is 100 real and legit and in this video i'm gonna explain why it's actually real and why it works how we can actually do this the right way and make money and i'm going to be showing you how to do all of
that completely step by step so if you want to learn about that and see how you can make money completely for free from home with doing very little work make that being said let's get started what's going on thomas garrett's here and like
i said in the intro i'm going to show you how we can use famous pictures or pictures of famous paintings and sell them online and make money completely legally and ethically now the first question you probably have is like how
you're lying you can't just take pictures online and sell them and that's true kind of right like for example we couldn't go to google and take pictures of wonder woman or the hulk or spider-man and just upload them and sell
them online right like if we click on this image here you can see right here this poster art copyright is believed to belong to the distributor of the film warner brothers obviously right however copyright doesn't last forever you may
not know this but it only lasts for 70 years after the artist passes away okay and then at that point it goes into what's called the public domain and its
copyright has expired and the public domain means literally there is zero copyright you can use it completely free you can sell it you can edit it you can do whatever you want with it and that's legal and ethical but before we actually
legal and ethical but before we actually start selling these images online i have to show you how to find more than just a mona lisa on the public domain so i mean there's plenty of ways but i'd
say there's three of the the best ways and number one is wikipedia number two is raw pixel and number three is free dash images.com and me personally i feel
like raw pixel puts it together in the easiest way to in this video but the other two options you'd like but once you're on rawpixel.com you
domain and then they sort it in different categories by like all public domain or like the name of the artist so like vincent van gogh right like he's their name of but he has a ton of great paintings so
you can see right here it's public domain free cc0 image that's copyright zero like there's zero copyright so it's in the public domain so you don't have
just free download and then just make sure to create your free account i'm be right back all right so after you're logged in or after you create your account you just hit free download and then you get your image right here okay
so this is literally a famous vincent van gogh painting right here all right pretty dope but now to actually sell this painting or picture there's two this painting or picture there's two ways to do it okay so the first way is
ways to do it okay so the first way is on etsy the second way is on redbubble okay so i think etsy's great i personally just don't have any experience with etsy all right if you want to use etsy you can do it but for
this video we're going to be using redbubble specifically so basically well and then once you're signed in you go right to your little profile right here and you hit add new work so right here you go upload new work you're gonna
go to your downloads right here and then we have our vincent van gogh painting and while it's downloading or uploading we could title it so we could do uh what's it called let's take the actual image name right here vincent van gogh's
starry night let's just literally take the title all right like you don't have paste that in you could probably take out the famous landscape painting and out the famous landscape painting and then you could do like updated 2021 hd
image or something like that just to give them another reason to get it and then for the tags you'd probably want to do vincent van gogh famous painting you do vincent van gogh famous painting you separate them by commas like it said um
separate them by commas like it said um i don't know starry night over the rhone fine art okay so that's good for the description what i would suggest personally is going and looking at other pieces of this art on redbubble and
seeing what other people are writing and then just kind of using that as like inspiration and writing your own so i'm just gonna say this is vincent van gogh's i'll just copy and paste that right there but the important part is it
prints it on all of these different things like clothing and all these different things some of them are going to be enabled some are going to be disabled i personally would disable most of them i mean you can keep whatever
enabled that you want like some of these look good and people might order them but the most important one is down here i'll show you it's right here prints cards and posters because if you hit edit right here and you click the second
box that's where you can get the framed art and the canvases and that's what people are most likely to purchase when it's a painting like this you know what sense i'm not saying people wouldn't order the other stuff but just know that
that's gonna be the main thing so then if you took any off of here like if you whatever you want just make sure you apply the changes and i personally would keep the markup what they have it at or you could try and undercut people by
lowering it a little bit but i wouldn't raise it too much okay and just in case you're wondering like how do you actually get that money for that markup basically when someone purchases one of these from your shop which you'll see in
a second redbubble prints your image on whatever is purchased ships it out for you and they give you a cut of the profit okay so it's a really simple business model it's called print on demand so i just wanted to clear that up
if you were confused at all about that but then once you've got all that set the page for media right here you can select up to two right so it's a digital select up to two right so it's a digital art and photography and then default
product in your shop optimize so they choose it who can view your work you want it public and is this mature condit content no it's not okay so i have the save work and then you just gotta wait for this to process and then this is the
page it goes to once it's all done processing you can click view right here and it will take you to all the different products that you now have for that design and if you just literally click on one this is the product page
that redbubble uses okay so you can add it to cart and that's how you can actually sell it through redbubble and again if you look at how many different so that's why i was saying i would probably take most of them off like i
said these are the main ones the canvas the art those are the ones that look super dope but when it comes to actually making money from redbubble the best part is you can literally just upload the designs and you can start making
sales because if we go to similar web right here it's a chrome extension they right here it's a chrome extension they get 30 million monthly visitors to their website okay people browsing and wanting to purchase designs just like this but
there are a couple things you can do to really multiply the amount of money you're making the first way would be creating like an instagram account or a pinterest account and really creating content around whatever type of art
you're uploading to redbubble and directing those people to your product pages for that specific design but that's really a more longer term play and definitely takes some more work so an easier way in my opinion would be to
an easier way in my opinion would be to do one or both of these next two things first you can take this image that we uploaded and you can change it a little bit whether that means change the colors or if you're really good at like
photoshop and it was like a different drawing or 3d image you could like move the arms around or make it if it's like a skeleton for example or a person you that's different from all the other ones because again this is public domain you
can edit these however you want but the easier way of those two i'll show you it'll take like 30 seconds okay so this is a free website called canva if you don't have an account you can create a free account but literally if we go to
create a design and you want to hit edit photo right here and you want to upload this one and it might be too big because this is yeah so this is too big in size take the next size down right here so it's less pixels basically which is not
a problem at all so now if we use the new image create design edit photo this one should work and it's working okay so just hit edit photo and literally all you got to do is click on the image and hit edit image so there's
a couple things you can do you can use filters and you can literally like look what i mean there's some pretty cool filters like that one's dope right you can double click on it too and raise the intensity if you want by the way or what
you can do is you can go back and go to none right so that's what it looks like without it you go back you can adjust the brightness and contrast on its own so if you want it brighter a little more contrast a little more saturation right
or again you can put those all back to zero then you can do the photogenic right and kind of do it like that that just completely changes the image into something completely new and it takes 30 seconds literally okay so then you would
just download the image as a png download and then you would upload it to redbubble like that and the second way is something you could combined with this like i said and it's super simple but it's just going to google and typing
but it's just going to google and typing in art added to public domain in 2021 or maybe you want to do 2022 and really try and be the very first person to upload something but even stuff added in 2021 there's not going to be as many people
who have added stuff like that to redbubble and etsy but if you look up mona lisa on redbubble and etsy there's going to be hundreds or maybe thousands of people using that whereas if you go right here maybe the cover illustration
of the great gatsby is something that there won't be a lot of but that's know what i mean so definitely just do some research on new stuff being added to public domain because being early or first on something can really make you a
lot of money but at the end of the day all of these strategies they're really all of these strategies they're really focused on earning small commissions or small profit from print on demand and there's nothing wrong with that this is
the side but something that can earn you a full-time income and has been able to provide me with income like i've never seen in my life and allowed me to quit my job and truly just have freedom in my life is with affiliate marketing but
more specifically with high ticket affiliate marketing and if you want to first link down below in the description that's my number one recommendation and that's the one program that changed my life but if that's your first time ever
even high ticket affiliate marketing i have a video right here you can watch where i go much more in depth i talk about the program and all of that so i highly suggest checking that video out and that's all i got see on the next
and that's all i got see on the next video