Do It Yourself Books, Music, Media & More

The barriers to self-expression have quickly eroded away. Producing your own creative product -- be it a book, music CD, photograph, artwork, whatever -- and making it available to the masses used to be a daunting task.

Not any more. There are a growing number of places you can turn to breath life into your creative ideas. Here are two of them:

Ourmedia provides "free storage and free bandwidth for your videos, audio files, photos, text or software. Forever. No catches."

Lulu is the place to go if you're "looking to buy cool stuff from independent creators or to publish and sell your work." The site specializes in digital music downloads, print-on-demand books, e-books, audio books, calendars and images.

Of course, you still have to promote your creative offerings and find an audience (and help your audience find you) before you rack up sizeable sales and start your first fan club. But when it comes to producing your creation and making it accessible to the world, there are no longer any excuses to not get started.

Think big. Dream big. Get busy!