Ethical to earn by Ads and passive income?

[rosegold]

I was wondering whether it was ethical to earn by copyrighting your production of music or book.
Ads.
Real Estate rentals.

Franklin never patented his inventions; in his autobiography he wrote, "... as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously."

I'm glad Mr. P gave up irrelavant Ads on his website, Ads that didn't align with his philosophy. But copyrighting a book? He can easily just make it available for free instead of selling it. He probably has more than enough money to live on for the rest of his life by now from all that Google Ads passive income.

[funchy]

There's nothing unethical about trading your work (a book) for your income. Even authors have to eat.

Ads on websites is really up to the discretion of the site owner. Considering most people going to a given web site won't pay, the site needs to pay for hosting somehow. As long as it's not an ad for something inappropriate or dishonest, why not?

[ruchirkc]

What's unethical about any type of passive income?

Books aren't sold free because: 1) The publisher will incur a loss, 2) authors take hundreds of hours into writing a book, why shouldn't they be paid for it?

[bbdream8]

People are willing to pay a price for something of valuable information. It is not unethical to earn by passive income and earning passive income is the way to help you live your ideal lifestyle.

Cheers
Vincent
Personal Development Blogger

[MagicalRealist]

Originally Posted by rosegold

I was wondering whether it was ethical to earn by copyrighting your production of music or book.
Ads.
Real Estate rentals.

If you do the work of getting a book out into the world, and that book provides value to its readers, why should you not receive value in return?

If you do the work of building a large blog readership by generating fresh, interesting content on a regular basis, why should you not sell advertising space? You are, after all, providing value to a lot of readers with your content, and also providing value to advertisers by working to build and maintain a large readership. And your readers have a choice--notice the ads and click on them, or don't.

If you do all the work required to make money to buy income properties, plus do all the work to improve and maintain those properties (or hire someone else to), then why should you not receive money in exchange for use of that property? If you rent an apartment, you receive value--a place to live--for the money you pay in rent every month. Maybe you don't like paying rent, but you'd probably like living on the streets a lot less.

If it bothers you so much that you have to pay for a book, see ads on a blog, or pay rent, that suggests that you either want something for nothing, or at least want to be able to dictate to others how much they should receive for the value they produce.

And "passive income," in my opinion, is a myth. The money doesn't come from nowhere or nothing; it is still the result of somebody's work. They put forth their energy--nothing passive about that--and instead of getting paid in one lump sum, they get it in a steady stream.

I'm glad Mr. P gave up irrelavant Ads on his website, Ads that didn't align with his philosophy. But copyrighting a book? He can easily just make it available for free instead of selling it.

Yes, he could. But why should he have to?

Steve already provides a tremendous amount of free content to anyone with Internet access. One of the things that impressed me about his blog from the start was how much information he offered--he didn't coyly hint at everything he was going to reveal in his 6-CD seminar that I could purchase for $119 + S&H, or at his workshop coming soon to my city, or in his new book. I didn't have to give him my email address to sign up for a newsletter. He just put information right out there, in usable form. There were ads, sure, and a donation button if I felt inclined to kick him a few bucks in exchange for what I'd read, but all of his content was right out there in the open.

Steve's blog is full of useful ideas and information, as is his book. The forums are interesting. He offers value to the people who want it--why is it wrong that he should receive value in return for it? He does the work of maintaining a blog, generating content on a regular basis. He gives value to his readers, who keep coming back, and in turn can offer value to his advertisers in the form of pageviews. If his readers don't care about the ads, they don't have to click on them, or pay them any attention; they still get to read his blog.

Value is being created and exchanged, by Steve, his readers, his publisher, and his advertisers. Money is just a symbol of that value, and the easiest means of exchanging it.

He probably has more than enough money to live on for the rest of his life by now from all that Google Ads passive income.

And this disturbs you why, exactly? If Steve makes money without having to struggle or suffer for it, or "work hard," how does this undermine you?

[Brutha]

But copyrighting a book? He can easily just make it available for free instead of selling it.

In that case the book wouldn't reach bookstores all around the country. Working with Hay House means that the book will get more publicity than the book would have got if Steve would have given it away for free on his website as pdf.

You won't get on bestsellerlists by giving away your book for free on your website.

A published book is a medium that allows you to reach people that you wouldn't reach through giving things away for free on a website.

[rosegold]

Oh, thanks Brutha.

[Eisho]

I live in a capitalist society, as does Mr Steve Pavlina. If other people start giving food away for free, transport, medical care, schooling, houses, clothing, holidays, beer, video games and whatever else then I will start giving my services away completely for free too. I'm sure Steve would too. Reality though is that we don't live in that kind of society.

Personally I don't have any strong feelings about Steve giving up Adsense. He was providing a service - ads - that readers presumably wanted. Give the money to charity.

Cheers,

Eisho

[Brutha]

Reality though is that we don't live in that kind of society.

Steve doesn't care much about the kind of society that we are living in reality.

A lot of succesful nonfiction authors make their money these days via public speaking.

They make 1-2$ per book sold and then use the fact that they have a bestselling book to give speeches for 50.000$/hour and life is good (to paraphrase Guy Kawasaki).

To to that, you need to go with a mass market publisher. If you go with a mass market publisher you need to have your book copyrighted.

[rosegold]

Ah..and then if you don't care for the money, you can buy with your own copyrighted books from the publisher in mass quantities and give them out for free? or sell them at a much cheaper price? for exaple 2 dollars.

[dannielo]

Why would you do something like that?
It's self-destructing.

You know you created something of value when people are willing to give money for it. And knowing you have done something of value will give you the confidence to continue further. Steve will start soon (if he didn't do it already) to work on his second book.

Not to mention that no publisher will ever work with you again, if you have the habit of taking money from other sources, buy your own books in mass and then give them away.

[Brutha]

Ah..and then if you don't care for the money, you can buy with your own copyrighted books from the publisher in mass quantities and give them out for free? or sell them at a much cheaper price? for example 2 dollars.

If you buy books from your publisher it costs you money.
In general the publisher also gets an exclusive license that prevents the author from giving away the book for free.
Part of Steves deal was that bloggers will get the book for free and that he gets 100 books for himself to pass around among friends (like the moderators of this forum).

But there are even people who do buy their own books to get bestseller status and be afterwards better able to get speaking engagements.

If I understands Steve right, he we wants to maximize his impact on the world. If the things he does create some extra money for himself he takes it gratefully.
There no need to reject that money because that would mean rejecting abundance.
Steves is in a position where he doesn't have to organize his life around making money.

This thread contains a bit of Steves present attitude about money (unless of course he changed it in the meantime).

[bluedragon]

I agree - feeling ashamed to gain money comes from a mindset of scarcity - you believe that there is a limited amount of wealth in the world and therefore, in order for you to earn money, somebody else has to lose it. In reality, the amount of wealth is infinite, or at least, there is enough of everything each of us will be able to use (to posses AND enjoy in whatever way he finds appropriate), therefore, the more you are able to use, the more you will gain. If you are planning to build a dance school for example, you don't have to be ashamed to be making the money needed for such a project - you could find it unnecessary though to earn as much as is needed for the construction of a hospital, so you can either reduce the amount of money you make, or if your flow of income has set itself on auto-pilot, donate that money elsewhere. But if you do plan to build a hospital, then the same amount of money will be an absolute necessity - just as the people who want Steve's book find it a necessity to earn enough to be able to afford it. If those people wanted to be able to afford all the books in the world that interest them - it is up to them to raise to the challenge of making enough money for that as well.
This is a mindset of abundance, but also one based on the acceptance of the validity of the law of attraction.