I am huge fan of Seth Godin. If you don't know who he is, Google “Internet Marketing Guru”, and you'll see his picture.

I have never met Seth, but he gave us a very nice testimonial about the importance of The Power of Giving. And I am most grateful for that. I'm also grateful for all things I have learned from him over the years. He's inspiring, thoughtful, and funny.

Reading his blog the other day I saw a posting about his policies on the possible conflicts a popular blog writer could have. It is a fine piece of writing.

He also revealed his generous nature by talking about two significant ways he's giving money he earns to charities.

And of course he freely gives his great ideas to about 100,000 people per week.

Yes, a blog helps him to sell some books, and get speaking engagements. But having read his blog and virtually all of his books over the years, it is obvious he is a giver of the first magnitude.

He is a superb example of a writer/business person who offers value, and is transparent. I urge you to read his piece.

Inspired by his message, I also want to tell you our policy on biases or conflicts.

We also don't take advertising on our site. We will never accept money to include links. We do plan to add links to other blogs that cover the issues you and I care about.

Azim and I both have written a number of other books. We don't even sell these books on The Power of Giving site. We have no plan to sell them here.

We are giving away all our author royalties, as you probably know. We have donated a lot of money to promote this book so it reaches a wide audience. We actually have donated thousands of hours of volunteer time to this project. It has been a pleasure. And many other people have donated significant time, money and insight to help make this book a campaign a success.

They are very generous, and we thank them sincerely.

You know, there is a lot of cynicism in the world – obviously some of it justified. But one of our goals is to reduce cynicism by promoting the importance of giving. There are so many people doing wonderful things—sometimes on a big scale, sometimes on a small scale.

To sum up our message, we want to make this book, and this web site, and our blog to be all about giving. And about you. We want it to be about giving without trying to get something in return. We have no problem with people trying to earn a living by selling things – after all, most people have to do this to feed themselves and their families. We just want to make sure that this book and this blog are all about giving, so that you can feel proud to be part of spreading the giving message. And we hope you do.