Well, there is a lot of things that are free, but the experience is different if you pay.
Spotify in my country is an example. You can listen to music, but not all of it in a way that you like.

Remaining on the investment, if everybody could copy, then probably they aren't the best trades available.

It all depends  on how good the traders are.

The same is mining: if you catch a good coin with a low difficult you can make a reasonable more money than mining ethereum.

However if a lot of people does the same, the difficult grow up immediately.

So, the average miner is looking at whattomine, to decide what to mine next, people in the known, receive info on new coin, or new contract win by XYZ coin, and mine that.

Then you can choose, you can go free with whattomine, I will be happy to give spend 1% to receive valuable info.
Like I am happy to pay developer fee for the miner, even if there are alternative free that "almost" reach the same level