[PStamatiou]

> Reputation goes down the toilet the moment you start selling stuff on your blog.

I'd say there are a great number of exceptions to that. My blog has several thousand subscribers (for whatever you want to define an RSS subscriber as) that have been following my blog for years, they know I have been working at early stage startups for years and they value my opinion, even going out of their way to ask if I have an affiliate link for something I might have mentioned on Amazon before or elsewhere.

One guy even held off buying a big DSLR camera on Amazon for a few days until he was able to get my affiliate code from me while I was out of town.

People can have a voice that is valued online and sell stuff through their writing/blog. Affiliate sales on my blog alone pay my rent while I can run around doing startups with no compensation.

Ken Rockwell comes to mind too. He reviews cameras and has amazing guides. Each camera page has a blurb about asking readers to buy it from sites that have his affiliate code.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/