Dana VanDen Heuvel joins in on the discussion concerning "The Transpearency Police", which started after Paul Chaney was scrutinized for recommending my e-book and using his affiliate link, and then continued through an interview I did with Paul.

"This is an issue close to me, as I contributed to Rok's book and would love to somehow recoup something for my time, but the transparency police jump down our throats when we try to make a buck. If we're honest, and you can look at a couple years worth of blog posts to figure that out, and we want to pimp a product, so be it!"

This is becoming an increasing problem for popular bloggers who believe in something and blog about it, but also want to generate some income from their hard work.

The question, which none of the "transparency police officers" has been able to answer yet, is why should that be prohibited?

Bloggers give away their knowledge and time to anyone interested in learning from their insights. They share freely, without asking their readers to open their wallets to read their posts.

And yet it seems that almost no one realizes how much time and effort running a useful blog takes.

Shouldn't bloggers be allowed to at leat somewhat be compensated for their hard work? As long as they are true to themselves and act as journalists, not blatant promoters, does really anyone see any real problems with this?