In the past, bloggers seethed at the thought of the words blogging and business being used in the same sentence. If a popular pundit blogged anything money related they were immediately bombarded by backlash and rumblings from their audience. The word “Sellout” was immediately found mixed with profanities in their comments section and trackback posts.

So what’s a blogger to do? With huge readerships and notoriety comes the added expense of upgraded hosting and more bandwidth. Feeding the fires ain’t cheap. Everything has its price.

As a way to cover the expense of being a blogger, tip jars, book recommendations, paid text links and ppc ads started showing up on popular blogs. People began to realize that money could be made… well, enough to cover the hosting fees and increased coffee consumption a lot of bloggers incur at least.

Several cash generating models have been explored including corporate sponsorships of blogs, specialized ads from services like Marketbanker and Blogads who handle your ad inventory for you, Google Adsense integration, bloggers for hire, etc.

The only problem I see is that a lot of bloggers who turn pro change their tone. The edge is taken off the sword so to speak. And that, IMHO is a fatal mistake.

If you already have an audience you need to keep them coming back. If your blog changes its tone from the raunchy tabloid that got people’s blood boiling to something the whole family can enjoy, just because you don’t want to irk your sponsors, you’ve missed the boat.

The act of transforming your blog from shocker to yawner has a name. It’s called Blogicide and you ain’t gonna make money if it happens to you. It’s your audience who will support you by clicking on the ads… remember them?