I was reading a few relevant tips from Darren at ProBlogger about some Do's and Dont's for professional business blogs. I wanted to pass on his wisdoms because I think that they're right on the money, no pun intended.

These are the same strategies I use on my blogs Affiliate Blogger, Affiliate Marketers and Affiliate Blog.

The topic was about what to do if you have viewers coming to your blog, but they never buy anything through you. The advice is sage:

Product relevancy and quality - unless the products you're promoting relate to the content/topic of your blogging you're wasting your time. Not only should they be relevant - they should be quality affiliate products. Don't get sucked into promoting something just because it relates to your site. Test it for yourself and if it's rubbish - stay clear. You can hurt your own reputation by recommending second rate products.

Traffic - the more people that see the promotions you run the better. While traffic isn't the only factor, it is certainly a big one. Work at drawing people to your blog and particularly to the pages that you are featuring affiliate promotions on.

Placement - affiliate links IN content tend to out perform promotions that you run in sidebars or banner ads. One genuine review of the product (see next point) seen by a handful of readers can be much more powerful than a banner at the top of your blog seen by many readers.

Your reputation and 'Sales Pitch' - I find that affiliate products work best for me on sites where I have a loyal readership of people who respect what I say and when I give genuine recommendation that show not only the positives of a product but the weaknesses in it. The way you promote the product is as influencial as almost anything else. Don't hype, don't lie and don't spin it.

I get a lot of emails from all sorts of Marketers. I don't post that much about those emails because, well frankly most of them are just spammy crap.

Once in a blue moon I'll get one that's really got some merit to it, and then I'll share it with you.

Your readership is valuable to me. I value your attention to the posts I blog about, and it's that attention that's given rise to the post I'm doing today.

There's a lot of discussion that we're heading into a new age of Online Marketing, pushing Permission-based Marketing to its limits.

A fairly well known marketer named Rich Schefren has released a new report called Attention Age Doctrine. This report outline's his predicitions for the near future of Online Marketing.

Like you, I said to myself … Oh great, another get rich quick scheme being hatched. I don't know about you, but I'm so sick of those tired old pitches full of hype and BS.

I decided to sign-up for Rich's free report and see what he had to say. I was expecting the same old song and dance, but that's not what I got. I was plesantly surprised.

Oh sure, there's a bit of that hype and zeal that marketers use, but there's also some meat to this dish … and it's worth the read. Very much worth the read.

If you look at Rich's list of clients, it's a "who's who" list of the top online marketers. Rich has been around awhile and has spawned some of the most widely used marketing strategies online to date.

Many of these online marketers are still doing business using traditional techniques, but they are listening to Rich's counsel and I can see how many of them are heading in this new direction that Rich's report outlines.

For the last month Rich has been writing his new Advisory report. It's called The Attention Age Doctrine.

The Attention Age Doctrine talks about the new environment of the Internet and where the Market is heading. I think he's dead-on in his analysis.

Unlike his Internet Business Manifesto Trilogy, this advisory will be available only for a limited time.

My advice … reserve your copy now: The Attention Age Doctrine.

We don't need no stinking badges! Or do we?

Jim Kukral at BlogKits has come out with a new viral idea to help the blogging community gain integrity while still earning an income from blogging. They're offering a BlogHonor banner for free with the following pledge by the blogger:

Thank you for reading my blog. You're here because you've clicked on the "Blog Honor" badge on my blog.

What does Blog Honor mean? It means I have chosen to pledge to you the following:

I will endeavor to continue to bring you the highest quality content that I am capable of

I promise to attempt to disclose or clearly mark any content or advertisements or other monetization attempts that help me keep my blog operating

I pledge to never write "fake" blog content solely for the purpose of trying to generate revenue without complete and clear disclosure. With exception, my blog may exist for business purposes, therefore I use it to talk about products & services that relate to my business, thus assisting me in generating leads & sales for me indirectly
In return, I hope that you will continue to read my blog with the knowledge that I produce my blog out of a passion for the topic I write about, and not because I'm hoping to fool you into making money for myself.

Please note, I have nothing against generating revenue from my blog, in fact, your ongoing support of my sponsors and advertisers (text links, partner ads, etc…) helps me keep my blog operating so that I may endure to create better content for you.

I do appreciate your support. Continued thanks for your readership.

According to BlogKits, the reason for the honor badges is that … right now we are at a critical juncture in the blogging community, where we (bloggers) can either find ways to band together to keep our integrity intact, or continue to let blogging get a bad name.

Blog Honor Badges were conceived by Jim Kukral, publisher of ReveNews.com and founder of the BlogKits Affiliate Marketing Blogging Network. Badge Artwork conception and creation by Whitecapstudios, specialists in blog design.

The big question is how to enforce abuse of the honor badge … If you believe you've found a blog that isn't practicing what they preach, then send it to us with your comments at info at blogkits dot com. We'll investigate it when we can and if we believe the blog is not representing our core values, we'll ask them to remove it. Beyond that, what can we do? We're not the blog police.

Bloggers, if you want to display this banner on your blog, then you need to stop cloaking those affiliate links and hiding them inside your content areas. Even in this post, I have keywords lighting up that link to my other resources. Does it matter that they're affiliate links or not? What I'm seeing other bloggers do is post a visable and static message on their blog "This Blog contains Advertisements" or they're adding this tag as the first line of their post if the post contains monetization links. It seems to be the path taken by top-notch bloggers.

But, what I really want to know is … Jim, when are you going to get BlogKits live?!!

I have forum thread started on the topic of BlogHonor at 5 Star Affiliate Marketing Forums that you might want to join in.