Advertising and/or promoting named products on this blog

When I originally started this blog, my intention was to create a completely independent, neutral, no advertising blog. A place, where a community and I myself with common interests would discuss any nutrition or other pet related topics without bringing my business, or for that matter of fact, any other business into the game. At least not in a fashion, where I would push for one or the other or speak against one or the other specific, named product. That is why all the products I named so far had these funny names like XYZ or DEF, etc.. Now, a couple of months later I am getting ready to deviate from this original thought. The reasons for this change are various. First of all, I am looking at any other blog. I see hundreds of them throughout a week of my regular work. I read columns about pets either on-line or in hard copy. I have yet to come across only one incident where absolutely no advertising is involved. This can be seen either with ads being placed in blogs or simply bloggers making specific recommendations. Columnists have absolutely no problem to recommend a specific product, and both columnists and bloggers, sometimes even are vets. I also believe that many readers are most likely looking for specific recommendations so they can figure out ways as to how to help their pets and be better pet owners.
I am not the kind of guy who starts revolutions. So why should I be doing things so totally different than anybody else does? The second reason was to use it as a tool to generate some interest not just in my thoughts, advice and comments. But I also was hoping that some of this interest would spark over into my business and help me there as well. This has not come to fruition so far and I strongly believe that this has to do with my strategy. Therefore, and in consideration of the fact that I spend a considerable portion of my daily work time with finding topics and writing/commenting for this blog, in future I will no longer hold back and make very product specific recommendations. One thing however I want to keep doing as I have done so far: I am going to try to stay as objective as possible, I will not allow myself the bashing of a specific product brand or name and I sure would not want to see any comments made in such a fashion. I am seeing many blogs where it seems to be common that specific products are simply being ripped apart and bad-mouthed with totally unqualified comments and bad language. This is not going to happen here. Let’s all act like human beings and provide constructive criticism with one common goal in mind: Healthy and happy pets, happy pet owners (the health of the latter is subject in many other blogs).