Online advertising continues to rise. That includes emerging marketing in the blogosphere. Several attempts have been made to monetize blogs including Blogs Ads, RSS Ads, Adsense, and others.

A new, somewhat controversial program has been unveiled by marketing communications company Marqui. Called the Blogosphere Program, it is a promotion being offered to select bloggers who, for a fee, agree to promote Marqui's products.

At last count there are 18 bloggers in the program including some pretty high profile names like Molly Holzschlag, DL Byron, Robin Good and others.

For the $800 per month the bloggers are paid the only have to put a badge on the site, make one mention per week of the product, and provide a link. Marqui even welcomes these bloggers to criticize the product if need be.

Though some blog purists see this as blatant bastardizing of the very reason blogs even exist, I see it as another step in the evolution of blogs as business and marketing tools.

Here's what Marqui has to say about it. . .

The idea of paying bloggers is a controversial one, as it challenges some of the sacred cows of the journalistic publishing business. When we first started talking about this idea, an energetic exchange between people with traditional publishing backgrounds and bloggers erupted on the Web.

Marqui is insisting on complete transparency with this program. With some high-profile bloggers buying into the program that should help. (I've thrown my hat in the ring, too. I'll let you know if they bite.) 

Not unlike Dr. Frankenstein creating several iterations of his infamous monster before coming up with his final grotesque lifeform, the blogosphere is going to be subject to some pretty outlandish e-commerce monstrosities itself. I see no real need to worry about it. The market and/or the blogosphere will eventually determine which have value and which don't.