IMHO- A person can accept money from the sale of a product that he helped design, prototype, test and bring to market while still retaining integrity and honesty within his field of interest.
When did we arrive at this place where the majority of folks believe that if someone in the industry is receiving compensation they will automatically lie and pull the wool over the consumers' eyes? I guess this shows just how bad this industry has become when that is the defacto assumption.
Form, I greatly appreciate your directness, honesty, and fact-based approach to making better hunters and better guns, and I believe that it is appropriate for you to receive compensation for the work that you do in that realm.
And, if you are the person who you appear to be in your public persona, I have no doubt you will be open and honest about that fact, and that your integrity and honesty will be such that when conflicts arrive (as they are sure to do,) you will choose the right path. And the haters will hate, and the idiots will spew, and the fan boys won't care. But the rest of us will see what you are doing and will respect you for it.
It is not shameful to profit from doing good, hard, honest work. And the industry needs more people with the integrity to call BS on their own products or their own actions and correct the path.