Have you thought about turning your blog into a business in an effort to receive a few perks? It’s certainly possible! Whether you’re offering small business blogging advice or if you’re just blogging as a hobby, there may be perks involved as a way to reward you for your time and effort. We’ve talked about how to use your blog for marketing purposes so this should be of great interest to many of our readers.

As documented in a great Orlando Sentinel story written by Sarah Lundy, more bloggers are combining their blogging passions with a little business acumen and getting some rewards. Sarah writes about a growing population of bloggers that receive products from companies for a period of time so they can review and blog about it. Have no fear, though, because the companies never tell the bloggers what to blog about, nor do they provide guidelines of what they can or can’t blog about.

In the story, Bess Auer, a popular Central Florida blogger of the blog, Central Florida Top 5, talks about how she’s gotten involved in a few projects that have turned out to be really fun. She also points out that being involved and blogging about certain subject, such as cars provided to her by Chevrolet, have helped her increase the traffic to her site - a win-win scenario.

Esther Crawford, the head of ShePosts.com, is also included in the article talking about the opportunity facing women bloggers and trends they can take advantage of.

Even though the companies aren’t involved with the content that appears on the blog, transparency is still required by new laws coming from the FCC. Bloggers are supposed to state clearly that they received product from a company if they then blog about it.

Do you use your blog as a way to write about other products? Tell us about it here!