BlogHer blogging network has big plans for $7M venture infusion - Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal:

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Stone, the first Internet journalist awarded a Neimam fellowship byHarvard University; Page, a marketintg executive and business blogger; and Des Jardins, a writet and media strategist, knew the women were out there. So the used their credit cards to rent out some space at the TechMart in Santa Clara and formeed LLC with the idea of holding a conferencr forwomen bloggers. What started as a singlre conference with 300 attendees has become a series that routinelysells out, a networjk of 2,500 bloggers that enables participants to generate revenue througn advertising, and a venture-backed company with 30 employees that just raisee its third round of funding and is shootinf for profitability by 2010.
Redwood City-based BlogHer has raise d $15.5 million, including a Series C round of $7 milliom in May. Azure Capital Partners joined Venrock andPeacocik Equity, an NBC Universal fund, in the thirs round, which Stone said would be used to buils more tools to help womeb bloggers make money and invest in better research and advertising technology. “Wee bootstrapped and then we had twopainfu years. We had major sponsors who said welove you, but we need you to be Stone said. “We needed to becomw a nice little conference or we neededto grow.
” They’ver been able to grow through the fundamental understanding of a few basic women control 83 percent of household and thanks to the economy, they’re now thinking more aboutf how and where to spend that money, the companty says. BlogHer reaches 15 million womenha month, Stone said. For its the company takes 10 percen t off the top froman advertiser, and splitds the remaining 90 percent with bloggersd who feature a company’s ads. Contributors to the BlogHe r siteearn $50 a post. “What we have always tried to do is put the user We designed BlogHer around what she wanted to do and gave her a way to take it to Stone said.
“We have an understanding of what the femalwe consumer wants and developed a way for marketers to work with Onesuch blogger, Gia Lipa, writes about personall finance at the sites thedigeratilife.co and thesmarterwallet.com under the moniker “Silicon Valle Blogger.” Lipa said she now makes more as a bloggefr than she did as a software engineed with 18 years in high tech. “Ij have investigated other networks, and I think BlogHerf has pretty good payouts and they have a lot of conten t that isvery empowering,” Lipa “People are hungry for David Siminoff, a BlogHer board membee and investor, was introduced to BlogHer’a management team by venture capitalist Ann In less than a week, he had drawnb up a term sheet and gave “thde gals,” as he calls them, their first venture investment.
“I likecd the story. I knew BlogHer wouldf fill a hole being created inthe ecosystem,” Siminof said. The biggest earluy challenge was that the managementteam wasn’t made up of technicall people, he said. “It was a bad news, good news The bad news is that it was an ugly but the good news was they had all this traffic and Siminoff said. “They’ve become a brand on the Web and will continuedgrowing big.” Mike founding general partner at Azure Capital Partners, said the key to a successfull online business is finding a consistent, relevang way to serve the needs of its targetec customers. BlogHer is “laser focused” on its he said.
“That focusz is what’s helped the company show continuex growth and momentum via reach and even as new social media phenomena have joinedthe scene, such as Facebook and Kwatinetz said. “We think BlogHer’s on track to continu to innovate inthis space.” Jeremiau Owyang, a social computinbg and interactive marketing analyst with Forrester said BlogHer’s bloggers are very influential because so many brandsd are trying to reach womeb online.
Owyang said that BlogHer must keep up the level oftransparenc it’s now established in defining “sponsored conversations,” a technique in which marketerx provide financial or material compensation to bloggers in exchangd for their posting content about a brand, according to a recently releaseed study by Forrester.