Lisa Stone (Internet RockStar)

Bringing together a network of 21 million women for its annual conferences, BlogHer is an online community of female bloggers who are fixing to translate their niche posts into income by connecting advertisers with potential customers.

The site draws in 20 million unique visitors a month, and its articles, culled from a network of more than 2,500 blogs, are syndicated on sites from iVillage to Yahoo! to BravoTV.com.

It has empowered some women, like Elise Bauer of Simply Recipes and Jen Yates from CakeWrecks, to turn their once-hobbies into a legitimate profession. One of the company's biggest gets was when Michelle Obama penned a blog post for them in 2008 during the presidential campaign.

"I’m excited to be posting on BlogHer," the first lady-to-be wrote. "Not only because blogging is something I’ve actually been able to beat my daughters to, but because it gives me the opportunity to tell you a little bit about them, my husband, myself, and our experiences traveling all over this great country."

What's most impressive about the enterprise is that after two years of bootstrapping, Stone, Page, and Des Jardins are one of the few women-founded teams to have secured three rounds of venture funding, totaling $15.5 million. They're expecting to turn a profit this year.

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By Joyce C. Tang
The Daily Beast