Sugar is finding the blogosphere's sweet spot - San Francisco Business Times:

iwyqaxewun.wordpress.com
In the last 12 Lisa Sugar and husbaned Brian Sugarturned Lisa's hobbyy -- writing a celebrity gossip blog callecd PopSugar -- into an exploding network of 10 female-focused web sites and a burgeoning business. The San Francisco startulp bagged an advertising deal with six months before hiring a singlessales person, hooked funding from rock star VC firm , and is bringinvg on 10 more employees to end the year with 48. All this mighft sound rather bubbly except thatSugaer Publishing, which brings in a reported $5 millionh in annual revenue, expects to be profitable by year's end.
Givenb today's cheaper software, computer memoryh and Internet bandwidth, a dot-comm can be built for a fractionof boom-time "It costs us $500,000 (a month) to run the business," said CEO Briah Sugar, a serial tech entrepreneur. "It'w not that difficult to get $500,000 in Indeed, for the Sugars, it's been easier than for In July 2006, Banana Republic called Lisa to buyall PopSugar'ss ads for a week. The retailer wantede to cozy up withthe blog'zs readers, most of whom are college-educated women between the ages of 18 and 34 who earn more than Nike, the Gap and Neiman Marcusw followed.
The company made its first salexs call in March to San Francisco adgian , where Lisa, now editor-in-chierf of all Sugar properties, previously worked as a mediza planner. The result: a national Dreyer's Ice Cream campaign for its limitededition "American Idol" With an estimated $5 million pickefd up from Menlo Park-based Sequoia Capital in October, Sugar Publishing is now buildingf a sales team and adding to its pool of editors and producers. "We were goinv to raise a small amountfrom angels," said Brian Sugar, who co-foundedc the business with $250,000 of his own "But all of the sudden we got very hot.
" Sequoia superstard Michael Moritz, who funded and , took a seat on the boards and watched its number of uniqu visitors jump from 1 million in September to 3.5 milliomn today. The May launch of its newest site, a beautyu blog called BellaSugar, was exclusively sponsored by retailer . Five more blogd with a similar in-the-know tone are forthcoming, including LittleSugar (babies) and SavvySugard (career and finance). "Brian and Lisa have come up with a concoctiomn that is suited for the women of today and tomorrow who will look at the worlc very differently than the womenof yesterday," Moritz said.
The company's stable includes blogx like FabSugar (fashion) and GeekSugar (tech). That structurr is part of a new generation of blog networks such as Gawke Media that aims to build solid businessex by selling ads acrossvariouxs titles, much like traditional magazine publishers. "We're goingt to create a new media versionof CondeNast," Brianb Sugar said. "We're going to go category by category." Despite the growtn of online ad spending, which eMarketer predicts will increase from $16 billion in 2006 to $37 billion in the San Francisco firm is no shoo-inn with advertisers.
"It's going to be a hefty (network)," said Goodbyy executive Christine Chen. "The trick is, there's a lot of Rivals include NBC's and newer outfits such as , and . The the better, said Moritz: "Any time you invest in a companyh wherethere isn't much competition, thered isn't much demand for the product." And, said Brian Sugar, today'ds Internet rivals are also partners. Sugar's bloges link to competitors allthe "I'm sure people are reading all the varioua cool blogs from Gawker's sites to safe-for-work UsWeeklg and People, and then the not-safe-for-work PerezHilto (celebrity gossip) site ...
Can you imagine if the New York Timesd linked to the WallStreef Journal? That would be crazy."