According to the New York Times, the number of visitors to female-oriented websites has nearly doubled in the last two years. Along with this unprecedented growth, a few big name women bloggers are cashing in on lucrative advertising deals.

Heather Armstrong, author of the wildly popular ‘mommy blog’ dooce.com is on track to make seven times the revenue that she did in 2006, due mostly in part to the advertising heavily laced throughout her site.

Ranking within the top 500 blogs in the world, part of dooce’s appeal is Armstrong’s authenticity; she doesn’t mince words and isn’t afraid to throw in the occasional obscenity. Her passion shows through, even though most of her posts are waxing poetic on daily life in Utah with her husband, daughter and dog. “It’s really raw and unfiltered, not run through a committee of 12 people who need to approve what you say. It’s the real deal,” she proclaims of her writing. Because of this unwavering honesty, she has established herself as one of the most respected voices in the world of mommy blogs.

Besides blogs focusing on motherhood, makeup, fashion and relationship advice have proved to be the most lucrative topics embraced by women. Part of the sudden push by blogs to cater to women’s needs hinges on the fact that they make most of the decisions regarding household purchases. And, earning their trust (and some of their buying power) is irresistible to advertisers.

For the most part, advertisers are steering clear of blogs promoting serious topics like politics in favor of lighter fare including fashion and celebrities because they’re what women are clamoring for. They claim that these are tried-and-true since they’ve been the staples in women’s magazines for years.

Many women including Armstrong have hit the big time; they’ve been given the opportunity to quit their day jobs and stay at home with the kids in exchange for sharing their daily anecdotes. Advertisers can’t get enough of their candidness and who can blame them? These bloggers’ stories don’t come from a movie script; they’re real life experiences that we can all relate to.

Happy Prescriptions “Thought it’d lead us..”

Getting it right, getting exposed. A comment on the Girl Talk post, left by a user named ‘Natron’ led me to a web site for Happy Prescriptions, no doubt the web site for said ‘Natron’ who it turns out is a Portland musician. Another click of a hand [you have to visit the site to get that] led me to Happy Prescriptions MySpace where I found the video above. There’s also a free MP3 ep there. Circle complete.

Launched in 2005, Blog Her is an online community for women who blog. In addition, it holds the world’s largest conferences for bloggers (men are also welcome to attend).

Last weekend, BlogHer held its yearly conference in San Francisco and featured workshops on building web traffic, using open source software and dealing with the emotional issues related to blogging. The signs that this was a woman-centric event were everywhere; men’s bathrooms had been converted to women’s, there was a lactation room and child care available and onesies imprinted with blogging slogans were for sale.

For a relatively new conference, BlogHer is in high demand. According to the NYTimes.com, though men and women are creating blogs in nearly equal numbers, many women believe that they’re not being taken as seriously. Notably, they claim that they are making much less in advertising revenue.

Feelings of inequality among women bloggers have been reinforced through lists by the likes of Techcult, who recently listed its top 100 web celebrities (only 11 were women) and Forbes.com who created at similar list, which included 4 women out of 25 contenders.

Do you think that there is a noticeable imbalance between women and men in the blogging world? Or, is it a matter of quality content and other factors causing the divide?

Here at Nemo, we were lucky to be graced by the VP of Business Development at Ning, Rachel Masters on Friday (read Dave Allen’s account here). What’s notable about Ning’s web-based platform is that it that allows you to create your own social network for anything and is fully customizable in almost every way imaginable.

One of the most beneficial elements of Ning I discovered is the option to use your own domain name. In essence, Ning can be built to function as your main website and many corporations and bands have leveraged this option with fantastic results. The band Good Charlotte uses Ning as their main site while Saturn has created an official gathering place for fans and employees of their line of cars.

Speaking of Saturn, they are a sponsor of the Bravo hit show, Project Runway. Now on its fifth cycle, this season features Portland alum Leanne Marshall of the chic Leanimal label. Though she first auditioned for the show in 2007, waiting out a year turned out to be to her advantage. She took the downtime to further develop her point of view and refine her designs and it shows in the crisp yet voluminous designs.

It’s true that Portland is a hotbed of creative talent. And, as the success of Ning and other social networking platforms have shown, connecting with like minded individuals needn’t be a chance encounter any longer. Whether you’re a fan of Saturn cars, Project Runway (or anything else for that matter), the odds are that a social network is only a click away.

This is serious news when it comes to business networking and social media, I see a serious win-win here for both parties. There has been some debate recently about Facebook and how seriously it can be taken when it comes to businesses using the Facebook network to extend their social media ambitions as well as advertise across it. I would argue that the LinkedIn/NYT partnership steps up the ante for both Facebook and MySpace; the NYT, one of the world’s great media institutions that has seriously embraced the internet to further its business, may be on a path to shaking off its “Grey Lady” image and LinkedIn, which, although having only 25 million registered users making it small by social network standards, is by far the doyen of social sites for serious business users. We’ll see how this one unfolds.

Kudos, once again to Marshall Kirkpatrick for breaking the story.

My Online Marketing Presentation About Radiohead from iaintait on Vimeo.