Felice Shapiro is a media veteran who has always been her own market.
She was her market 25 years ago when as a Larchmont mother of two she started five print Family Guide magazines and ancillary publications, including Westchester Family magazine, which grew to 90 pages in its first year by targeting young families that resembled hers.
Fast-forward to the world of clicks and terabytes and Shapiro”™s year-and-a-half old venture is called Betterafter50.com (BA50 in shorthand) and, again, the now-56-year-old Shapiro is the standard-bearer for her own market. The demographic is booming. “A woman in America turns 50 every 16 seconds,” she said.
The site attracted 15,000 visits initially and now attracts 85,000 monthly visitors. The managing editor is Ronna Benjamin, 54. Topics addressed might include adult children with aging parents and the maze of finances they face, sex, hormones and fashion. To keep it lively and regional, the site offers “Your City” sections, such as Your City Chicago or Your City New York. “We”™re developing a community feel,” Shapiro said.
As giants like Yahoo and Facebook seek to become one-site clearinghouses, Shapiro says, “We filter news sources and the idea is that as someone turns 50, BA50 becomes her home page.”
The “She Did It” arena focuses on business activities and, as such, the site is a font of ideas and networking possibilities. “It”™s very popular,” Shapiro said of the business feature. “It”™s a fight women can relate to.”
BA50 is hosting its first New York “She Did It” event April 16, hoping to attract 200 women to Manhattanville College for a one-day gathering featuring live and interactive conversations about topics including technology, health, business, beauty and finance.
The “She Did It” event is designed to prompt networking and will feature keynote addresses from Marci Alboher, former New York Times “Shifting Careers” columnist and now Encore.org”™s vice president and author of “The Encore Career Handbook: How to Make a Living and a Difference in the Second Half of Life”; and Barbara Hannah Grufferman, an expert on health and positive aging and the author of “The Best of Everything After 50: The Experts”™ Guide to Style, Sex, Health, Money and More.”
The event is 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Manhattanville College in Purchase. Preregistration at Betterafter50.com is required.
The “She Did It” arena focuses on business activities and, as such, the site is a font of ideas and networking possibilities. “It”™s very popular,” Shapiro said of the business feature. “It”™s a fight women can relate to.”
