It was conversations like these that caused GoodEnoughMother.com, which Syler publishes on WordPress software, to take off in its first year as a mommy-lifestyle site. It soon pulled in more than 50,000 visitors a month, many of whom stuck around to comment, debate and share and went on to follow her on Twitter (she now has 10,000 followers) and Facebook (4,700 fans). Syler’s numbers are small compared with those of well-established network sites like BlogHer (15 million) but large enough to attract the attention of companies that care about reaching her audience. When Syler wrote about the benefits of serving her family Lean Cuisine for dinner, the -frozen-food competitor Healthy Choice delivered three big boxes of suppers to her doorstep. Evenflo, a manufacturer of products for infants and children, invited Syler to serve as a paid adviser and content contributor for its “Savvy Parent” marketing campaign. Inadvertently, Syler had created a job for herself as an “influencer.”

When Disney, the theme park giant, needed a keynote speaker for its 2011 Social Media Moms Conference (held annually since 2009), Syler’s blog post “How to Survive Theme Parks” captured the company’s attention. Laura Spencer, Disney’s social media manager, invited Syler to speak. “She’s plugged in, just like the moms we host our event for,” says Spencer. Syler shared her life story and re-invention journey with a rapt audience. “She had no notes, just walked around on the stage sharing the lowest point in her life, the highest point,” Spencer says. “She had them laughing and crying.” That weekend, tweets from the 200 moms listening to Syler’s speech sent the hashtag #renesyler into the top five worldwide trending topics on Twitter (the other leading topic that weekend: the U.S. bombing of Libyan airfields). “That is the power of 200 women in a room on Twitter,” Syler says. “Channel that, and we can change the world.”

Going into the second year of her business, Syler is pulling in more than $75,000 from different sources: speaking gigs at social media conferences, guest appearances on TV and her website. Of the thousands of small, niche blogs on the Web, an estimated one in 5,000 attracts an audience larger than 50,000 unique visitors. At that point, companies such as Glam Media, which sell online ad space to the big advertisers, take note. Syler just signed a deal with Glam, and although she prefers not to share her site’s ad income, the financial rewards—typically about $1 to $3 per 1,000 impressions for small to midsize blogs, according to industry experts—are probably not yet significant. Still, she says, “for the first time, the site is profitable. When I look back at old pictures of me, the overwhelming thing I see is fear. Fear of offending, of losing my job, standing out from the crowd, making people angry.” She pauses. “Today I’d say I’m fearless. I’m working without a net—and I’ve never worked this hard, ever. But I know it’s going to pay off.”  

Alison Overholt has written for Fortune, Fast Company and Working Mother.

Running the numbers

 • $0 Cost of starting your own blog at WordPress.com with one of its 135 free designs

• $17 Annual cost of setting up a siteusing a domain name (such asGood-EnoughMother.com) at WordPress.com

• $100 Cost of a USB microphone (forexample, a Snowball) to record podcasts for a website

• $150 Cost of a portable HD videocamera (for example, a Kodak Zi6)to create videos for a blog

• 10,000 Approximate number of followers a blogger needs in order to capture the attention of a mainstream book-publishing house

• $300–$500 Cost per day of hiring a professional video editor