When Dawna Stone launched Her Sports last year, she entered a race that Time Inc.'s Sports Illustrated Women and Condé Nast's Women's Sports & Fitness couldn't finish. Despite deep pockets and big promotions, neither women's fitness magazine lasted more than three years. But Stone, a 37-year-old lifelong swimmer and runner with no publishing experience, saw a gap in the market and stepped up to fill it. She looked at the defunct magazines as models of what not to do: Don't forget your audience and don't spend a fortune on your launch.

Only one out of five new magazines lasts more than five years. When the twelfth and final issue of SI Women came out in December 2002, Stone was determined to figure out why it failed. For six months she spent evenings after work researching the industry and decided to focus on personal accounts and how-to stories on improving performance in running, cycling, surfing and snowboarding. With $350,000 of their savings, Stone and her husband, Matthew Dieter, who runs an ad agency, launched Wet Dog Media in St. Petersburg, Fla. Six investors together kicked in slightly less.

She put together a full-color 32-page mock-up of the magazine and approached advertisers. Some, like L'Oréal, signed on quickly. Others, like Land Rover and Asics, doubted that a newcomer could make it and told her to come back in a year. (She did; both now advertise.) After two months of fierce pitching Stone went to Ingram Periodicals, a direct distributor of specialty magazines, which, amazingly, offered her a two-year distribution contract, putting the magazine in 350 Barnes & Noble stores, 200 Borders outlets and hundreds of other locations in North America.

A national magazine launch typically requires a seven-figure investment in a direct-mail campaign. With less than $700,000 to spend, Stone opted for a grassroots approach, handing out magazines at marathons and charity races, doing dozens of radio spots and cultivating partnerships with groups like the Active Network, an online sports event registration company. Under its banner she sends a monthly e-newsletter to 400,000 people, linking stories in the letter to the Her Sports Web site and a sign-up page for subscriptions. Such free exposure helps Stone keep marketing costs below $12,000 a year. Another penny-squeezing strategy: no models. Every woman pictured is a real athlete.

The 80-page bimonthly now has a circulation of 55,000. (Condé Nast and Time launched their magazines with 350,000 and 300,000, respectively.) Stone aims to increase circulation to 100,000 by 2006. One-tenth of the copies are freebies at athletic events, and an equal number are sold at newsstands (Stone gets about half the $5 cover price). The remaining 44,000 go to subscribers.