Karen Brownlee, 54, founded Encompass Magazine 3 years ago, aiming her content at women 50 and older. Encompass appeared quarterly with a print run of 5000 copies. The newsstand price is $3.99.

Brownlee found and nurtured volunteer writers who wanted to tackle subjects of interest to her mature female target audience. Articles in her first issue included: "Is your Investment Built to Last" and "Learning to Love The Shape You're In".

After the second issue, Brownlee sold subscriptions and found a distributor to place the magazine in stores. Within a year and a half she made the leap to the internet with digital editions of Encompass available in Apples I-tunes store and on Android devices.

Since then, she has added distribution on Windows8 and Kindle Fire devices and she is currently working on deals with Amazon and other channels.

Says Brownlee, "When I first made the deal with Apple I was elated because it meant that any woman anywhere could not only get our current issue, but they could also order back issues".?

Brownlee says around the time of her online distribution move she began to broaden the scope of Encompass to include younger women. Her masthead now reads: Encompass, Celebrating Modern Women Globally.