Traffic Numbers

For an idea to go from a single tweet to a massive, worldwide charity drive in the span of six days is impressive and possibly insane. That said, I’d do it again in a heartbeat (though I hope that won’t be necessary).

Just to give you some numbers from the traffic side of things:

• Sunday January 17, 2010: 0 visitors
• Monday January 18, 2010: 1,962 unique visitors
• Tuesday January 19, 2010: 31,667 unique visitors
• Wednesday January 20, 2010: 43,664 unique visitors

The biggest source of referral traffic was Twitter with Daring Fireball, and the Google.

In terms of bandwidth, IndieRelief.com pushed a whopping 75 gigabytes in the span of two days. My thanks to my hosting provider Joyent for agreeing to cover the overages and ensuring that everything on that end went smoothly.

The Money Raised

In terms of money earned, here’s just a sample:

• Wil Shipley of Delicious Monster raised $6000. He was also kind enough to agree to match funds up to $5000 for his charity of choice, Partners in Health.
• Gus Mueller of Flying Meat raised $6461 for Doctors Without Borders.
• Daniel Jalkut’s Red Sweater Software raised $2300 for Partners In Health.
• Kevin Hoctor’s No Thirst software $3,195 donation to the St. Boniface Haiti Foundation.
• Marketcircle raised $7000 for Doctors Without Borders.

I’d really like to go out of my way and thank Wil and Gus for being so forthcoming with their numbers and the #teammeat vs #teamdelicious battle. I sincerely think it eased the minds of a lot of other developers to share their donation numbers. Sharing your numbers with me wasn’t a required aspect of participating in Indie+Relief, but I’m happy to say that 100/140 companies did.

After tallying the donations over the past day, I am pleased to report that…

Indie+Relief raised $143,872 for charity!

I cannot begin to explain how far above and beyond this amount is compared to what I had in mind a week ago. What I thought would just be Second Gear and a few other small Indie Mac developers banding together for a small benefit turned into a massive fund raising effort.

Indie+Relief 2.0

All things considered, this went off fairly smoothly for being an idea on Twitter 6 days ago to a full blown promotion, but there’s obviously room for improvement should we do this again.

As for the sequel, I don’t anticipate doing something like this annually. Like Comic Relief, the event which inspired the naming, I think Indie+Relief is a great thing to do when there’s an event that calls for it.

With that in mind, I’ve setup @IndieRelief as a sort of Bat Signal should the time arise. We also have a really great foundation in place for setting this up again and can certainly build on it to improve going forward.

And speaking of that foundation, I hope you all do take the time to thank Garrett Murray who spent countless hours getting the Web site up and running for Indie+Relief. This thing wouldn’t have happened nearly as smoothly as it did without his help.

Thanks again for participating.

I asked on Twitter for people who were participating in Indie+Relief, but not listed on the page to let me know so I could build a list. I’ll update this list through the day as companies email me (justin at secondgearsoftware dot com).

• Battle For Vesta by Insight VR is supporting Healing Hands for Haiti
• CoverSutra by Sophiestication is supporting UNICEF
• iLikeCereal by Marroni Electronic Entertainment is supporting Cross International Catholic Outreach
• iTimeZone by Tangerine Element is supporting the Red Cross
• Humidor and MyGarden by Perceive Designs are supporting Yéle Haiti
• Rivet and Ringtones by The Little App Factory are supporting Doctors Without Borders

As a bonus note, Wil Shipley of Delicious Monster, has agreed to personally match donations up to $5000 for any Delicious Library purchases today. All his sales will be going to Partners in Health.

If you’d like to see a preview of the companies participating on the 20th, head to the Indie+Relief now. Many of the companies you have probably heard of, and I’m certain there are a few gems in there you haven’t. Even if you don’t have any intention of buying software on Wednesday, do yourself a favor and see what awesome Mac & iPhone products are out there.

The response leading up to the event has been great. We got great coverage from the likes of Mashable and Macworld. Now that we’re nearing the actual event, what I really want to focus on now is getting the word out on Wednesday. This is where I need your help.

If you are a company participating in Indie+Relief consider writing a blog post, tweeting your customers or announcing it to your newsletter subscribers. I’ll do my best to prompt my media friends and colleagues to raise awareness about the event, an I’d encourage you to do so as well.

Even if you aren’t a participating company, it’d be awesome if you could spread the word via Twitter (sorry, no automated Tweetblasts) or blog posts. You could also put an Indie+Relief banner on your site or blog to let others know about the promotion.

• 500px wide banner
• 250px wide banner

The more awareness there is, the more software will be bought. The more software that is bought, the more is donated to charity. I realize we won’t be making nearly as much money as the text messaging campaigns or other telethons, but it is refreshing to know the Mac & iPhone community has the opportunity to at least make a dent in the Haitian relief effort. Thanks for being a part of that.

I am still not set on a specific date, but I’m leaning on Wednesday, January 20th. By admission, this is a spur of the moment idea I had driving home tonight, so the date is subject to change. I have no name, no domain and no idea if anyone else is even interested in participating.

This is where you come in and I want your help.

In the spirit of OneFingerDiscount and MacSanta, I’d like to aggregate all of the participating companies onto a single site that customers can go to, see the products being offered and make their purchasing decision. You would handle the sales of your product on your store and at the end of the day donate the sales to your charity of choice.

If your company is willing to donate a single days sales of your products (or a single product) to charity, email me at justin@secondgearsoftware.com with your company name, what products you are interesting in offering and the charity you are planning to support. Once I have a list of participating companies, we can go from there.

Even if you aren’t a Mac or iPhone developer, you should donate to the cause. Doctors Without Borders is who I am leaning towards making Second Gear’s donation to, but if you have another favorite relief charity, please do send what you can.

Update: The project now has a name (Indie Relief) and a placeholder site (http://www.indierelief.com)