So it's been nearly two weeks since the end of the subscription drive, and I should've written this sooner, but after our outages during the Iowa caucuses, I had the tech team focused 100 percent on fixing the bugs to ensure that it wouldn't happen again. That's relevant, because to get our final numbers, I needed them to dig into the database.
Explanation aside, let's get to the data.
2,651 -- total new subscriptions. My secret goal had been 1,000
624 -- gift subscriptions
423 -- gift subscriptions that were anonymous, so over 2/3rds.
70 -- gift subscriptions from Nurse Kelley's small donor drive
45 -- The number of individuals who purchased three or more gift subscriptions
Best data point?
HOLY CRAP, Y'ALL! WE RAISED ENOUGH MONEY TO BUY SUBSCRIPTIONS FOR EVERYONE ON THE LISTS!
That is, everyone who asked for a gift subscription -- and the list was freakin' long -- got one. That's incredible!
But that's not all! There were several cascading effects from the drive, all of them positive, and most of them unforeseen.
For example, December is always our slowest month in pretty much ever metric. That's understandable, given that half the month is ceded to the holidays. But check this out:
New User Accounts
01/11 940
04/11 2,263
05/11 2,187
06/11 2,154
07/11 2,355
08/11 2,484
09/11 2,072
10/11 2,946
11/11 2,286
12/11 3,472
We had a huge spike in October thanks to OWS, but the December rush blew the rest of the year out of the water. I wanted to compare with December 2010, but we were getting flooded with spam accounts at the time, so we can't do a direct comparison. However, December traffic is traditionally roughly equal to January traffic -- so we can probably assume less than 1,000 legit accounts. [Update: There were 1,426 legitimate new accounts created in December 2010.]
And you guys were far more prolific, too. While in December 2010 there were 8.185 diaries written, that number was 9,206 last month. We are seeing a direct correlation between getting those lifetime subscriptions, and participation on the site.
Now if someone had come to me and said, "If you engage the community in a fundraising drive, you will bring them together closer than they have been in years, deliver LOADS of warm fuzzies, increase their participation on the site, and generate over double your most optimistic goals", I would've punched you in the face.
Actually, no, I wouldn't have punched you in the face. That is, unless you were Karl Rove. And even then, I wouldn't punch you, just make a snide joke at your expense. BUT, had you told me that, I never would've believed it. Because when has a fundraiser ever brought people together? They're necessary evils, and people soldier through them, but they're just that -- a necessary evil.
But you guys are different, and it was a perfect reminder of why this community is so special. You saw this fundraiser not just as a way to help Daily Kos keep growing and delivering great news and activism tools. You saw it as a way to reward each other, to show your appreciation in the most unambiguous way possible. Is there a better feeling than having someone open up their wallet in appreciation for what you do?
I don't know if lifetime subscriptions will ever come back (if they do, it would make me a liar), but whether they do or don't, we have to find more ways to generate this kind of community building. One of my tasks is to find ways to allow you guys to better show your appreciation for each other. It's no accident that people receiving gift subscriptions suddenly participate more -- it showed them that there were individuals out there who really appreciated their work. We need more of that.
I don't have any easy answers or ideas on that front just yet, but it's foremost on my mind. If you guys have suggestions or ideas, today or later, please share them. (If you're thinking micro-payments for each other, as in tipping diarists with real cash, we've been trying to find a solution along those lines for a long time and haven't found one yet. But it's certainly on our wish list.)
Something amazing happened in the month of December, aside from the money raised, and I suspect it'll be a long while before I truly grasp it all. But it was wonderful, and I definitely hope we can figure out ways to do it again and again.
1:51 PM PT: Since many of you have brought it up, let me briefly explain why lifetime subscriptions went away. In short, we'll lose money on those in the long run (as in, users who are around more than three years). We pushed them this last time because it gave us some upfront cash to spend on our technology expansion (and some other things), but it came at a price down the road.
And as everyone knows, these costs aren't one-time costs. We're going to staff up our technology team quite a bit, but the money raised doesn't pay for that staff in perpetuity, and I don't hire people with the thought that I'll lay them off in a year. In fact, I've never laid anyone off.
So while we can suddenly pay for a bunch of new staff, we have to keep paying for them. And lifetime subscriptions, unfortunately, actually make it harder to continue to do so.
On the other hand, like I said, we need to recreate what we saw in December, but not the money part, rather all the other incredible stuff. That's our challenge at Daily Kos HQ.