Yesterday, for those of you who don’t follow us on Twitter, was the single best traffic day on the website. We’ve broken our previous record two days in a row, but yesterday’s numbers were a bit of a fluke.
Earlier in the day, I wrote up a story about the NHK television application being on the App Store so that people could keep up with the news coming out of Japan. It was largely based around a TUAW article, and I felt inspired to post it as well.
One thing led to another and we found ourselves in the number one spot for ‘NHK Japan’ on Google News. Traffic began pouring in and really putting the boots to our server in the process. You may have noticed the server slowing to a crawl at times throughout the day.
But as the day went on, it became increasingly difficult to watch the our Google Ad revenue climb because of our fortunate position on Google News, and all because of our article about a disaster.
Late last night I decided that all of our revenue from Google Ads yesterday was going to be donated to charity. The amount doesn’t matter—every little bit helps.
You can do it too
So here’s our call to action. If you run a website that’s largely based on advertising, why not donate one day’s revenue to the Japanese cause? What’s one day in the grand scheme of things?
I’ve forwarded the money on to the Canadian Red Cross, but the charity doesn’t matter. Just get what you can into the hands of those who can help. We couldn’t sit idly by and do nothing, and we hope that you won’t either.
Every penny helps.
