Stunning Readership @ Daily Kos!

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I hope you saw Markos’s email from last week, but here’s what you need to know if you didn’t: Daily Kos traffic is so enormous right now that our top priority is just keeping the site up and running smoothly.

This is a good problem to have, but it’s still a problem. Daily Kos is the largest progressive political publication in the country and we can’t afford to have the site go down between now and Election Day—too many progressive Democrats come to us for election news.

We had 8.5 million readers last month. We could keep Daily Kos up and running for two years if they’d pitched in just $1 each. That’s because I like to run a tight ship. We invest in the parts of the site that best serve our readers and our community, and we don’t waste money on things we don’t need.

But, obviously, not all of our readers contribute—and not all of them are in a position financially where they can contribute.

So, I’m asking you: If you can, please chip in just $5 to help keep Daily Kos running smoothly through the election.

Thank you,
Will Rockafellow, Daily Kos

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Following crazy record-setting months in June and July, August has proven that Daily Kos is the place to be during heavy news periods. Just look at our traffic chart.




Daily Kos had nearly 8.5 million unique visitors during the month, and 41.7 million pageviews. That compares with 7.3 million uniques and 37.5 million pageviews in July, our previous record.

Our previous record-setting month, October 2012 during the height of that year's presidential season? 6.8 million uniques.

So we now have significantly more unique visitors, in summer—our traditional "slow" part of the year. It's mind-boggling! And we should keep seeing this kind of growth through the election.

We are putting the finishing touches on a new version of the site, and had planned to launch this month. But with this crazy traffic, we’re holding off until after the election. It would be risky to jump to an untested code base at a time when millions are flocking to Daily Kos to get educated about the coming election. Keeping Daily Kos up and running has become the current priority.

Can you chip in $5 right now to keep Daily Kos running smoothly through the election?

I say this every time I ask you for money, but it’s the simple truth: Daily Kos is a small organization running a very big website. If each one of our 8.5 million unique readers month chipped in just $1, we could finance operations for over two years! That’s how tight a ship we run around here.

But obviously not every reader chips in—and not every reader is in a position financially to do so. If you’re one of the lucky ones, please chip in $5 to keep Daily Kos running smoothly.

Thank you and keep fighting,
Markos Moulitsas
Founder and Publisher, Daily Kos

P.S. You can read more about Daily Kos’s growth trends—site traffic (including mobile traffic), email, Facebook, and more—at my full write-up.

P.P.S. Every time that I’ve written asking for help, you’ve come through. We’ve been able to transition our business away from an ad-dependent model towards a community-dependent model. You did that. Please chip in $5 now.