Today marks the one-year anniversary of when we relaunched Gimundo independently -- and we've got a few great updates to share with you.
Normally, we share good news from around the world—but today, we’d like to celebrate our own good news, if that’s okay with you all.
One year ago, after purchasing Gimundo from the company I used to work for, my husband Jeff and I relaunched the site all on our own. The previous owners, who launched the site in 2007, had let Gimundo die some time ago, and we weren’t sure if anyone would still be interested. Nonetheless, I’d worked as Gimundo’s editor since soon after the site’s creation, and was passionate about discovering and writing about all the good that’s happening in the world. Jeff and I figured that if we cared, other people would, too. Luckily, we were right.
Since that time, we’ve welcomed a baby into the world—our amazing daughter, Leah, who you can see in the video below, is eight months old this week—but it’s also been a year of rebirth for this website, and we’ve been thrilled to watch it grow up.
In the last year, while running the site on a shoestring budget from our home in Maine with no staff or outside assistance, we’ve been lucky enough to welcome over three and a half million unique visitors to our site, with thousands more discovering it for the first time every day. We’ve had visitors from more than two hundred different countries, everywhere from Iceland to Armenia, and have received dozens of wonderful letters to thank us for our work. Truly, we believe that positivity is a unifying force, and we are so honored and thankful for your support.
Thanks to the incredible growth Gimundo has seen since its relaunch, Jeff and I have both been able to step back on the writing and web development work that we’d been doing for clients to pay the bills, and are now both focusing on this site as a full-time job. Jeff handles technical aspects and our advertising relationships, while I write, edit, and curate the content. Although this forces us to live a bit more frugally, we’re happy to have the time to give this site the attention it deserves (along with spending plenty of time with our other baby, of course).
Now, we’re in the process of a few changes that should make the site even better. Although good news is and will always be a huge part of what Gimundo is all about, we want to broaden the scope of the site to encompass the fun and inspiring videos on our site, along with new photo galleries and personal essays, so we’ll be changing our tag line to “the brighter side.”
As you may have noticed, since we’re able to devote more time to the site, we’re also updating it more frequently. We’re now including at least two new stories each day, with up to five videos. If there’s something you think we should feature, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
We’ve also introduced more social sharing tools on each article to make it easier for you to share articles through Twitter, Facebook, and StumbleUpon. If you like a story, please click the buttons below the photos to spread the word—our only revenue from the site is through our advertising, so in order to keep the site going, we need to keep visitors coming in.
We will always keep Gimundo free for our readers, so if you’d like to help support us, please consider buying an ad slot on our site or in our newsletter to support your business, or telling a business-owner friend about our opportunities. Advertising details for our new Marketplace are available on this page. If you don’t own a business, you can still support us by spreading the word about our site, so please tell your friends to check us out!
Last but not least, in the near future, we’ll be rolling out a beautiful new design for the site by our extremely talented friend Braden Buehler of Narrative Design in Westbrook, Maine. It’s not quite ready for its unveiling yet, but here’s a sneak peek if you’re curious.
Thanks for making our first full year running Gimundo such a great one. We’ll look forward to making your days a little brighter for many years to come!