In the age of the Internet, we have become accustomed to free and plentiful access to news, analysis and information. Some sites have gone the route of online content available only to paying subscribers. I think of Élet és Irodalom in Hungary or the New York Times in the U.S. But at the end of the day, there is an expectation that news and thought-provoking op-eds are available at our finger tips at no cost to the reader. Certainly, a volunteer-based site like the Hungarian Free Press has far lower operating costs than a legacy publication. Everyone who writes for us does so out of their personal passion for, and commitment to democratic values in Hungary and further afield. In the three years since our establishment, we have published more than 800 articles, the vast majority of which were original pieces. We are not in a position to offer honorariums and our volunteer writers have graciously accepted this reality.
But maintaining Hungarian Free Press, and our Hungarian-language sister publication, the Kanadai Magyar Hírlap, does come with some unavoidable costs and as the founder of these two publications, I realized that covering these expenses was my responsibility. There is a culture of donating to community causes in Canada; maintaining these two sites is how I have chosen over the years to spend most of the portion of my income, which I earmark each year for donations.
Yet these expenses have been climbing. It currently costs approximately C$5,000 per year to operate the two websites–the Hungarian Free Press and the Kanadai Magyar Hírlap. This includes server costs, the occasional hiring of an IT specialist when things get much too technologically hairy for this “lay” editor to handle, subscriptions to certain applications that help keep the site secure and protect it from attacks, bookkeeping and other professional fees, as well as modest advertising and promotional material for our site.
Some of our readers may have seen website hosting packages advertised for as little as a few dollars a month, so couldn’t HFP or KMH use something like this? Unfortunately, we could not. These packages are often misleadingly, advertised as offering “unlimited” bandwidth–basically, allowing for unlimited traffic to the site. In reality, there is no such thing as “unlimited.” What hosting companies mean is that they calculate an average monthly bandwidth usage for sites that they host. When a given website goes too far above this overall average, the site can no longer be hosted on a shared hosting plan, but must instead pay for either a dedicated server or for a Virtual Private Network (VPN). This is how we run both the Hungarian Free Press and the Kanadai Magyar Hírlap.
Our server is one area where we cannot be especially frugal. We host our sites with a firm based in the United States that offers 24/7 technical support and response times of under 30 minutes to our questions. If there are technical problems that hinder or even shut down our site completely, these are generally resolved within a matter of hours, rather than days. We have always received speedy responses and quick solutions to technical glitches and issues. This is important for any website that reports on, or analyses current events. We cannot afford to be offline for days.
I had been encouraged in the past to provide readers with an opportunity to donate to the upkeep of our publication, but was always reticent and tried instead to generate some modest revenue from Google Adsense ads. But for the first time since I established my Hungarian site in 2004 and HFP in 2014, I am adding a donation button to this site for those readers who may consider contributing in this way. Perhaps one can think about this as a type of virtual subscription. Of course, our material will remain accessible to all, but those who choose to donate or subscribe will play a role in preserving this publication.
If you are interested in contributing, please click on the Paypal button below. You do not need a Paypal account to contribute–Paypal accepts all major credit cards. If you are not a Paypal user, just look for the “Don’t have a PayPal account?” line and the “continue” hyperlink near the bottom of the page that opens when you click on the Paypal link. Donations can be made in Canadian Dollars and the transaction will list Presszo Media Inc., our incorporated publishing company, as the recipient.
We aim to keep publishing as long as possible and to be accessible to all. Many thanks to those, however, who decide to help keep this website alive through their contributions.
To donate, please click below:
