Dearest Readers,
On Sunday 28 January 2024, The Film Magazine faces permanent removal from the internet unless we secure immediate funding to cover essential renewal costs.
We are a zero-budget, independent publication that has freely hosted more than 2.5 million words of writing about cinema — criticism, features, interviews, and analysis — and that archive is at risk. As of Sunday 21 January 2024 we do not have the funds required to renew our hosting and security services; without those services the site cannot continue to operate.
Without urgent financial support, The Film Magazine will cease to exist. We need your help to preserve this independent resource.
To be fully transparent, here are the renewal options and their costs as quoted by our host:
3 Years = £175
6 Years = £745
Thanks to a special arrangement with our hosting provider, we can renew for three years at the price of two. It is not possible to pay for a single year under this arrangement.
Earlier in January 2024, generous reader donations allowed us to renew our URL ownership on 5 January, but remaining expenses — server hosting, security services, and certification — still need to be met. These services are fundamental: without servers and valid certificates, the site cannot be accessed securely, and the archive cannot be preserved.
If you would like to help, please follow this donate link to contribute via PayPal. PayPal provides a secure, trusted payment method.
How our income is generated and why we need support
We cover our modest monthly costs through a combination of on-site advertising revenue, profits from a RedBubble merchandise store, and affiliate links. These funds currently pay for a website-specific email account, an Adobe subscription used for editorial work, and are periodically added to our renewal fund. In practice, monthly income from these sources often amounts to very little or nothing, and any surplus is reserved for long-term renewals.
Over the past five years, renewal costs for hosting and security have risen by more than 300%. At the same time, advertising revenue has declined, partly due to post-pandemic ad markets and changes in how major platforms and search engines surface information. Search engines increasingly display answers and solutions directly in their results pages, reducing the number of visits to independent websites. These industry-wide shifts have forced several established film publications to close in recent years, reducing the diversity of voices covering cinema.
Similarly, our partnership with RedBubble has become less profitable due to new fees and reduced platform traffic, combined with rising delivery costs affected by global supply changes and geopolitical factors. Affiliate earnings have become infrequent and small, sometimes producing payouts only once every 18 months to two years. Taken together, these trends make it extremely challenging for independent, non-commercial journalistic outlets to survive without direct reader support.
This is not a problem created by independent publications — it is an industry-wide shift that threatens many small outlets and the diversity of cultural criticism online.
The Film Magazine has existed in various forms for almost a decade: beginning as a blog, expanding into a store, and growing into the editorial website you know today. Across more than 2,000 articles, more than 100 contributors from at least ten countries have provided reviews, essays, interviews and festival coverage that document and celebrate cinema.
We believe this work matters. Our reviews and features aim to support filmmakers, encourage audiences to visit cinemas, and foster thoughtful discussion about film as an art form. Preserving this archive means preserving a record of those conversations and making sure future readers and researchers can access them.
We believe in our impact, and we believe The Film Magazine deserves to continue.
If you value independent film criticism and reporting, please donate via PayPal to help keep our site online and secure.
Every contribution, large or small, makes a difference. Donations will be applied directly to hosting, security certificates, and necessary services to keep the site accessible. If we reach the three-year renewal target, it will buy us vital time to plan a sustainable future and continue publishing work by our writers.
Thank you for your attention, for reading our work, and for any support you can provide in this critical moment.
Joseph Wade
Founder | Editor