How do we keep our heads above water?

The ‘Posts’ are financially sound, but whether it will remain so is a recurring question. Costly developments are coming, and the question is whether we can keep them affordable without additional financial measures.

Zeepost, Scheepspost and Windassist run on a minimal budget, fed from three sources: paying subscribers to the newsletters, advertisers and a few larger sponsors. Their financial support, unfortunately, is not a steady thing. Every year we reconvene with the main sponsors EOC, FVEN, BBZ and EZS to see if their support can be continued. So far, fortunately, this has always been the case, for which we are very grateful. New main sponsors are of course also welcome. Please write us at zakelijk@zeepost.info.

For the coming year, we have several wishes that cost money: the necessary upgrades of the software to keep everything up to date in digital terms, and perhaps more manpower, for whose services we will have to pay in part. So a little more money is always needed than comes in, to keep up with developments, even for a non-profit foundation like ours. To this end, we would like to appeal once again to our advertisers and subscribers.

Advertisers

Advertisers are visible in two ways: via a banner that links directly to their website, or via an advertorial: a news item created in collaboration with the advertiser, which is posted as paid content. Often, the two take place in combination. For advertisers, the question is always whether they get enough exposure. Particularly now that people are increasingly reading on mobile phones, this is a challenge that our IT staff regularly revisits. Ideally, we don’t want to constantly interrupt our coverage with ad banners. Whether we can keep that up, however, is the question. We are looking for solutions that satisfy both advertisers and readers. Advertisers can report to the editor: redactie@zeepost.info.

Subscribers

Our biggest concern is actually the paying subscribers. Or rather, the non-paying subscribers. Subscribers get the news via one or more newsletters in their inbox; a service still appreciated by a large number of readers. We charge only 20 Euro a year for that service, but that is far from being paid, unfortunately. Moreover, you can also surf to our websites without subscribing to the newsletter, where you get the same news unabridged; a situation that has grown that way, but is difficult to sustain. The number of subscribers is still rising for Windassist, but we fear that the free news on the website may soon put an end to that.

So it seems logical to deal differently with the semi-free service we so offer: payment is more a matter of goodwill and solidarity than obligatory, and then many readers understandably opt for the cheapest solution.
We are now considering a way to persuade our readers to pay with a little more conviction. Delaying the free coverage on the site compared to the newsletter could be one form. This is being studied by our IT staff: we do not yet have a definitive answer.
And that might not be necessary, if every reader converts the realisation that we too cannot live from the wind alone into a good start of 2026, by transferring € 20 via the donation page. That would really help us a lot.

Thank you very much in advance!

Windassist sponsor