The thesis is concerned with Hungarian online news sites’ business models utilizing audience revenue-streams for financing their core activity. We consider the Hungarian unique: we first assume that the state gives an unnatural protection for pro-government online news sites, while independent and critical media have to find alternative ways to survive, and second, this political climate can trigge ran increase in people’s willingness to pay for online news. This thesis will explore the general regulatory and economic context of the Hungarian online news market, then describe the different business models, and finally, based on previous research on the willingness to pay for online news and crowdfunding campaigns, will test various factors in order to investigate, who is willing to pay for online news in Hungary.