Ideally, advertising would pay for good quality journalism. However, advertising in Malaysia still remains largely in traditional media, although the shift to online grows day by day. For online advertising, a large percentage gets invested in large non-Malaysian owned sites such as Facebook and Google. Also, some advertisers prefer to advertise on entertain sites. Online advertising is also much cheaper than print advertising. For example, if a print newspaper can earn US$100 per reader, a website may earn US$ 1 per reader.

Hence, Malaysiakini believes to create a sustainable journalistic site, we believe that users should contribute a small subscription fee.