How we make money
How Tokaj Slovakia is funded: labelled Partner listings, accommodation links, grants and contracts, and what money can never buy in this independent guide.
Updated:
Keeping a guide accurate costs money: checking every listing twice a year, translating, hosting. Here is exactly where our income comes from and, just as important, what it can never buy.
What money never buys
- A higher position. Lists of wineries, cellars and places to stay are sorted by village and then alphabetically. Paying does not move anyone up.
- Our editorial text. Descriptions, itineraries and articles are written by us. No one can pay to change them or to read them before publication.
- Ratings or reviews. We do not sell reviews, scores or rankings, and we publish no star ratings.
- A "recommended" label. There is no paid "recommended", "best" or "top" label on this site. The only badge businesses can display is a free "Verified listing" badge, and a link back to us is never a condition of anything.
- Links that boost search rankings. Every paid or affiliate link is marked as sponsored in the page code (
rel="sponsored"), so search engines know it is paid. - Your own details. Adding, correcting or claiming a listing is always free and never depends on buying a package.
Where our money comes from
In order of importance:
1. Partner listings
Every business gets a free basic listing. Those that want more can buy a yearly package, and everything a package adds is labelled "Partner".
| Package | Price | What it adds |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | Free | Location, contacts, opening hours or how to book, languages, links, date of our last check |
| Partner | in preparation | "Partner" label, photo gallery, extended description in the site's languages, booking or enquiry button, unlimited events, yearly statistics report |
| Partner Plus | in preparation | Everything in Partner, plus rotation in a labelled "Partners" box, one labelled sponsored article a year and newsletter mentions |
| Event package | in preparation | Multilingual event page, link to tickets, labelled promotion |
We will publish the prices of paid packages in 2027, after talking to local businesses; the first ones to join will get a founding-partner discount. The full contents and rules are on for businesses.
2. Accommodation links
Pages about where to stay may later include links to booking platforms. If you book through one of them, we may earn a commission, and you pay the same price as you would otherwise. These links will be labelled on the page and marked as sponsored in the code, and we pass no personal data to the platform. They are switched off for now and will only be switched on once the operator details are published on this page.
3. Grants and content contracts
We may apply for public grants for tourism or cross-border projects, and accept paid work from tourism organisations, for example translations or multilingual pages for events. Any page funded this way names the funder. The editorial decisions stay with us.
4. Bookable experiences, later
In a later phase, we may offer tastings or tours that you can book through licensed partners, such as travel agencies or the wineries themselves. We would earn a commission on these, and they would be labelled like any other paid feature.
What we never do
- No display advertising. No Google AdSense, no ad networks, no tracking scripts.
- No paid rankings or reviews. No one can buy a place on a list, a review or a "best of" mention.
- No wine sales. We do not sell wine. Wineries sell their own wine, at the cellar or through their own shops.
- No wine advertising on our Polish pages. Polish law bans the advertising of alcoholic drinks other than beer, so our Polish pages carry no partner features of wineries, no sponsored wine content and no links to wine shops.
- No trading in data. We do not sell or share visitor data. In fact, we collect almost none; see our privacy notice.
Who receives the money
All income goes to the operator (see the details below). Slovak law requires online services to say clearly who runs them, so paid packages and affiliate links are switched on only after the operator's full details are published on this page.
If you have a question about how we are funded, or think something on the site is not labelled as it should be, please tell us through the contact form. Read more about our editorial principles on about us.
Operator
The operator details will be published here before any paid service or affiliate link is switched on.