[Tfug] From LWN.net: Help Wanted

[Claude Rubinson]

As a huge fan of LWN.net, I thought that I'd pass this job opening
along.  Maybe somebody in TFUG knows somebody in advertising or is in
advertising themselves?  Text is below.  Original link is at
http://lwn.net/Articles/340924/.

			     Help wanted
		   [Posted July 10, 2009 by corbet]

Are you able to sell web advertisements, knowledgeable about free
software and LWN, and interested in taking on some work? If so,
LWN.net would like to talk to you; please read on for details.

LWN's business model is a bit of an anomaly; there are few sites,
anywhere, which get by primarily on subscriptions from their
readers. There is a lot to like about the subscription model; among
other things, it ensures that our real customers are our readers, not
our advertisers. That keeps our priorities where they should be. But
making an exclusively subscription-based model work is not an easy
thing to do. Support from our readers has taken us a long way, but
we're still not where we should be.

Need we add that the economic turmoil seen over the last year hasn't
helped?

The truth of the matter is that advertising needs to be a part of the
revenue mix if LWN is to be viable. What is also true is that LWN's
staff is terrible at selling advertising. We are engineers, not sales
people; we lack the skills, contacts, and interest required to do a
good job at ad sales. And, we think, our readers would rather we
focused on technology and writing instead of making phone calls. In
the end, if advertising is going to play the part it must in keeping
LWN going, somebody else is going to have to help make that happen.

What we are hoping is that, out there somewhere, we can find an
advertising sales person who is willing to work on a 100% commission
basis. We need somebody who is not only good at what they do, but who
also understands free software and the LWN reader community. We should
not have to explain why ads which get between our readers and our
content are not acceptable. We can't put time into pushing back
against "Get the facts" campaigns and their like. We need, in other
words, somebody who can be as fussy about what goes onto LWN as we
are.

It's a challenging job, to be sure. We are more constrained than many
sites in terms of what we can accept. LWN's readership is also highly
spread out across the world. But, out there somewhere, there must be
somebody with the skills and the interest in taking on a challenge
like this. If you are that person, please send a note to
sales at lwn.net, and we'll talk. Or if you think you know that person,
please draw their attention to this post.