LWN advertising update

Posted Sep 3, 2007 23:39 UTC (Mon) by Zack (guest, #37335)
Parent article: LWN advertising update

LWN is not a rag, and it shouldn't be treated as one.

As it is a high quality publication with a loyal readership it shouldn't be too hard to find willing advertisers directly.

A big part of advertising is not direct sales but also association to a particular well-known name or institution.
This was one of the reasons my business took out a small text ad on here a while ago, not just to sell something, but also to be associated with a high-tech high quality free software publication.

Another reason was the knowledge that the costs would directly go to useful and important writing that would serve the free software community.

I would suggest turning on the sideline text-ads and one or two modest banners for the complete readership, raise the price of those to meet your demands, and deal with commercial open-source/free software businesses directly.

I think LWN can get away with not just selling as many eyeballs as possible, but monetize on the prestige it has so painstakingly build up over the years as well.