Brilliant and dumb: Advice welcome

Years ago, at university, one of my student newspaper peers said: "We can't figure you out. You are so stupid at times, and so brilliant at others." That's how I feel right now in approaching this forum with a challenging problem.

Background: I have a reasonably successful (primarily offline) publishing business. Conventional online revenue is tiny; AdSense pays about the monthly minimum. Yet I'm the only person in AdSense history to have experienced two "account disabled" emails to survive and even become a moderator (Top Contributor) on the AdSense help forum -- receiving invitations to visit Mountain View at Google's expense. I'll probably be heading to California again this fall. It is fun hanging around "in" the Googleplex. (I'm subject to non-disclosure agreement rules so can't discuss much about what I have learned there.)

However, we've had some success in developing hybrid online/offline publications. They are magazines with the look feel and style of print publications, but most readers are online (we can add video and hyperlinks etc) to make things more appealing) and we print a few copies for those who really want paper. The good thing about these magazines is that we can charge "print" advertising rates without printing much at all -- and sell the ads at one to two orders of magnitude more than we would with conventional online PPC or banner-type ads.

Now my question isn't about building AdSense revenue; it is figuring out how to find local publishers for regional websites in a specialized industry niche where we can sell the combination of print and online advertising. This is genuine sales work and cannot purely be done behind a computer screen. However, the reps work from home, have personal freedom, and can make upwards of $100,000 a year. (Not a fake number -- my top sales rep truly earns more than I do.)

Geographical boundaries are diverse -- anywhere in Canada and the U.S. will do (though some markets are better than others).

Conventional job boards don't work very well. They are expensive. Services like Craigslist have some potential but of course you cannot repeat your ad/message over many markets. We need a huge funnel to generate enough inquiries from people who (a) can sell and (b) would work on pure commission. We have screening systems and tools to weed out people who wouldn't be good for the work -- this is not a "take everyone who applies" opportunity as that wouldn't be fair (and we are ready to pay cash out of pocket expenses, not require ANY investment, and provide training and support to qualified candidates.

A few years ago I explored the various "work from home" deals, and of course ran smack into the various scam sites. I decided to expose one scammer -- old timers around here may remember "Reality Millions" -- an endeavour that took me around the world including searching (online) South African land registry data to track down the scammer. Contributions to the anti-scam forum netted me one local publisher. He soared mightily then crashed just as fast -- generating $50K in sales in one month, then essentially disappeared.

So, I welcome recommendations on how you would market to recruit the right type of sales reps for this sort of initiative. I can pay referral fees, but don't want to fork over huge sums of money in conventional advertising (unless I can develop a truly reliable testing and evaluation system for the advertising effectiveness.) If you had this problem, how would you solve it.