Larry Johnson

My (tentative) plan for building readership

This is the sort of introductory post that should really have been at the beginning, but when I began this I was in the middle of figuring out how to utilize Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages. I’m Larry Felton Johnson. I use my middle name to differentiate myself from the many thousands of other Larry Johnsons,Continue reading “My (tentative) plan for building readership”

The need for a balance of traffic sources

As the Editor and Publisher of a small local news sites I wear a lot of hats. The two that create the most conflicts are my hat as editor and my hat as ad salesperson. Until I can hire a salesperson this is going to continue, and I’d like to focus on one of theContinue reading “The need for a balance of traffic sources”

AMP ad sales explained another way

To some extent I’ve struggled to explain, even to other publishers, why it’s imperative for me to master Accelerated Mobile Pages and AMP ads. The short answer is that I have no choice unless I want to slow down my page load speed and trigger a drop in traffic back to the modest levels IContinue reading “AMP ad sales explained another way”

AMP and the ad sales dilemma

This post is a modified and expanded version of one I posted to a social media forum dedicated to small publishing ad sales. For a small publisher, the complexity that comes with a sudden increase in traffic is a good problem to have in some ways, but it’s a problem nonetheless. In the case ofContinue reading “AMP and the ad sales dilemma”

Why I’m so focused on AMP

When I first added AMP pages to the Cobb County Courier it was just because someone advised me to do it. At the time I knew Accelerated Mobile Pages had something to do with site access via smartphones and other small-screen devices, but I was still oriented to desktop and laptop computers. But I installedContinue reading “Why I’m so focused on AMP”

Introducing Publishers Notebook

My name is Larry Johnson, and I’m the editor and publisher of the Cobb County Courier, a local independent news site in Cobb County Georgia. I’m starting this blog (and I have no illusions that it’s anything other than a blog) to flesh out techniques and policies in my role as publisher. You won’t findContinue reading “Introducing Publishers Notebook”