6 Months into Project 24: What I’ve Learned So Far

It is February 5th. I have been grinding blogs, hosting clients, and YouTube videos since September 2018. My total earnings from all of it? One dollar and twenty cents from Google AdSense. That is not a typo. That is not a joke. And I am not quitting.

This video series started because I wanted to hold myself accountable and actually document what it looks like to try Income School’s Project 24 in real life, not on a highlight reel. No scripted takes, no edits, no notes. Just me talking through what I have built, what has flopped, and where I am going next. If you are thinking about starting a blog-based business or already in the middle of one, here is what six months in actually looks like.

What You’ll Walk Out With

What Project 24 actually is and how the 60-step system works
The four blogs and two YouTube channels I built in six months
Honest earnings after five months of publishing content daily
Why Udemy courses and social media affiliate posts are not passive income
How the Blog2Social plugin changed my social distribution workflow
The web hosting and web design side hustle I am building in parallel
The AWS blog idea I am chasing next and why it could be different
Not sure which online income path fits your current skills? finder.platformproof.com can point you in the right direction in two minutes.

The Project 24 System: 60 Steps to a Full-Time Income in Two Years

Project 24 is a program from Income School, run by Jim and Ricky. The core promise is that if you follow their 60-step system, you can build a full-time income from blogging and YouTube in 24 months. That is two years. Not two weeks. Not one course launch. Two years of consistent content creation before you should expect serious money coming in.

The method is not about black-hat tricks, backlink spamming, or gaming the algorithm. Jim and Ricky are direct about it: write a ton of content, do it well, and the traffic will come. For each new site, the starting goal is 30 blog posts and 10 YouTube videos. Then you move to a second site and repeat it. Then you come back to the first and keep building. There are 60 defined steps covering everything from picking a niche to monetization, and each one has a specific purpose in the sequence.

I had spent from May through September 2018 watching what felt like hundreds of hours of YouTube videos on passive income and affiliate marketing. Most of what I saw was people telling you to buy their course, build a list, and spam links. Income School stood out because they told you to do it the right way. Write real content for real readers. That was enough for me. I talked to my wife about it, she said go ahead, and on September 7th I launched my first site. The second site launched October 24th.

The program is not cheap. It is a real investment of money on top of the hours you will spend writing. Income School frames it the same way I think about it: you are investing your time and your money and hoping for a return on that investment over 24 months. If you go in expecting to recoup it in 90 days, you will quit early. If you go in understanding it is a two-year process, the early months become manageable instead of demoralizing.

Four Sites, Two YouTube Channels, and One Full-Time Day Job

Here is where things stand as of February 5th. I have four active blog sites. I have not shared the URLs publicly yet because none of them are at a level I want to showcase, but here is a breakdown of where each one is.

Site one started September 7th, 2018, and will hit 56 posts by the end of tonight. I have also hired one writer who is doing excellent work covering a different section of the niche while I cover the other. The goal for site one is to add another 40 posts over the next two months, getting close to 100. This site also has 15 YouTube videos and two dedicated YouTube channels attached to it.

Site two has about 30 to 31 posts. The niche is honest-to-goodness boring, but boring niches with real search volume and low competition can absolutely be successful. Site three has 10 posts and is the one I am most uncertain about because the niche has real competition baked into it. Site four is the newest with only 4 posts, and the challenge there is that the topic is not evergreen. Anything that changes with technology or industry trends requires ongoing updates, which changes the passive income equation significantly.

On top of all four sites, I am building a web hosting and web design service with my business partner Rodney. I work a day job from 6am to 3pm. After family time each evening, from about 8pm to midnight, I work on the blogs and the business. That four-hour window is where all of this gets built. There is no other time slot. This is not glamorous, but it is what the early stage of building something actually looks like when you have other responsibilities.

The Numbers After Six Months: One Dollar and Twenty Cents

I am going to say it plainly because there is no sense in dressing it up. From September 7th, 2018 to February 5th, 2019, I have earned one dollar and twenty cents. All of it from Google AdSense on my first site.

That is not a failure. That is exactly what Project 24 told me to expect. Jim and Ricky are upfront from the beginning: it is going to be slow, you are not going to make any money for a while, you are going to get frustrated, and you just have to keep going. A new site with 30 to 56 posts has not aged enough for Google to give it real authority. The traffic is not there yet in volume because the site has not been around long enough to prove itself.

My short-term goal is to hit what Income School members call pizza day. That is the month where your earnings are enough to buy a pizza. When that happens, you post in the community group with your city and state, and Income School puts a pin on a map to mark the milestone. That is the target right now. My long-term goal is to make my primary site the absolute go-to resource in its niche. I want it to have 500 posts and function like the ESPN of that topic space. Every question someone has in that niche, my site answers it.

What Has Actually Worked So Far

Writing volume inside a structured system is the core play here, and the Project 24 format gives that volume real shape. Before finding Income School, I was experimenting without direction. The program gives you specific targets, a defined sequence, and a community to report back to. That structure is underrated as a motivational tool, especially when the income number is still zero.

Hiring a writer for site one has been a real accelerant. He is also in Project 24 himself, which means he understands the method and the content standards. He covers one section of the niche and I cover another. That lets the site build out in two directions simultaneously instead of one person grinding through the whole thing alone.

The other thing working well is the Blog2Social WordPress plugin. When I publish a new post, it automatically gets distributed to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. That process takes me about 30 seconds. I am not manually logging into five platforms and copying links anymore. Facebook requires a business page for this to work rather than a personal profile. Twitter does not send much referral traffic back. Instagram gets decent engagement in terms of likes, though I am not certain how many of those turn into actual site visits. Pinterest and LinkedIn round out the distribution. The time savings across a month of publishing are significant.

What Has Not Clicked Yet

Three income paths I tried before finding Project 24: Udemy courses, posting affiliate links on social media, and YouTube affiliate traffic. All three had real problems that made them harder to justify over time.

Udemy was the most surprising. I put in the time to build a course and then discovered that launching it is only the beginning. The platform has thousands of instructors competing in the same categories. You have to constantly go back and market your course, respond to students, adjust pricing, and push it whenever the algorithm stops surfacing it. If you do not already have an audience driving people to your Udemy page, you are starting from zero in a crowded marketplace. Right now I am making a couple cups of coffee worth of revenue from it each month. That is something, but it is not passive and it is not scalable without an existing audience.

Posting affiliate links on social media is what I now think of as the hamster wheel problem. You provide helpful content, you post your link, you hope someone clicks and buys. Then you have to do it again tomorrow. The moment you stop showing up consistently, the traffic and the clicks stop. There is nothing compounding in the background. You are renting attention instead of owning it through content that keeps ranking.

YouTube affiliate traffic has been inconsistent. I have people watching my videos but not clicking through to the affiliate links. The discovery lag on YouTube is also similar to blogging in that a brand new channel with few videos takes time to build views. The difference is that a well-written blog post can start ranking in Google searches much earlier than a YouTube video reaches a meaningful audience on its own.

Not sure which income path to start with?

Take two minutes and use the free quiz at finder.platformproof.com to find the online income path that fits your current skills and schedule.

The Web Hosting and Web Design Business

Alongside the blogging, I am building a web hosting and web design service with my business partner Rodney. The original concept was to target restaurants, local businesses that almost always have either no website or a badly outdated one. I am now looking at expanding that target market to contractors, plumbers, and subcontractors in the area. These are tradespeople who are busy doing their actual work and often have no digital presence at all.

I joined an app called Thumbtack to generate leads. Thumbtack sends you inquiries from people across the United States who are looking for services you offer, and then you submit a quote. If the potential client likes what they see, you move forward together. I have been on the platform for about a week as of recording this video. Zero contacts so far. I am aware of how that sounds. But one week is not a meaningful sample size, and the goal is to keep showing up there until the first client comes in.

The growth plan for the web design side of the business has a clear staircase to it. Hit five clients by the end of March. Then grow from five to 25. Then from 25 to 50. Then from 50 to 100. Keep going until it outgrows my capacity to handle it alone. The logic is to start small enough that the first milestone is actually achievable, deliver real results for those first few clients, and then let the referrals and track record take over from there.

Web design for local clients is active income, not passive. But it generates cash while the blogs are still in the early months of building authority. That cash runway matters. You cannot keep publishing content for 12 months with no incoming revenue if you have actual expenses to cover. The service business makes the overall operation financially sustainable while the long game plays out.

Honest Drawbacks of Running Multiple Sites at Once

Running four sites simultaneously sounds like smart diversification. In practice, it creates a real risk of burning out before any single site has the content depth it needs to perform. Project 24 recommends 30 posts per new site. When you are doing that across four sites while also managing YouTube channels and a service business, the total output required is large. My original goal was six websites in a year, one every two months. I am scaling that back because the writing volume pushed me to the edge of what is sustainable on top of a full-time job.

The other honest drawback is the waiting period. You can execute the Project 24 system exactly as outlined and still not see meaningful Google traffic for months. The Income School team is clear about this from the start. A new domain needs time to age. Links accumulate naturally over time. Google takes time to understand what your site is about and how it compares to what is already ranking. If you are building blogs expecting to replace your income inside of six months, this model will disappoint you.

Finally, sites covering non-evergreen topics require ongoing maintenance indefinitely. A blog post about something that changes annually is not a write-once asset. It needs to be updated every time the underlying facts or technology shifts. Site four in my lineup has this problem, which is why I am already thinking carefully about how much attention I want to put into it long-term versus sites where the content stays relevant without intervention.

The Game Plan Going Forward

The immediate focus is site one. Getting from 56 posts to close to 100 over the next two months is the specific target. With a writer covering one section of the niche and me covering the other, that target is within reach without burning out either of us. At 100 posts, the site has real depth. Google starts treating it as a serious resource in the niche rather than a thin site that only covers the surface of a topic.

I am also planning a new site focused entirely on Amazon Web Services. I am AWS certified, and the platform releases new services and updates existing ones constantly. The idea is to build a site that covers the full service catalog one topic cluster at a time. EC2 instances could anchor one set of 30 posts. Identity and Access Management could anchor another. The AWS documentation and white papers are notoriously dry and technical, which means there is real opportunity for content that explains the same material in plain language.

The downside to an AWS site is that it will never be fully passive. The platform changes too frequently for any post to be a permanent set-and-forget asset. But the upside is that the niche has consistent, large-scale search demand from professionals studying for certifications and engineers trying to solve specific problems. From there, the site could expand into paid study guides, structured certification paths, and courses built on top of the content. That is a longer arc but it could become the biggest thing in the portfolio.

Find Your X

The hardest part of starting an online income path is not the execution. It is figuring out which path actually fits your skills, your available hours, and what you are willing to keep doing for the next 12 to 24 months without quitting. Blogging with Project 24 worked as a starting point for me because I had writing habits and technical knowledge I could build content around. That combination does not exist for everyone, and a different starting point might get someone else to revenue faster. Use the free quiz at finder.platformproof.com to find the path that fits where you actually are right now.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Project 24 and who runs it?

Project 24 is a 60-step blogging and YouTube program from Income School, created by Jim and Ricky. The goal is to build a full-time income from niche websites in 24 months by publishing consistent, high-quality content. The steps cover niche selection, site structure, content production, and monetization through ads and affiliate marketing.

Is Project 24 expensive?

Project 24 costs real money and is not something just anyone can sign up for based on price alone. Income School frames it as a business investment: put in the upfront cost, follow the 60 steps, and aim to earn it back and grow beyond it over two years. Exact pricing changes over time so check directly at their site for current membership costs.

How realistic is it to run four blogs at the same time?

It is possible but pushing into burnout territory if you have a full-time job. Project 24 itself suggests starting with one site, getting to 30 posts, then starting a second before returning to the first. Running four at once accelerates your reach but also your risk of running out of steam before any single site has enough content to perform. Hiring a writer for at least one site is almost necessary at this scale.

What is pizza day in the Income School community?

Pizza day is the milestone Income School members celebrate when a site earns enough in a single month to buy a pizza. The amount is small, but it is the first proof that the site can generate real revenue. Members announce it in the community group with their city and state, and Income School adds a pin to a map marking the moment. It is a small win that means a lot when you have been grinding for months with nothing coming in.

Does Blog2Social actually drive traffic to your site?

Blog2Social automates social distribution when you publish a new WordPress post, sending it to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. The time savings are real. Whether it drives meaningful traffic depends on the platform. Instagram gets engagement but may not convert to actual site visits. Twitter tends to send very little referral traffic. Facebook requires a business page, not a personal profile, for the plugin to work. The biggest value is removing the manual work of posting to five places every time you publish.

Why is Udemy not a good passive income source for beginners?

Udemy requires constant marketing to stay visible on the platform. Thousands of instructors are creating courses in the same categories, so standing out means promoting your course aggressively, discounting it regularly, and staying active with student questions. If you stop, sales drop. Without an existing audience to drive to your course page, you are starting from zero inside a platform where the buyers shop primarily on price. Courses sold through your own site or to your own email list can be more sustainable, but on Udemy you are dependent on the platform’s traffic and terms.

How long before a new blog gets real Google traffic?

Most new sites do not see meaningful organic search traffic for six to twelve months. Google needs time to crawl your content, assess the domain, and compare your pages against everything else already ranking for those search terms. Sites that publish frequently with specific, well-researched posts tend to move faster than sites with thin or generic content. Project 24’s content standards are designed to produce posts that can eventually rank, not just fill up a site with words.

Can you actually build a blog business while working full-time?

Yes, and most people who have done it started exactly this way. The constraint is the number of hours available each day. A 6am-to-3pm day job followed by family responsibilities leaves a limited window. Working 8pm to midnight gives you four hours, which is enough to publish consistently if you are organized about it. The advantage of keeping your day job during the early months is that you have financial runway to get through the period where the blog earns almost nothing. The disadvantage is that everything takes longer than it would if you were working on the blog full-time.

Sources

Income School Project 24 Program at incomeschool.com
Blog2Social WordPress Plugin at blog2social.com
Thumbtack Freelancer Marketplace at thumbtack.com
Google AdSense at google.com/adsense
Udemy Online Learning Platform at udemy.com