Income School Project 24: 14-Month Update on 4 Sites (Real Numbers)

Fourteen months into running four websites at the same time, Alston sat down and pulled up the real numbers. No cherry-picking, no single winning site held up as proof the whole thing works. All four sites, honest traffic breakdowns, a look at what is already profitable and a direct admission of where keyword research mistakes cost him traffic he should have had by month six. This is a raw progress report on Income School’s Project 24 method covering the period from September 2018 through the end of October 2019.

If you are somewhere in the first year of a content site and wondering whether the 60-step method actually produces results or just sounds good on a webinar, this update is the closest thing to a real test you will find. Four sites. Four different niches. Four different start dates. Same basic framework. Here is how each one performed.

What You’ll Walk Out With

Real traffic numbers from all four of Alston’s Project 24 sites at month 14
Why Site 1 underperformed despite having 95 to 100 blog posts and a full YouTube channel
What the bounce rate difference between Site 1 and Site 2 reveals about the free Avocado theme
Whether a tourist site can generate real organic traffic (Site 3 answers this directly)
How Site 4 became profitable with fewer than 20 posts and zero YouTube presence
The specific plugins and tools in rotation across the portfolio
A clear read on which traffic sources actually matter and which ones look impressive but pay nothing, and how to find which model fits your current situation at finder.platformproof.com

Project 24 at 14 Months: The Starting Point

Project 24 is a content marketing course created by Jim and Ricky at Income School. The core idea is straightforward: follow 60 structured steps, produce useful content around low-competition keywords, and eventually earn income through affiliate commissions, ads, or digital products. When Alston joined on September 7, 2018, the method was built entirely around blogging and organic search. No paid ads, no black-hat SEO, no backlink schemes.

By the time this update was filmed, Income School had expanded what Project 24 members receive. The free Avocado WordPress theme had been added, along with a YouTube course, a Pinterest course, a digital info product course, and 13 mini courses covering different aspects of content marketing. The free webinar from Jim and Ricky is the front door most people walk through before joining, and Alston linked it in his description for anyone still on the fence.

The 60-step framework starts easy. Step one is buying a domain. Step two is getting a premium theme. The first ten steps take almost no time. Steps 11 through 60 involve the actual writing, the research, and the site architecture. If 60 steps sounds like a lot, Alston’s point is simple: if you can find this video on YouTube, you can execute those steps.

Site 1: The Original Blog (Started September 7, 2018)

Site 1 is Alston’s largest site by post count. At the 14-month mark it had between 95 and 100 blog posts plus a companion YouTube channel with somewhere between 40 and 50 videos and 50 or more subscribers. That is a serious amount of output. The traffic numbers, however, tell a different story.

Through the end of October 2019, the site had generated 11,035 total page views and 7,695 unique views. Average time on page was one minute. Bounce rate was 57.89 percent and exit percent was 58.01 percent. The bounce rate is actually one of the better numbers on this site, and Alston credits the free Avocado theme for that. The theme is built specifically for readability and reader retention, and the bounce rate on this site versus his other sites makes the difference visible.

The traffic source breakdown is where things get uncomfortable. Google ranked eighth as a traffic source with only 109 sessions across 14 months. Direct traffic was high, which is the opposite of what you want for a content site built on organic search. Facebook was elevated for a specific reason: Alston was using a plugin called Blog to Social, which automatically pushes each new blog post or update out to every connected social media profile. He had it configured to distribute posts on a 52-week schedule, meaning older content kept getting recycled to social platforms. This inflated the social traffic numbers but did not represent actual search growth.

Alston is direct about the cause of the underperformance. The keyword research on Site 1 was poor. He relied on tools and assumed he understood what he was doing. Later sites showed that as his keyword research skill improved, traffic followed. Site 1 suffered from decisions made in the first few months that were difficult to reverse without rewriting a significant portion of the content. The niche is also highly seasonal, which he notes in this update. Traffic was picking up as the Christmas season approached, and he was starting to see actual sales in the final months of 2019, including during what he called “Black Friday in July.” Top countries sending traffic were the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, India, and Australia. That five-country distribution is exactly what you want: developed, English-speaking markets where people buy solutions rather than searching for workarounds.

Site 2: The Niche Site He Built Without Caring About the Topic

Site 2 started October 25, 2018. Alston completed the first 60 steps of the Project 24 framework in the first week of January, then added another 10 to 15 posts. The niche is larger than Site 1 and draws a wider international audience. He also only produced 10 YouTube videos for this one rather than 40 to 50.

The stats at month 14: 3,526 page views, 3,300 unique views, average time on page 2 minutes and 49 seconds, bounce rate 91.73 percent, and exit percent 87.75 percent. The bounce rate is significantly higher than Site 1, and the reason is the absence of the Avocado theme. Site 2 was built on a different theme, and the comparison is striking. Avocado’s design keeps people on the page longer and keeps them moving between posts. A different theme, even a good one, does not do the same thing.

What Site 2 does well is the traffic source breakdown. Organic search leads by a wide margin. Direct, social, and referral all fall behind. When you pull up the source detail, Google is at the top. That is the goal. A content site should be getting found primarily through search, not through social distribution or direct links from people who already know you. Top countries were the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and India, all consistent with the developed-market pattern from Site 1.

Alston admits he has no personal interest in this niche. He saw a gap, identified a group of people looking for information, and created content to fill it. The site works. His point here is that you do not have to love the topic to build a functional content site. That is a meaningful thing to hear if you are spending too much time searching for a passion-project niche rather than just picking something useful and starting.

Site 3: Can a Tourist Site Work? (learnKenosha.com)

learnKenosha.com is a question that comes up repeatedly in Project 24 communities and in the broader blogging world: can a tourist site or a locally-focused site actually produce organic search traffic? Alston built this one to test the idea, and the site itself has an interesting origin. He originally started it in July 2018 as a directory site, a place where local restaurants could be listed and promoted. It eventually became a tourist-focused content site.

Kenosha is a city on Lake Michigan and a short drive from Chicago. It gets tourist traffic, especially in summer. The plan was eventually to sell ad space to local businesses once the site had enough traffic. At the time of this update the site had fewer than 20 blog posts and was built on the Listing Pro WordPress theme rather than Avocado.

Traffic had a large spike during a period of active social media marketing, then flattened considerably. The spike came from Blog to Social pushing content out aggressively. Without that boost, the organic growth was slower. Google ranked second in the traffic source breakdown with 182 users and 182 new users. That is a small number but it confirms the search component is working at a basic level.

The geographic reality of this site is unusual compared to the others. Alston notes that if someone outside the Midwest navigated to learnKenosha.com, he would assume they were either a bot or someone he knows personally. The entire value proposition is local. That is both the strength and the ceiling of the site. It answers the original question though: yes, a tourist site with fewer than 20 posts and a local subject can generate real Google traffic. Whether that traffic eventually monetizes depends on whether the local businesses are willing to pay for exposure and whether the summer traffic numbers hold when the site gets older and more indexed.

Site 4: The Smallest Site That Is Already Profitable

Site 4 is the one Alston calls his pound-for-pound winner. It is his youngest and smallest site by post count, with fewer than 20 articles. He bought the domain earlier but started creating content in mid-January 2019. The plan was to write on Sites 2, 3, and 4 simultaneously while working a full-time job, which he describes as incredibly difficult and nearly maddening. Site 4 got built anyway.

The stats: 3,351 page views, 2,940 unique views, average time on page 3 minutes and 21 seconds, bounce rate 87.67 percent, and exit percent 83.92 percent. The time on page is the highest of all four sites. Readers who find this content stay with it for over three minutes, which signals strong match between what they were searching for and what they found.

The traffic source breakdown shows 90 percent organic search. Google is number one. There is no YouTube traffic because Alston did not even build a YouTube channel for this niche. The site stands entirely on written content and search intent. The design is minimal: a logo, black and white colors, no additional images. Despite that, the engagement numbers are the best of the four.

Most importantly, the site is already profitable. At fewer than 10 months old with fewer than 20 posts, it is generating income. Alston attributes this to two things. First, the niche is extremely specific. He estimates he is writing to the same 3,000 people who keep coming back looking for information in that area. Second, his keyword research had improved significantly by the time he built Site 4. He was not making the same assumptions he had made with Site 1. He was picking topics where intent and search volume aligned with what a small site could reasonably rank for.

Not sure which online income model fits where you are right now?

Answer five questions and get a specific recommendation at finder.platformproof.com.

Site-by-Site Numbers at a Glance

Here is the full comparison across all four sites at the 14-month mark, pulled directly from the analytics shown in the video:

Site 1 (started Sept 7, 2018): 11,035 page views, 7,695 unique, 1:00 avg time, 57.89% bounce. 95 to 100 posts, 40 to 50 YouTube videos. Google ranked 8th as a traffic source.
Site 2 (started Oct 25, 2018): 3,526 page views, 3,300 unique, 2:49 avg time, 91.73% bounce. Around 70 to 75 posts including the original 60-step foundation. Organic leads, Google on top.
Site 3 (learnKenosha.com, started July 2018): Fewer than 20 posts. Google second with 182 users. Tourist and local niche, Listing Pro theme, heavily US Midwest traffic.
Site 4 (started mid-January 2019): 3,351 page views, 2,940 unique, 3:21 avg time, 87.67% bounce. Fewer than 20 posts. 90% organic. No YouTube. Already profitable.

What These Four Sites Actually Prove

The most important takeaway from this update is not a single number. It is the visible improvement across the four sites as Alston’s skills improved. Site 1 was built when his keyword research was weakest. Site 4 was built when it was strongest. The post counts are not even close to each other, but Site 4’s engagement and early profitability are dramatically better per post than Site 1’s.

Skill compounds. If you write 100 posts with mediocre keyword targeting, you get 11,000 page views and Google ranking eighth. If you write 18 posts with tight keyword targeting and a very specific audience, you get early profitability and three-minute average read times. The method matters less than whether you execute the research component correctly.

The Avocado theme finding is also worth paying attention to. A 57 percent bounce rate on Site 1 versus an 87 to 91 percent bounce rate on Sites 2 and 3 is not a small difference. The Avocado theme was built specifically to keep readers moving through a site, and the data supports that it does exactly that. If you are running Project 24 and not using Avocado, that decision is costing you engagement time.

The Blog to Social plugin shows up across multiple sites as a distribution tool, but Alston is clear about what it is and is not. It inflates social traffic numbers by automatically pushing posts out on a schedule. That is useful for visibility, but it does not replace organic search growth. Watching Facebook climb in your analytics because a plugin recycled an old post is not the same as Google ranking your content for a search that converts.

The tourist site question gets a real answer here. learnKenosha.com is small and locally focused, but it is indexed, Google is sending traffic, and the foundation is there. A tourist site works if you approach it with the same content discipline as any other site. The ceiling is lower because the potential audience is geographically bounded, but the method is not fundamentally different.

The Honest Drawbacks of Running Four Sites at Once

Alston calls the plan to write on Sites 2, 3, and 4 simultaneously while holding a full-time job “incredibly difficult and incredibly maddening.” That is the most important operational note in this entire update. The Project 24 method works, but running four sites at once while employed full-time means each site gets a fraction of the attention a focused operator would give it.

Site 1 has 95 to 100 posts but suffered from early keyword mistakes that would have been caught faster with more focused attention. Sites 2 and 3 have 20 or fewer posts each because dividing writing time across four properties means each one grows slowly. Site 4 is profitable but remains small for the same reason.

The counter-argument is that running four sites simultaneously accelerates learning. Each site becomes a live test of a different niche, a different theme, and a different level of keyword research skill. The mistakes on Site 1 informed every decision on Site 4. That is genuinely valuable, even if the traffic numbers on any individual site look slower as a result.

If you are deciding whether to build one site or several at once, this update gives you real data for both scenarios. One site with focused effort will likely outgrow what you see on any individual site in this portfolio. Multiple sites will teach you faster but strain your output capacity at every step.

Find Your X

Alston’s four-site experiment shows that the Income School framework can produce profitable results, but the path is different for every person depending on their niche selection, their keyword research skills, and how much time they can realistically give to content creation. If you are not sure which model fits your current situation, the tool at finder.platformproof.com takes five questions and gives you a specific direction based on your skills, your available time, and what kind of income you are trying to build first. It is free and takes under two minutes.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to see real traffic from Project 24?

Based on Alston’s results, meaningful organic search traffic is not guaranteed in the first year, especially if keyword research is weak early on. Site 4 showed the fastest results because the research was tightest. Site 1 had 14 months and over 95 posts but Google was still a minor traffic source. The honest answer is that it depends heavily on niche competitiveness and keyword targeting skill, not just post count.

Is the free Avocado theme worth using?

Alston’s data makes a strong case for it. Site 1, which uses Avocado, had a 57.89 percent bounce rate. Sites 2 and 3, which do not use it, had bounce rates above 87 and 91 percent. Lower bounce rate means readers are moving through more of the site rather than leaving after the first page. For a content site monetized with display ads or affiliate links, that matters.

Can you build a profitable site without a YouTube channel?

Yes. Site 4 in this update has no YouTube channel and no YouTube traffic at all. It is already profitable at month 14 with fewer than 20 posts. The content exists entirely as written articles. If you are not comfortable on camera or simply do not want to add video production to your workload, this update confirms that a text-only content site can generate income through organic search.

Does the 60-step Project 24 framework actually work?

Based on this specific update, the framework produces results when the keyword research component is executed correctly. Site 4 shows what the method can do with strong research: profitable at fewer than 20 posts. Site 1 shows what happens when the research is weak at the start: 95 plus posts and Google ranked eighth as a traffic source after 14 months. The framework is a structure. The quality of the research you do inside that structure determines the outcome.

Should you build in a niche you are personally interested in?

Site 2 is the answer to this question. Alston has no personal interest in Site 2’s topic. He built it because he saw a gap between what people were searching for and what was available. The site performs well. Personal interest helps with consistency and voice, but the traffic data does not care whether you find the subject exciting. If there is genuine search demand and the content is useful, the site will get traffic regardless of your personal feelings about the niche.

What is the Blog to Social plugin and is it worth using?

Blog to Social is a WordPress plugin with both free and premium versions. It automatically pushes your blog posts to connected social media accounts when you publish or update, and can also schedule future distributions on a defined interval. Alston configured it to distribute posts across a 52-week period, which keeps older content circulating. It raises social traffic numbers but should not be confused with organic search growth. It is a distribution tool, not an SEO tool.

Can a local or tourist site work as a Project 24 strategy?

learnKenosha.com shows that it can, with some important limits. Google is sending traffic to the site even with fewer than 20 posts. The Listing Pro theme gives it a directory feel appropriate for the local subject. The ceiling is the audience size: people who are interested in visiting Kenosha, Wisconsin or living near Chicago. That is a real but bounded market. If the monetization plan is selling ad space to local businesses or targeting local affiliate programs, the site can work. If you expect it to scale to a large audience, the geography limits you.

How should you approach keyword research differently after seeing these results?

The lesson from comparing Sites 1 and 4 is to treat keyword research as the most important skill in the system, not something you do quickly before writing. Site 1’s underperformance is explicitly attributed to weak early keyword research. Site 4’s success is attributed to improved keyword research. Before you write your next post, know exactly what question you are answering, whether there is real search volume behind it, and whether a new or small site can realistically rank for it. Tools help but do not replace the judgment you develop by doing it repeatedly across many posts.

Sources

Alston Godbolt, “Income School Project 24 14 Month Update of 4 Sites,” YouTube, November 2019, https://youtu.be/vBNVPvRdZMg
Income School Project 24 (Jim and Ricky): content marketing course and 60-step framework referenced throughout
Avocado WordPress theme: free theme provided to Project 24 members, referenced for bounce rate impact
Blog to Social plugin: referenced for automated social media distribution across a 52-week schedule
Listing Pro WordPress theme: used on learnKenosha.com (Site 3) as referenced in the video