Income School Project 24: 16-Month Update on 4 Niche Sites

Sixteen months into running four separate blogging websites built on the Income School Project 24 method, and the results are exactly what most people don’t talk about: some sites are crushing it, one barely got off the ground, and all of them handed over lessons that no course module could have taught upfront. This is not a polished highlight reel. It’s a real accounting of page views, bounce rates, traffic sources, and the mistakes made along the way since September 7, 2018.

Project 24 is a content marketing course built around organic search. The core idea is to build blogging websites that rank on Google, YouTube, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and other search engines without paying for traffic. Over 16 months, four sites went through the process with wildly different results. Every number in this breakdown comes from real analytics data, not projections or hypotheticals.

What You’ll Walk Out With

Real 16-month analytics from four niche sites built on the Project 24 method
The exact numbers: page views, unique visitors, bounce rates, and average time on page for each site
Why the Avocado theme cut Site 1’s bounce rate to 42% while Site 2 sat at 90%
The keyword research mistake that slowed Site 1 down and how to avoid it from the start
Three traffic channels that actually moved the needle: Quora, YouTube, and LinkedIn
Why Site 4, with fewer than 15 blog posts, outperformed everything else pound for pound
What happens when you try to run four blogging sites at once with a full-time job and a family
Figure out which niche fits your background before you write a single word at finder.platformproof.com

What Project 24 Actually Is

Project 24 is an Income School course that launched with a simple promise: follow 60 steps, build a blogging website, and within 24 months create enough passive income to replace a full-time salary. The first 30 of those 60 steps are the actual blog posts. The other 30 are setup tasks like buying a domain, installing WordPress, picking a web host, finding images, and configuring the basics. So the intimidating “60-step framework” is really 30 blog posts plus 30 setup tasks. That reframe makes it significantly more approachable.

When the course launched, it covered blogging with affiliate marketing and ad revenue as the primary monetization paths. Since then, Income School added content on YouTube, Pinterest, and digital products. They also created a free WordPress theme called Avocado, which is exactly what you see on alstongodbolt.com. The focus throughout is 100% organic traffic, meaning no paid ads, no boosted posts, no ad spend. You write content, you optimize for search, and you wait for Google and other engines to rank it.

The community inside Project 24 includes a private podcast, meetups, and a members-only forum where you can ask questions and bounce ideas around. None of that is available to the public. At the time of joining in September 2018, there were about 13 mini-courses that made up the full curriculum. More have been added since.

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

This is the site that went live on the first day of joining the course. At 16 months in, it has somewhere between 95 and 100 blog posts and 40 to 50 YouTube videos attached to it. The YouTube channel tied to this site has around 90 subscribers. Here are the actual analytics numbers at the time of this update:

Page views: 17,000
Unique views: 10,000
Average time on page: 46 seconds
Bounce rate: 42.32%
Exit percent: 53.03%

The bounce rate of 42% stands out immediately. That number is unusually low for a blogging site, and the reason is the Avocado WordPress theme. Avocado is built specifically for content-heavy sites and loads significantly faster than most standard WordPress themes. Speed reduces bounce rate. Readers who land on a fast-loading page are more likely to click to a second page rather than leave after reading one article.

The honest assessment of Site 1: it is behind the timeline that Project 24 suggests. The site is generating some ad revenue and some affiliate marketing commissions, but not at the level the 16-month mark should produce if the method was executed well. Two big reasons stand out.

First: keyword research was done poorly in the early months. When you have never done keyword research before, it is very easy to think you’re doing it correctly while actually missing the target. You don’t know what you don’t know. As you create more content and run more searches, patterns emerge. You start to see which articles rank and which don’t, and you develop a feel for what Google will reward. In the first months of Site 1, that skill wasn’t there yet.

Second: the niche turned out to be more seasonal than expected. Looking at the traffic chart, December traffic spiked sharply, which signals that people search for this content during the holiday season and much less the rest of the year. A seasonal niche isn’t disqualifying, but you have to build content around that reality rather than assuming demand is consistent year-round. The initial assumption was wrong, and it took 16 months of live data to confirm it.

The niche was also too narrow. Getting too specific when selecting a topic limits the total pool of articles you can write and the total audience you can reach. Site 1 niched down past the point where it could grow into a large traffic operation. That is a mistake that shows up slowly over time rather than immediately, which makes it hard to catch early.

On the traffic source breakdown: the ideal for an organic content site is Google leading by a wide margin. Site 1’s largest traffic source was direct, followed by Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Facebook, Quora, YouTube, with Google further down the list. That is not the mix you want to see. Google should be number one for a blogging site focused on organic search.

Two things that did work for jumpstarting traffic on this site: answering questions on Quora and posting videos to YouTube. Both still send traffic today even though neither channel has been actively updated in six-plus months. Quora in particular keeps delivering visitors long after the last answer was posted, which makes it a solid early-stage traffic strategy for a new site.

Site 2: The Rising Star (Started October 25, 2018)

Site 2 launched about seven weeks after Site 1, on October 25, 2018. The first 30 blog posts were completed in the first week of January 2019. Here are the 16-month analytics:

Page views: 9,296
Unique views: 8,714
Average time on page: 3 minutes 36 seconds
Bounce rate: 90.5%
Exit percent: 88.96%

The 90.5% bounce rate here compared to Site 1’s 42.32% tells almost the entire story. The difference is the WordPress theme. Site 2 is running a heavier, slower theme instead of Avocado. Slow-loading pages lose visitors. Someone who clicks in from Google and waits an extra second or two for a page to render will leave. The content might be identical in quality, the articles might answer the same questions just as well, but if the site is slow, the bounce rate climbs and readers don’t explore further. This is one of the clearest investments a new blogger can make even before buying additional courses or tools.

The traffic source distribution on Site 2 is exactly what you want to see: organic search leads the way, followed by direct, social, and referral. That is the correct order for a content site built on organic search principles. When organic is at the top, it means Google is finding the content, ranking it, and sending free visitors over and over without any additional work.

Site 2 is also in a much broader niche with a wider audience compared to Site 1. The audience breakdown shows traffic from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and India. First-world country audiences tend to have stronger buying habits. They’re more likely to click an affiliate link, buy a product, or click an ad. When you’re building a content site around affiliate marketing or ad revenue, audience geography matters for monetization.

This site was also running the Blog to Social plugin with a full 52-week schedule of posts. Over a year before this update, all the posts were queued and scheduled to go out to social media accounts daily or weekly. That automation keeps social traffic trickling in without requiring any active management. Set it up once, walk away, and the system keeps posting.

At 16 months, Site 2 shows signs of the hockey stick traffic growth that Project 24 describes: slow and steady early, then beginning to curve upward as more content ranks and earns more links over time. The trend at the 16-month mark looks encouraging. The niche is broad, the audience is right, and the traffic sources point in the correct direction.

Site 3: The Local Ad Play (Created July 2018)

Site 3 is the oldest of the four in terms of domain creation, launched in July 2018 around Kenosha County, Wisconsin. The original concept was not about blogging for affiliate income. The plan was to build a local news and events site, generate organic traffic, and then sell ad space to local Kenosha businesses at rates cheaper than what they would pay in the Chicago market.

Since Kenosha sits in the Chicago metro area, local businesses often face Chicago-level advertising prices. A smaller, more affordable local option could attract advertisers who can’t compete with those rates. The pitch would be: “I’m getting 10,000 monthly visitors. One percent of that could realistically grow your business.” Then monetize the audience through direct ad sales rather than affiliate commissions or display ads.

The strategy made sense on paper. Build the traffic first, then walk into local businesses with proof in hand. But the execution hit a wall. By December 2018 and January 2019, a plan was in place to create content for four separate content tracks on this site simultaneously. That is a recipe for burnout when you have a full-time job, a spouse, and three kids at home.

It might work if one of those major life obligations is absent. But trying to maintain four distinct content tracks on top of a career and family almost guarantees that at least one of them stalls. In this case, Site 3 stalled. At 16 months, it has fewer than 20 blog posts, direct traffic leads over organic, and the ambitious local advertising vision never got off the ground.

One genuinely useful data point from Site 3: LinkedIn appears in the traffic sources. LinkedIn doesn’t come up often in blogging traffic conversations, but it functions as a search engine with a global professional audience. Posting blog excerpts or short summaries to LinkedIn with a link to the full article can drive real visitors, especially for content with a professional or business angle. It’s an underused channel that can produce results when more common social platforms plateau.

Site 4: The Pound-for-Pound Winner

Site 4 is the most efficient site in the portfolio. That’s the word that matters here: efficient. Not the biggest, not the oldest, but the site producing the most results per piece of content published. At the 16-month mark, Site 4 has fewer than 15 blog posts. The first piece of content went live in January 2019. The site has a logo, no images, affiliate links, and text. That’s the full setup.

Here are the 16-month analytics:

Page views: approximately 9,463
Unique views: 8,532
Average time on page: 4 minutes
Bounce rate: 87.74%
Exit percent: 87.38%

Nearly 9,500 page views from fewer than 15 blog posts. The organic traffic channel leads the way on this site, which is exactly what a Project 24 site should look like at this stage. The niche was chosen well: not too narrow and not too broad. The content targets keywords that real people search for regularly. Google picked it up, and the traffic reflects that.

The traffic source mix confirms the niche selection worked: organic leads, followed by direct, referral, and social. Facebook appears in the data even though the content was never actively shared there. Someone found an article and posted it to a group or their own feed, which sent a few hundred visits. That kind of organic sharing happens when the content answers a real question that a community cares about.

Site 4 is the proof-of-concept argument for Project 24: get the niche right, write the content well, target the right keywords, and the traffic comes without shortcuts or paid promotion. The simplicity of the site (no images, minimal design) also matters. A fast-loading page with clear text and relevant affiliate links in the right context often outperforms a slower, prettier site built on a weaker niche.

The lessons from Site 1’s early keyword research struggles directly informed the niche selection and content strategy on Site 4. The skills built from getting it wrong the first time are what made getting it right the second, third, and fourth time possible.

Not sure which niche fits your background and experience?

Answer a few questions and get a match in under two minutes at finder.platformproof.com.

The Avocado Theme: One Change, Two Very Different Bounce Rates

The most visible lesson across these four sites is what a single WordPress theme choice does to your analytics. Site 1 uses the Avocado theme, which Project 24 provides free to members. Site 2 uses a heavier, slower theme. The result is a 42% bounce rate on Site 1 versus a 90% bounce rate on Site 2.

A 42% bounce rate means that 58 out of 100 visitors who land on a page click through to a second page on the same site. That’s strong internal navigation, which tells search engines that the site has relevant, connected content. A 90% bounce rate means 90 out of 100 visitors leave after reading just one page. That is not automatically a disaster since some single-page visits are valid, but it limits how many readers explore the rest of what you’ve built.

The Avocado theme was designed specifically to load fast and keep readers on the page longer. If you’re not in a position to invest in the full Project 24 course, the Avocado theme is worth looking into on its own. The speed improvement is measurable and it shows up directly in your bounce rate data and in how long visitors stick around.

Traffic Channels That Actually Worked

Across these four sites over 16 months, three traffic channels outside of direct Google search proved worth the effort:

Quora: Answering questions in your niche on Quora sends referral traffic that keeps coming months after your last answer. On Site 1, Quora still appears in the traffic sources even though no new answers have been posted in roughly six months. If your site is new and Google hasn’t ranked your content yet, Quora is one of the fastest ways to get real visitors while you build organic traction. Find questions in your niche, write thorough answers, and link back to a relevant blog post on your site.

YouTube: Both Site 1 and Site 2 benefit from YouTube traffic. Project 24 added YouTube content to the course after the initial launch, recognizing that video and blogging work together. A YouTube video on the same topic as a blog post creates two search-optimized assets instead of one. The visitor who finds the video might never discover the blog otherwise, and the reader who finds the article might not know the video exists.

LinkedIn: This one doesn’t come up often in blogging circles, but Site 3’s traffic data shows LinkedIn as a real source. LinkedIn is a search engine. People search for professional development, local information, and business insights there every day. Posting a paragraph from your blog post or a short summary with a link to the full article can drive traffic from an audience that most content creators ignore completely.

The Blog to Social plugin was used across multiple sites to automate social distribution. When a new post publishes, the plugin automatically sends it to every connected social media account. That is how Facebook traffic appeared in Site 1’s analytics without any manual sharing. The plugin was configured once and ran in the background for over a year without needing any active management.

Real Numbers Across All Four Sites at 16 Months

Here is a side-by-side breakdown of where each site stood at the 16-month mark:

Site 1 (Sept 2018, 95-100 posts): 17,000 page views, 10,000 unique visitors, 46-second average time on page, 42.32% bounce rate. Traffic sources: direct leads, then Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Quora, YouTube, Google. Avocado theme in use.
Site 2 (Oct 2018, 30-50 posts): 9,296 page views, 8,714 unique visitors, 3 minutes 36 seconds average time on page, 90.5% bounce rate. Traffic sources: organic leads correctly. Heavier non-Avocado theme in use. US, Canada, UK, India audience.
Site 3 (July 2018, under 20 posts): Stalled. Direct traffic leads over organic. Local Kenosha content site that never hit scale due to burnout from managing four sites simultaneously.
Site 4 (Jan 2019 content start, under 15 posts): approximately 9,463 page views, 8,532 unique visitors, 4-minute average time on page, 87.74% bounce rate. Organic traffic leads correctly. No images, no design investment, just affiliate-linked text content in a well-chosen niche.

Site 4 is the outlier in the best possible way. Fewer than 15 posts, content started only 12 months before this data was pulled, and it nearly matched Sites 1 and 2 in raw traffic. The output-to-input ratio on Site 4 is the highest of the group. The reason traces directly back to niche selection and keyword targeting done well from the beginning.

What Running Four Sites at Once Actually Taught

The experiment of managing four blogging websites while working full-time with a family produced one clear verdict: don’t. Two sites is manageable with discipline. Three is a stretch. Four is where burnout becomes nearly inevitable if you have other major obligations on your time.

The Project 24 framework itself evolved over time. The original recommendation was to start two sites in parallel and alternate content between them. More recent guidance has shifted toward building one larger site with sub-niches instead. For example, rather than running a separate basketball site and a separate youth sports site, you would build one umbrella site and create sub-sections for high school, college, youth training, and accessories.

That structure keeps all the organic authority in one domain rather than splitting it across multiple smaller sites, each competing for Google’s attention with far less total content. If you’re starting from scratch today, concentrating your output into one well-structured site with a clear niche umbrella will likely produce results faster than spreading the same number of articles across four separate domains.

Find Your X

The single biggest variable separating Site 4 from the other three is niche selection. Site 4 picked a niche that was broad enough to support real search volume but specific enough to rank without competing against massive media sites from day one. That combination is what drives organic traffic at scale without paid advertising. If you’re trying to figure out which niche fits your background, your interests, and the market demand you can realistically capture, the Platform Proof Finder will help you identify it. Go to finder.platformproof.com and answer a few questions to get your match.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Income School Project 24?

Income School Project 24 is a content marketing course designed to help creators build blogging websites that generate passive income through affiliate marketing and ad revenue using 100% organic search traffic. The name refers to the goal of reaching income replacement within 24 months by following a structured 60-step launch framework, where 30 of those steps are the actual blog posts and 30 are site setup tasks.

How long does it take to see traffic on a Project 24 blog?

It varies significantly by niche selection and keyword targeting quality. Site 1 and Site 2 both showed meaningful organic traffic within 12 to 16 months. Site 4 reached roughly 9,400 page views in its first 12 months of content production. Site 3 stalled below 20 posts and never built real momentum. The biggest factor is whether the niche and keyword choices are sound from the start, not just the number of posts published.

Is the Avocado WordPress theme required for Project 24?

No, it is not required, but the data across these four sites makes a strong case for using it. Site 1 on Avocado had a 42% bounce rate. Site 2 on a heavier theme had a 90% bounce rate. The speed difference is significant and shows up directly in analytics. Project 24 members get Avocado free with the course. If you’re not a member, it is worth considering as a standalone investment based purely on the bounce rate impact.

Can you really run four blogging websites at the same time?

Technically yes, but the real question is whether you can produce enough quality content across four sites to make all of them grow. With a full-time job, a spouse, and three children, the answer based on this 16-month experiment is no. Two sites are workable with discipline. Three are difficult. Four lead to burnout and stalled content on at least one or two of them. The recommendation is to build one or two sites well rather than four sites poorly.

Does Quora actually drive traffic to a blog?

Yes, and it keeps driving traffic long after you stop posting there. Quora answers in your niche continue sending visitors for months without any additional effort on your part. It is one of the most practical traffic channels for a new site that hasn’t ranked on Google yet. The key is answering questions thoroughly and linking to a genuinely relevant blog post rather than just dropping a link with no context. Quora’s moderation will remove answers that look like spam.

What is the Blog to Social plugin?

Blog to Social is a premium WordPress plugin that automatically distributes new blog posts to connected social media accounts. When you publish a post, the plugin sends it out to Facebook, LinkedIn, and other platforms you’ve set up. Sites 1 and 2 both used it with 52-week scheduling queues configured in advance, meaning social posts go out automatically without any ongoing management after the initial setup.

What makes a good niche for a Project 24 blog?

Based on these four sites, the ideal niche is broad enough to support at least 100 articles without repeating the same topics, specific enough that you’re not competing directly with major media outlets from day one, and consistent in search demand year-round rather than tied to seasonal spikes. Site 4 hit this combination and produced the strongest results per post. Site 1 got the niche wrong on two dimensions: too narrow and too seasonal.

Is Project 24 worth it for someone just starting out?

The assessment at 16 months is yes, with a caveat. The course is genuinely valuable and the organic-first approach holds up across the data. The caveat is that keyword research and niche selection are skills that develop over time, and the gap between doing them roughly right and doing them well is wider than it looks at the start. The learning curve on Site 1 directly made Site 4 more effective. The sooner you get honest feedback on your niche choice and keyword strategy, the faster the sites compound.

Sources

Income School Project 24 course (joined September 7, 2018)
Site 1 Google Analytics: 17,000 page views, 10,000 unique visitors, 42.32% bounce rate, 46-second average time on page
Site 2 Google Analytics: 9,296 page views, 8,714 unique visitors, 90.5% bounce rate, 3 minutes 36 seconds average time on page
Site 4 Google Analytics: approximately 9,463 page views, 8,532 unique visitors, 87.74% bounce rate, 4-minute average time on page
Avocado WordPress theme (free with Project 24 membership)
Blog to Social plugin (premium; auto-publishes new posts to connected social media accounts)