Income School Project 24 Update: 3 Sites Reviewed + A New Business Idea

Ten months into building three websites at once, and the traffic numbers are not what the sales page promised. That is exactly the point. This is a real-time update from the week of July 20 to 27, 2019, covering three active content sites at different stages, different niches, and very different results. One site has 97 posts and almost no Google traffic. Another is gaining traction in a bigger niche. A third is a local experiment with nine page views for the month. And buried in all of it is one practical idea that could turn a struggling local site into a real business.

If you have ever bought a blogging or content course and wondered why your numbers look nothing like the success stories, this update is for you. The trajectory is real, the stats are unfiltered, and the strategy adjustments are honest. Here is what happened and what it means for anyone working the same model.

What You’ll Walk Out With

What Income School’s Project 24 actually teaches and why the name means what it means
Real weekly traffic data for a 97-post site at the 10-month mark, including the breakdown by source
Why Google nearly disappeared from one site’s traffic and which search engines picked up the slack
How a smaller 35-post site performed differently in a larger, more competitive niche
A local “tribal site” strategy built around one city and why it pivoted from ad sales to web design
The YouTube interlinking strategy that could multiply traffic from existing posts without writing a single new article
An honest list of drawbacks that come with running three content sites simultaneously
How to figure out which online income model fits your actual situation at finder.platformproof.com

What Is Income School Project 24?

Project 24 is a course created by Income School that teaches people how to build content websites and YouTube channels from scratch. The “24” in the name refers to the core promise of the program: you can replace your full-time income with passive income in 24 months if you follow the method correctly. That is the goal on paper. In practice, the path involves writing dozens of blog posts before most sites earn a dollar, waiting through a period when Google barely acknowledges your content exists, and trusting that consistent work compounds over time.

When the course first launched, it focused primarily on blogging. Since then, Income School added a YouTube component. The updated version of Project 24 teaches both channels together, because the combination of long-form blog content and video content is what drives sustained, compounding traffic. The course also includes a 60-step process that walks students through everything from choosing a niche to publishing, promoting, and monetizing content.

In this update, all three sites follow the Project 24 framework. The key benchmarks the course emphasizes are the first 30 posts (get them up as fast as possible), a minimum of six months before expecting meaningful Google traffic, and a multi-year mindset. These are the guardrails that shape every decision in this weekly update.

Site One: 97 Posts and 10 Months of Real Data

This is the largest and oldest of the three sites. It launched September 7, 2018, which means the week of July 20 to 27, 2019, marks roughly ten months of active publishing. In the first 45 days after launch, the first 30 posts went live. An additional 67 posts followed over the next eight months, bringing the total to 97 published blog posts at the time of this update.

For the week of July 20 to 27, the numbers looked like this:

Total page views: 270
Unique views: 260
Average time on page: 6 minutes and 10 seconds
Average daily page views: roughly 35 to 45
Traffic by source: 113 direct, 99 organic, 26 social, 3 referral
YouTube channel: 28 videos, 28 subscribers

The 6-minute, 10-second average time on page is actually a strong signal. It tells you that readers who arrive stay and read. The content holds attention. That metric often matters more than raw traffic at this stage, because it affects bounce rate, session quality, and ultimately ad revenue once the site monetizes. A visitor who reads for six minutes is worth more to an advertiser than one who skims for 30 seconds.

The more complicated number is the organic traffic breakdown. Of the 99 organic visits, Google contributed only 8. Bing led organic search, followed by Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Quora, and Facebook. For a site with 97 posts that has been live for ten months, that is a genuinely low Google number. The site was still waiting for the Google sandbox to lift.

There was also a notable spike in direct traffic. A portion of that came from what appeared to be automated hacking attempts rather than genuine human visitors. This is common for newer sites that begin showing up in public databases of WordPress installations. It skews the direct traffic number up without representing real audience growth.

Geographic traffic breakdown: United States led, followed by United Kingdom, Canada, India, and the Netherlands. This gives you a sense of where the niche has international reach. The US leading heavily suggests the content is written primarily for an American audience, but the UK and Canada numbers show meaningful English-language appeal across borders.

Why Google Was Nearly Absent at Month Ten

This is the part that shakes most new content creators. You have published 97 articles. You have followed the method. And Google is sending you eight visitors a week. The explanation inside the Project 24 model is what practitioners call the “Google sandbox,” an informal term for the period when a new site’s content exists in Google’s index but has not yet earned the trust signals that push it to page one. It is not a penalty. It is a waiting period.

Most Project 24 practitioners report that this sandbox period lasts anywhere from six to eighteen months depending on the niche, competition level, and quality of content. For this site at month ten, Google organic was at 8 visits. The expectation shared in the update is that Google would eventually find the content and multiply traffic two to three times once that trust threshold is crossed. In the meantime, Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo were delivering real traffic. These smaller search engines tend to trust new sites faster than Google does.

The practical implication: if you are judging a Project 24 site at month ten by Google traffic alone, you are measuring the wrong thing at the wrong time. The better indicator at this stage is whether your content quality is holding readers when they do arrive. The 6:10 average session time says yes.

Site Two: 35 Posts in a Larger, More Competitive Niche

The second site launched later, on October 25, 2018. Publishing moved quickly: the first 30 posts were live by the first week of January 2019, a pace of roughly 30 posts in 10 weeks. At the time of this update, the site had 35 published posts total, fewer than Site One, but it was operating in a much larger niche with higher search volume and more established competition.

Stats for the same week of July 20 to 27:

Total page views: 115
Unique views: 107
Average time on page: 2 minutes and 12 seconds

The standout difference with Site Two: Google organic actually led all traffic sources. In contrast to Site One, where Google delivered almost nothing, Site Two was getting the majority of its organic traffic from Google. That is a notable split. Two sites, same method, same general time frame, and one is in Google’s good graces while the other is still waiting. Niche selection and competition level almost certainly explain part of the gap, as do content structure and keyword targeting decisions made early in the process.

Traffic came primarily from the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and India, in that order. The geographic ordering matched expectations for the niche, which naturally serves those four English-speaking markets in descending priority.

The 2-minute, 12-second average time on page is the flag worth watching here. Compared to Site One’s six-plus minutes, this is significantly lower. It could mean the posts are shorter or more answer-focused. It could mean readers are finding their answer quickly and leaving, which is fine for certain types of informational content. Or it could signal an opportunity to add more depth, internal links, and related content to extend the session. At 35 posts and under nine months old, there is room to diagnose and improve.

Site Three: A Local Experiment Called Learn Kenosha

The third site is unlike either of the other two. This is what gets called a “tribal site” in some content circles: a hyper-local content site built around a single city. In this case, the site is learnkenosha.com, focused entirely on Kenosha, Wisconsin, where Alston lives.

The traffic numbers for the month: nine total page views. Yes, nine. This is the early stage of a local content site that has not yet built the content volume needed to show up consistently in local search. But the organic search that did come through was led by Google, which is actually the right foundation. Google-led organic means the content that exists is being found, just not in large numbers yet.

The original business model for Learn Kenosha was to sell advertising space to local restaurants and businesses. The pitch would be: here is a local site your customers read, and you can put your ad here instead of paying Yelp or similar platforms for visibility. It is a legitimate local media model. But the problem became obvious fast. You cannot sell advertising on a site that does not have traffic yet. Content has to come first, audience second, monetization third.

So the model shifted. The updated version has two revenue paths. The first stays the same: build content and audience, then approach restaurants and local businesses about ad space as an alternative to Yelp. The second is new: offer web design services directly to local businesses that do not have a website yet. Many small local restaurants, shops, and service providers are still operating without a functioning website. A person who already knows how to build sites, write content, and drive traffic has a real value proposition for those businesses. Web design fees can fund the project while the organic traffic grows.

One tool that was running in the background during this entire period: Blog2Social. This plugin automatically syndicates new and updated content to social media platforms. Alston noted that he does not manually post about Learn Kenosha at all, but Blog2Social had been automatically distributing content for 20 weeks. The result in the traffic data was a Facebook referral showing up without any manual effort. Small, but automated. That is what you want running on a site you are not actively promoting yet.

Traffic came from Kenosha itself, as well as Idaho, Illinois, Maryland, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. A local city site picking up visitors from multiple states suggests the content has some broader geographic pull, possibly from people researching Kenosha for a visit or relocation, or from people with ties to the city living elsewhere.

Not sure which online income model fits your situation?

Answer six questions and get a clear recommendation at finder.platformproof.com.

The New Idea: A YouTube Channel Built Around Your Commute

The most actionable new idea from this update applies directly to Learn Kenosha, but the underlying principle is usable anywhere. Alston proposed starting a dedicated YouTube channel focused exclusively on Kenosha content, completely separate from his main channel.

The logic is practical. Local landmarks, events, neighborhoods, restaurants, and points of interest are exactly the kind of content you can film without a studio or elaborate setup. If you drive through your city on the way home from work, you are passing content every day. Point a camera at a landmark, explain what it is, talk about the history or the best time to visit, and post it. A channel built entirely around one city creates a local discovery hub that both residents and visitors have reason to watch. Over time, that YouTube presence feeds traffic back to the local blog, and the two properties support each other.

The key decision was to keep this channel completely separate from the main channel. Mixing Kenosha content into a channel built around online income and affiliate marketing would confuse the audience and dilute the purpose. Two clear channels, each serving a distinct audience, is cleaner than one channel trying to serve everyone.

The YouTube Interlinking Strategy for Site One

For the main site with 97 posts, the strategy going forward centers on YouTube videos and how they connect to blog content. At the time of this update, the site had 28 YouTube videos and 28 subscribers. Alston had previously posted twice a week, paused for a period, and returned to a weekly schedule.

The competitive advantage this creates is worth paying attention to. Many of the larger, more established brands in this niche do not have YouTube channels. They have built their traffic entirely through written content and domain authority. A newer site cannot out-domain-authority a five-year-old brand in the short term. But a newer site can create video content that the bigger brand has not thought to produce. When a reader searches YouTube for answers the big blog covers in text but never in video, the newer site’s YouTube channel can appear in that gap.

The plan was to create YouTube videos specifically around topics already covered in the blog, then interlink the two. A blog post gets an embedded video at the top. The YouTube video gets a link to the full blog post in the description. That bidirectional link creates two discovery paths instead of one, and each successful video drives traffic back to a post that already exists and ranks for related search terms.

Honest Drawbacks: What the Update Reveals

This update is useful precisely because it does not hide the hard parts. Here are the real trade-offs that appear in the numbers.

Ten months and 97 posts, with 8 Google organic visits in one week. That is a long time to wait for the biggest search engine to recognize your work. The Project 24 model says patience is part of the process, and that assessment may be correct. But anyone who enters this model should go in knowing this is a real possibility for the first year.
Site Two’s 2:12 average session time signals a depth problem. Low session time on a content site limits future ad revenue potential and suggests readers are not finding enough reason to stay and explore. This needs to be addressed through longer posts, better internal linking, and stronger content architecture before the site scales.
Site Three (Learn Kenosha) had nine page views in a full month. As a business concept with real monetization goals, this is still at zero. The web design pivot is promising, but it requires outbound sales effort and client management, which is fundamentally different from passive content income. Be honest with yourself about whether you want to add a service business on top of a content project.
Running three sites divides time and attention. Three sites at different stages, with different strategies, different niches, and different tools, means every hour spent on one is an hour not spent on the others. For someone with a day job, that is a meaningful trade-off. The portfolio approach to content sites has real upsides when it works, but it also means none of the three sites gets the concentrated effort that a single-focus strategy would allow.

Find Your X

Three sites. Three very different results. The right model depends entirely on your situation: how much time you have, what niche you understand deeply, whether you want to build passively or sell services, and how long you are willing to wait before the numbers move. Watching ten months of real data from multiple sites gives you a much more honest baseline than any highlight reel does.

If you are not sure where to start or which approach fits your actual life, take six minutes and answer the questions at finder.platformproof.com. The tool helps you match your skills, time, and goals to the income model most likely to work for your specific situation, not the one that looks best in a YouTube thumbnail.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Income School Project 24?

Project 24 is a paid course from Income School that teaches you to build content websites and YouTube channels with the goal of replacing your full-time income within 24 months. The course covers niche selection, content writing, publishing frequency, keyword research, and monetization through ads and affiliate income. It originally focused only on blogging and later added a YouTube track to address how the two work together.

How long does it take to get Google traffic with a Project 24 site?

Based on real data from this update, a 97-post site at ten months was receiving only 8 Google organic visits per week. This is consistent with what practitioners call the “Google sandbox” period, during which new sites are indexed but not heavily ranked. Most Project 24 users report that meaningful Google traffic begins between months 6 and 18. Niche, competition level, and content quality all affect the timeline. Plan for at least one year before drawing conclusions.

Do you need 30 blog posts before your site gets traction?

The 30-post milestone is a Project 24 benchmark, not a magic number. The idea is that a site with fewer than 30 posts does not have enough content for search engines to understand what it is about or for readers to explore when they arrive. In practice, getting your first 30 posts up as quickly as possible creates a foundation that search engines can evaluate. Traffic rarely arrives meaningfully before that threshold. Both Site One and Site Two in this update had their first 30 posts up within their first 10 weeks.

What is a tribal or local content site?

A tribal site is a content website built around a specific community, group, or geographic area rather than a broad topic. In this update, Learn Kenosha is a local tribal site targeting one city. The audience is people who live in, visit, or have a connection to Kenosha, Wisconsin. The appeal of this model is that local competition is usually much lower than broad national niches, and there are real offline monetization opportunities like selling ad space to local restaurants or building websites for local businesses without an online presence.

What does Blog2Social do and is it worth using?

Blog2Social is a WordPress plugin that automatically syndicates your blog content to social media platforms when you publish or update a post. You connect your social accounts, set your preferences, and the plugin handles distribution without manual posting. In this update, Blog2Social had been running on Learn Kenosha for 20 weeks without any manual intervention from Alston and was responsible for generating a Facebook referral visit. For a site you are not actively promoting, automated social distribution is a no-cost way to maintain a presence while you build content volume.

Can you really replace your income in 24 months with content sites?

The honest answer based on this ten-month update is: possibly, but not always, and the timeline varies significantly. At month ten, Site One was generating 270 page views per week. That is not income-replacing traffic at any realistic CPM. The model requires a longer runway than many people expect. Some niches and content strategies reach income replacement in 24 months. Others take longer. The 24-month goal is a realistic best case, not a guaranteed outcome. Most people who succeed with this model do so by sticking with it past the point where most people quit.

What is ClickFunnels and how does it fit into a content marketing strategy?

ClickFunnels is an all-in-one email marketing and sales funnel platform. It handles landing pages, email autoresponders, and list management in a single interface. The reason it gets mentioned alongside a content site strategy is email list building. When you have blog traffic, capturing email addresses gives you a direct line to your audience that does not depend on search engine rankings or social media algorithms. Alston mentions ClickFunnels specifically because it uses a drag-and-drop builder with no coding required and keeps landing pages, email sequences, and list management in one place instead of across multiple separate tools.

Is running multiple content sites at the same time a good strategy for beginners?

Probably not for most beginners. Running three sites simultaneously, as shown in this update, means splitting your time and attention across three different niches, content calendars, and traffic-building efforts. The upside is diversification: if one niche stops working, the others continue. The downside is that none of the sites gets the full focus that a concentrated effort would produce. Most experts in the content site space recommend getting one site to consistent traffic before starting a second. The multi-site approach in this update reflects a specific learning and experimentation mindset, not a prescription for fastest results.

Sources

Income School Project 24 weekly update video, week of July 20 to 27, 2019 (Alston Godbolt, YouTube)
Income School / Project 24 course (incomeschool.com)
Blog2Social WordPress plugin (blog2social.com)
ClickFunnels (clickfunnels.com)