Income School Project 24 Weekly Update (June 15-21) – Site Progress & New Theme Review

Three blogs. Three very different traffic stories. One free theme that just dropped for Income School Project 24 members. If you are in the trenches of blogging right now and wondering whether the system is actually working, this June 15-21 weekly update from Alston’s own Project 24 journey is the kind of real-numbers breakdown most bloggers never share publicly. No inflated screenshots. No cherry-picked wins. Just three sites at different stages, their actual daily pageview counts, where the traffic is coming from, and what needs to get fixed.

Alston has been building these sites since as early as September 2018 following the Income School method created by Jim and Ricky. Project 24’s promise is straightforward: follow the process and you can replace your full-time income with passive income inside 24 months through blogging and affiliate marketing. This update covers the week of June 15 through June 21 across his largest site, a mid-size site, and a smaller local city niche site. Here is exactly what the numbers looked like.

What You’ll Walk Out With

Exact pageview counts for three real Project 24 blogs at different stages of growth
An honest breakdown of traffic sources including Google organic, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Facebook, and direct
Why the new free Income School theme can change your site speed rankings and what that means for Google
The specific reason Amazon affiliate commissions (4-10%) leave money on the table compared to digital products
The quick wins Alston identified for each site: interlinking, Amazon link placement, YouTube embeds, and better monetization
What a local city niche blog looks like in practice and whether Google organic is picking it up
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The New Project 24 Theme Is Free for Members (And Why That Matters for Rankings)

The first thing Alston covers in this update is the new free theme that Income School released to all Project 24 members. His largest site had been running on X Theme, which is a paid premium WordPress theme many bloggers in the space use. Income School built their own theme and made it available at no extra cost to everyone already enrolled in Project 24. At the time of this update, the theme was still in beta, meaning Jim and Ricky had not yet given the all-clear to install it on every site. Alston had already installed it on his main site but was holding off on his two newer blogs until the bugs were confirmed fixed.

Why does this matter? Site speed is a direct ranking factor for Google. When you have dozens or hundreds of blog posts pulling in images, logos, and various fonts, a slow-loading theme can quietly drag your search rankings down without you ever knowing why. Alston says he actually created a separate video that week comparing the page speed scores between X Theme and the new Income School theme. He showed some real emotion in that video, which tells you the speed difference was significant enough to feel. A faster site means pages load quicker for visitors, Google’s crawlers score the experience higher, and posts that are sitting on page two have a better shot at breaking into the top results. For a site with 97 blog posts and 25 YouTube videos embedded across the content, this is not a small upgrade.

The theme reportedly competes with major business sites in terms of professional appearance and speed. For Project 24 members who were previously paying for X Theme, switching to this free alternative is an immediate cost saving plus a potential ranking improvement. Once the beta period is over, non-members will be able to purchase the theme separately, but enrolled students get it as part of what Alston calls a strong return on investment in the overall course.

Site 1: 97 Blog Posts, 25 YouTube Videos, and About 750 Pageviews per Month

Alston’s largest site launched September 7, 2018. By the time of this June update, it had accumulated 97 blog posts and 25 YouTube videos embedded across the content. The traffic had been relatively flat for a while, which is a common experience in the early stages of any blog following the Project 24 method. Then things started to shift. During the June 15-21 week, the site was pulling in roughly 25 to 30 page views per day. That works out to somewhere around 750 pageviews per month, which Alston describes as pretty good progress.

One of the more meaningful signs in the data is that organic search had finally overtaken direct traffic as the leading source of visits. For bloggers who understand how traffic works, this is an important milestone. Direct traffic often comes from people who already know you or who clicked a YouTube link. Organic search means strangers are finding your content through Google searches, which is the foundation of the Project 24 passive income model. Once organic leads the way, the growth tends to compound over time because new posts keep getting indexed while older ones continue to age and rise in the rankings.

The full traffic breakdown for Site 1 during this week included visitors from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India, UAE, China, Netherlands, Panama, Portugal, and Senegal. Beyond Google organic, other sources included Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, Facebook, AOL (which Alston jokes about), and what appears to be WordPress’s own reader. The fact that Bing and DuckDuckGo are contributing traffic is a quiet win. Those search engines index content without the intense competition that Google carries, so they often send traffic to sites that are still building domain authority.

The niche for this site tends to get its biggest traffic boost in the winter months, specifically November and December, because the subject matter aligns with Christmas shopping. Alston specifically mentions this seasonal pattern as a reason to stay the course even when summer traffic feels flat. The plan is to show a full June traffic summary at the end of the month and then a longer multi-month view so subscribers can track how traffic moves as the site ages.

The Amazon Link Strategy That Actually Moved the Needle

Alston mentions that in the previous week’s video, he talked about a change he made to his Amazon Associates links. He described it as adding more engaging or more enticing links out to Amazon. The title of that video was “I Should Have Listened to Jim and Ricky,” which gives you a sense of his tone. He resisted advice from the Income School founders, eventually applied it, and saw his Amazon affiliate revenue increase. The takeaway is that the way you place and present links to Amazon products inside your content affects whether readers actually click them.

This is not just about stuffing more links into posts. It is about context, placement, and making the link feel like a natural next step for someone who is already reading about a product or topic. If a reader lands on a post about outdoor gear and the Amazon link sits buried in the middle of a dense paragraph, fewer people click it. If the link appears in a context that makes clicking feel helpful rather than promotional, conversions improve. Alston applied this principle across his content and saw the revenue move up enough to make a video about it.

Why Amazon Commissions (4 to 10 Percent) Are Only Part of the Story

During this update, Alston flags something that often gets overlooked by new bloggers: the math on affiliate commissions versus digital products. Amazon Associates pays somewhere between 4 and 10 percent depending on the product category. On a $200 product, you are earning $8 to $20 per sale. That adds up over time, but you are always giving away 90 to 96 percent of the transaction to Amazon. The buyer has already decided to spend money. The traffic exists. But the commission ceiling is low.

A few months before this update, Alston had added a couple of ebooks to his largest site. These are digital products that live directly on his blog. When a reader buys one, Alston keeps the full sale price minus taxes and payment processing fees. There is no 4 to 10 percent ceiling. He notes that he had not yet done the work of adding links to these ebooks throughout his existing blog posts, which is the same interlinking strategy he uses for Amazon links. The income school method calls this linking to premium pages. Going back through 97 posts and adding relevant internal links to your own digital products is a time investment, but the return per sale is dramatically higher than any affiliate commission rate.

This distinction matters regardless of whether you use Project 24 or not. Every blogger who monetizes through Amazon or other affiliate programs eventually hits the same ceiling. The path to significantly higher income per visitor runs through owning something: a course, an ebook, a template, a community membership. Alston identifies this as a clear next step for his largest site.

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Site 2: 45 to 55 Posts, 9 to 10 Daily Visits, and a Monetization Audit That Is Overdue

Alston’s second site launched with its first blog post on October 24th and had somewhere between 45 and 55 posts at the time of this update. The niche is larger than Site 1, which gives it more potential ceiling but also more competition. Traffic during the June 15-21 week had settled at about 9 to 10 visits per day, which was actually down from a month or two prior. Alston suspects someone may have scraped and reposted his content, which is a real problem for blogs in competitive niches. A scraper site copies your articles, publishes them under a different domain, and in some cases gets indexed before your original version, splitting or stealing your organic traffic.

Despite the traffic dip, the source breakdown shows Google organic leading, which is the right signal. After Google, the traffic comes from direct visits, then Facebook, then Yahoo, Bing (listed twice in different formats), DuckDuckGo, and Facebook again in a different breakdown. Most of the audience is in the United States, with India and Canada following.

The monetization situation on this site is something Alston openly admits is a problem. He is not confident he has properly monetized it. The site may still have links pointing to an old Amazon Associates account that is no longer active. Old broken links that used to be affiliate links now send traffic to Amazon without any commission being captured. This is money being left on the table every single day the links stay broken. He also identifies interlinking between posts as something that needs attention, plus adding relevant YouTube video embeds. The site has a real traffic foundation starting to form, but the revenue infrastructure has not been built out to match it.

Alston acknowledges honestly that he built this site because he saw a market need rather than because he was personally passionate about the topic. That lack of personal connection to the niche has slowed down some of the work. He still believes a day or two of focused monetization cleanup would produce a meaningful increase in revenue, but that work has not happened yet at the time of this update.

Site 3: The Local City Niche Blog With 15 to 20 Posts and Early Google Signals

The third site is built around the city where Alston lives, targeting travel and summer-related searches. It is the smallest of the three with only 15 to 20 total blog posts. Daily traffic is averaging around 6 pageviews, which is low, but the traffic sources tell an interesting story. Google organic is already contributing 3 of those visits, which means roughly half the daily traffic on a very young, low-post-count site is coming from unpaid search. That is proof the method is working at a small scale.

The rest of the traffic comes from direct visits and social. The most visited pages are visible in the analytics and represent the content that search engines have already decided is relevant to what people in or visiting that city are searching for. Alston’s plan for this site is simple: keep adding content. There is no complex technical fix needed. The Google organic signal proves the content is rankable. More posts on relevant local topics should push traffic higher in proportion to how well each post matches search intent. A local city blog in a travel-heavy area has real potential in the summer and can support affiliate links to hotels, restaurants, local attractions, and experience-based products.

What Is Actually Working After Multiple Months on Project 24

Looking across all three sites, a few patterns stand out from this update. First, the traffic growth on Site 1 is real and accelerating despite being a niche with strong seasonal variation. The 97-post count matters. Income School teaches that blogging is a volume and consistency game in the early stages, and the evidence here backs that up. The site that has the most content is the one showing the clearest upward traffic trend.

Second, organic search is the traffic source that actually builds passive income. Direct traffic from existing followers or YouTube subscribers does not scale the same way. When Google decides a post is worth showing to searchers, that traffic continues arriving week after week without any additional promotional effort. The shift Alston is seeing on Site 1, where organic has passed direct, is the tipping point every Project 24 blogger is working toward.

Third, the revenue-side work almost always lags behind the traffic-side work. Alston has the Amazon link strategy improving on Site 1, but Site 2 still has potentially broken affiliate links that need to be repaired before the traffic produces any income. The lesson here is that traffic growth and income optimization need to run in parallel, not in sequence. Waiting until the traffic is big before fixing the revenue infrastructure means leaving income on the table during the growth phase.

Fourth, the free Income School theme represents real value for Project 24 members. Getting a professionally built, speed-optimized theme at no extra cost removes one of the common stumbling blocks for new bloggers who are trying to minimize expenses while building. Site speed matters to Google, and a theme that is engineered for performance gives every post a better technical foundation from which to rank.

Honest Drawbacks of Project 24 to Know Before You Sign Up

Project 24 is not a fast path. Alston says directly in this video that he is behind on the suggested timeline, and his largest site has been live since September 2018. Multiple months in, the traffic is just starting to pick up on the most developed site and is still quite low on the others. If you need income in the next 30 to 60 days, blogging is not the right tool. The 24-month timeline in the course name is aspirational and depends heavily on consistent publishing, good niche selection, and following the steps correctly.

There is also real work involved in the monetization side that does not happen automatically. Alston admits his second site may have broken Amazon links and has not been properly monetized despite having 45 to 55 posts. Building traffic and building revenue are two separate projects that require separate attention. Many bloggers focus almost exclusively on content creation and then discover months later that the affiliate infrastructure they assumed was in place was either broken or missing entirely.

Finally, blogging in a niche you are not genuinely interested in creates a consistent motivation problem. Site 2 is the slowest-moving of Alston’s three sites from a work output perspective, and he attributes that at least partially to the fact that he built it around a market opportunity rather than a personal passion. Project 24 recommends passion-based niches, and this update shows why that advice exists in practice rather than just in theory.

A Simple Action Plan If You Are Following the Project 24 Method Right Now

Check your Amazon Associates links on every post and confirm they are pointing to an active account before assuming any commission is being captured
Run a speed test on your current theme and compare it to the Income School theme if you are a Project 24 member and have not switched yet
Add internal links from your existing posts to your best-performing content and to any digital products you have created on the site
Check your analytics to confirm whether organic search or direct traffic is leading; if direct is still ahead, prioritize publishing new content over any other growth tactic
If you have a site that is getting organic traffic but producing little revenue, spend one focused session auditing every monetization element before publishing a single new post
Do not wait until one site is fully optimized before starting on the next; parallel site building is part of how the Project 24 income model works over the full 24-month window

Find Your X

Blogging works for some people and not for others. The difference usually comes down to niche selection, personal interest, and realistic expectations about timeline. If you are not sure whether blogging through a system like Project 24 is the right fit for where you are right now, the Platform Proof Finder can help you figure that out in about two minutes. Answer five questions about your skills, your schedule, and what you actually want from an online income, and it will match you with the income model most likely to produce results for your specific situation. Free to use at finder.platformproof.com.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Project 24 by Income School?

Project 24 is a blogging and affiliate marketing course created by Jim Harmer and Ricky Kesler of Income School. The goal is to help members replace their full-time income with passive income within 24 months by building niche blogs that rank in search engines and generate revenue through affiliate links, display ads, and digital product sales. The core curriculum includes a 60-step blogging process plus 13 additional mini-courses covering everything from keyword research to email marketing. Members also get access to exclusive tools, a private community, podcast content, and as of this update, a free proprietary WordPress theme.

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

Based on Alston’s experience, meaningful organic traffic on a brand-new blog can take anywhere from 6 to 18 months or longer. His largest site launched in September 2018 and was just starting to show consistent daily organic traffic at the time of this June update, which is roughly 9 to 10 months later. Income School is transparent that the 24-month timeline is an aspirational target that requires consistent publishing, good niche selection, and following the process steps correctly. Blogs in seasonal niches may also see large swings in monthly traffic based on the time of year.

What is the new Income School WordPress theme and is it actually free?

Income School developed their own WordPress theme and released it to all active Project 24 members at no additional cost. At the time of Alston’s June update, the theme was in beta, meaning Jim and Ricky were still resolving some bugs before recommending it for all sites. The theme is built to load fast, which matters because Google uses page speed as a ranking signal. Non-members will eventually be able to purchase the theme separately, but enrolled Project 24 students receive it as part of their membership. Alston had already installed it on his largest site and was waiting for the beta to clear before adding it to his newer blogs.

How much does Amazon Associates actually pay bloggers?

Amazon Associates commission rates vary by product category, generally ranging from 4 to 10 percent of the sale price. On a $200 product, that means you earn somewhere between $8 and $20 per referred sale. The commission structure has also been reduced by Amazon over the years, meaning rates that bloggers relied on in prior years may no longer apply. This is one reason Alston highlights digital products as a more sustainable income layer for an established blog. When you sell your own ebook or course, you keep 100 percent of the revenue minus taxes and payment processing, rather than the 4 to 10 percent ceiling that affiliate commissions impose.

How many blog posts do you need before Google starts sending traffic?

There is no fixed number, but Alston’s three sites offer a useful comparison. Site 1 with 97 posts is showing meaningful organic traffic growth. Site 2 with 45 to 55 posts has organic search leading the traffic mix but overall daily numbers are still low. Site 3 with 15 to 20 posts is pulling in a few organic visits per day. The pattern suggests that organic traffic tends to become more reliable and consistent as post count climbs past the 50 to 100 range, though niche competition, content quality, and how well posts match search intent all play a significant role alongside volume.

Is it worth building a blog on a niche you are not personally interested in?

Alston’s experience with Site 2 suggests the answer is probably no, at least for most people. He built that site because he identified a market opportunity rather than a personal interest, and it is the site that has received the least amount of consistent work. Monetization has not been fully set up. Interlinking has been skipped. Content growth has been slower. Income School’s curriculum recommends passion-based niches partly because the work of blogging is substantial enough that sustained motivation matters. A niche you find genuinely interesting makes it far easier to publish consistently over the 12 to 24 months that meaningful traffic growth requires.

Why does site speed matter for Google rankings?

Google uses a set of signals called Core Web Vitals to measure how fast and stable a page feels to a real visitor. Sites that load quickly, do not shift their layout around as content appears, and respond instantly to user interactions score higher on these metrics. Google has confirmed that Core Web Vitals are a ranking factor, meaning two posts with similar content quality can rank differently based on how fast their respective sites load. For bloggers with dozens or hundreds of posts, using a theme that is optimized for speed gives every page on the site a better technical baseline from which to compete in search results.

What should you focus on first when you already have a blog but traffic is low?

If you have fewer than 50 posts, the answer is almost always more content. Alston’s Site 3 is a clear example: the only prescription he identifies is to keep adding posts on relevant local topics. If you have 50 or more posts but traffic is still low, the next step is a content audit to check whether your posts are targeting searchable topics with genuine informational intent. If traffic exists but revenue is low, the priority shifts to fixing broken affiliate links, improving link placement within posts, and adding internal links to any digital products on the site. In Alston’s case with Site 2, all three of those revenue-side fixes are waiting to be done.

Sources

Income School Project 24 weekly update video by Alston Godbolt, June 15-21 coverage
Income School website: Project 24 course overview and curriculum details
Amazon Associates program commission rate schedule (categories referenced: general merchandise range 4-10%)
Google Search Central documentation on Core Web Vitals as ranking signals