Project 24 Income School 10-Month Update: Are My Sites Growing or Failing? (Full Breakdown!)

Ten months into Project 24, the question is no longer whether the model works in theory. It is whether it is working right now across four real sites with real traffic numbers. In this update, Alston walks through every site in his portfolio, site one through site four, sharing the actual monthly pageview counts, the traffic sources, the mistakes, and the honest verdict on where each property stands at the 10-month mark.

The short version: Site 1 is growing steadily but slower than the Income School timeline predicts. Site 2 is trending upward after being left alone for months. Site 3 is a local directory experiment with a declining traffic curve. And Site 4, which has fewer than 10 blog posts and no affiliate links, is quietly pulling in organic traffic from Bing, Google, and Yahoo. There are real lessons in all four of these outcomes, and none of them require you to guess.

What You’ll Walk Out With

Exact monthly pageview numbers for all four sites at the 10-month mark
Why Bing and Yahoo generated more organic traffic than Google on Site 1
How the Blog to Social plugin automated publishing across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn
What happens to a niche site you stop touching for four months
How swapping to the Project 24 WordPress theme raised PageSpeed scores from 53 to 85
Why poor keyword research in month one is still costing traffic in month ten
The honest case for and against pursuing Income School’s 24-month passive income timeline
Not sure which online income path fits your background? Find out at finder.platformproof.com

What Project 24 Actually Promises

Project 24 is a course membership from Income School, run by Jim Harmer and Ricky Kesler. The core promise: follow their 60-step process, publish blog posts using their format, and you can replace a full-time income with passive income within 24 months. Alston enrolled on September 7, 2018, which makes this a true 10-month mark from day one.

The program has grown since that launch date. What started as a blogging system now includes a complete YouTube course for creators who want to build video alongside written content, and a purpose-built WordPress theme called Acabado. Acabado was provided free to existing Project 24 members. It loads fast out of the box, is structured for SEO, and scored an 85 to 90 on Google PageSpeed Insights after installation, compared to a 53 on the previous setup. Google uses PageSpeed as one of its ranking signals, so that jump matters when two posts are competing for the same keyword.

Site 1: The Flagship (95-100 Blog Posts)

This is the oldest site in the portfolio and the most developed. Alston published the first 35 blog posts in 45 days after enrolling on September 7, 2018. He stepped back briefly, then returned in mid-January 2019 and continued adding content, reaching somewhere between 95 and 100 total posts by the 10-month mark. The site also carries roughly 25 YouTube videos.

Total traffic over the period: 4,200 pageviews and 3,747 unique views. Average time on page came in at 1 minute 56 seconds. Bounce rate was 58.56 percent, exit rate 69.74 percent. Broken out by month:

February: 446 pageviews
March: 643 pageviews
April: 576 pageviews
May: 595 pageviews
June: 681 pageviews

That is roughly a 100-pageview gain between May and June. The trend is moving in the right direction, but the numbers sit below where the Income School timeline suggests a site with 95 posts should be at this stage.

The traffic source breakdown tells part of the story. Until recently, direct traffic led, followed by social, then Bing organic, then Yahoo, then DuckDuckGo, then Google at the bottom. Alston attributes the weak Google organic performance to two root causes. First, keyword research in the early months was not strong. He admits this directly, calling it the primary reason the site has not seen the jumps other bloggers in the program report. Second, the niche is genuinely small, which limits the ceiling even with quality content.

The Blog to Social plugin handled distribution. Every time Alston published a post, the plugin automatically pushed it to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. This explains why social sits higher in the traffic reports than most niche sites at this stage. Quora also contributed: Alston answered questions in his niche and linked back to posts or YouTube videos, building referral traffic incrementally. The YouTube presence adds another layer. Because Google owns YouTube, the algorithm can draw a connection between video content and a blog in the same space, which may explain why Google organic traffic has started picking up more recently even though it was nearly flat for most of the first 10 months.

Site 2: The Second Niche (30-40 Blog Posts)

Site 2 launched at the end of October 2018 in a moderately larger niche. By the first week of January, Alston had reached 30 posts. The plan had been to run four sites simultaneously, but working full time made that difficult to sustain. He scaled back and shifted focus, which meant Site 2 received little attention after March or April 2019. He has not touched it since.

Monthly traffic for Site 2:

February: 54 pageviews
March: 144 pageviews
April: 97 pageviews
May: 115 pageviews
June: 209 pageviews

The June spike is notable because Alston published no new content between March and June. The site matured on its own as Google indexed and ranked the existing posts over time. The traffic mix is different from Site 1: direct and social run neck and neck, and Google organic shows up clearly in the data rather than being buried below Bing and Yahoo. This suggests the keyword targeting on Site 2 was better suited to how Google evaluates content.

Site 2 only has 10 YouTube videos tied to it. Despite that, it appears to be pulling stronger organic search results than the flagship. The plan going forward is to go back, add affiliate links to high-traffic posts, and build internal linking between pages so visitors stay on the site longer and discover more content.

Site 3: The Local Directory Experiment (learnkenosha.com)

Site 3 is the most unusual property in the portfolio: learnkenosha.com. The concept was a local directory for Kenosha, Wisconsin, structured like a niche Yelp where local restaurants and businesses could purchase listings. The monetization plan depended on proving traffic first, then using that data to pitch advertisers on buying space.

Total stats: 541 pageviews, 484 unique views, average time on page 1 minute 7 seconds, bounce rate 85.23 percent, exit rate 71 percent. Monthly breakdown:

February: 89 pageviews
March: 63 pageviews
April: 82 pageviews
May: 61 pageviews
June: 72 pageviews

The pattern here is a declining ceiling. The highs are getting lower and the lows are not recovering. For a site built around local seasonal activity, this is a signal worth taking seriously. The 85 percent bounce rate tells you that most visitors land, find what they came for (or don’t), and leave. That is a problem when the monetization plan requires showing advertisers an engaged local audience.

The fix Alston identifies is adding blog posts centered around Kenosha and Kenosha County, local events, attractions, and guides that would pull in search traffic organically. That content would lower the bounce rate, build topical authority, and give the traffic graph a reason to trend back up. Without that additional content, the directory will stay flat or continue declining.

Site 4: The Bare-Bones Surprise (Under 10 Posts)

Site 4 is the most surprising number in this report. It has fewer than 10 blog posts. No affiliate links. No images. A logo and a handful of articles. Alston has logged into it once or twice to update plugins, and that is it.

Total: 443 pageviews. Monthly:

February and March combined: 158 pageviews
April: 42 pageviews
May: 67 pageviews
June: 99 pageviews

The organic traffic breakdown is the interesting part. Bing organic generated 27 visits. Google organic generated 14. Yahoo added another 12. From under 10 posts, those search engines are already indexing and returning this site for real queries. That is a signal that the niche has demand and the topic targeting landed. Alston notes this openly: if he chose to invest in this site, the opportunity is there. The traffic floor exists without him doing almost anything.

What would happen if he went back and added 30 posts, built out affiliate links, and ran it the same way he ran Site 1? Based on the organic signal at the 10-month mark with minimal content, the answer is probably a faster traffic ramp than anything he has seen so far.

Not sure whether blogging, YouTube, or something else fits your situation?

Answer a few questions at finder.platformproof.com and find the path that matches the skills you already have.

The Real Numbers Across All Four Sites

Adding all four sites together at 10 months produces approximately 5,700 total pageviews. Site 1 is responsible for most of that volume given its content size, but the combined traffic tells a story about what early-stage niche sites actually look like before they mature.

Site 1 averaged roughly 588 pageviews per month over the five-month window tracked here. The Project 24 timeline would likely predict that a site with 95 posts should be closer to 1,000 monthly pageviews at this stage. The gap is real, and Alston does not try to explain it away. The cause is keyword research quality in the first phase, and the lesson is straightforward: picking keywords that Google cannot rank you for in a reasonable timeframe, regardless of how well you write, will cost you months of compounding.

Site 2 shows what happens when the keyword targeting is closer to correct. Despite being touched less and having fewer posts, it is pulling better Google organic results relative to its size. Site 4 shows the same signal even more starkly: a handful of posts, no optimization effort, and organic traffic is still showing up.

Honest Drawbacks at the 10-Month Mark

Project 24 is not a fast path and Alston does not frame it as one. A few honest friction points from this update that anyone considering the program should think through:

Working full time limits how many sites you can actually manage. Alston started with the intention of running four to five sites simultaneously. By month six or seven, he had scaled back. Publishing 30 to 40 posts per site while holding a full-time job takes longer than the model assumes for most people. Site 3 and Site 4 both suffered from split attention.

Google organic takes longer than Bing and Yahoo for most new sites. On Site 1, Bing and Yahoo were the primary organic channels for most of the 10-month window. Google barely registered until recently. If you are targeting Google as your primary traffic driver, you should expect a longer ramp than the Income School examples might suggest, particularly in competitive or niche-constrained topics.

Keyword research errors compound over time. The posts Alston published in the first 45 days on Site 1 used keywords that were either too competitive or too small. 10 months later, those posts are still sitting with thin Google rankings. You cannot easily go back and undo that investment. Getting keyword research right at the start matters more than publishing volume in year one.

Local directory monetization requires proof of traffic first. Site 3’s challenge is structural. You cannot sell ad space to a local restaurant until you can show them that people are looking for restaurants in Kenosha online. Getting to that traffic level in a local, geographically constrained niche is a different problem than building a general interest blog, and the timeline will be different too.

PageSpeed matters more than most beginners realize. Before the Project 24 theme, Site 1 scored a 53 on Google PageSpeed Insights. After switching, that score jumped to 85. The theme is included with membership. If you are on an old or bloated theme, this is a real ranking penalty you are carrying around without knowing it.

Three Actions That Would Move These Numbers

Alston identifies several concrete moves he could make that would improve results across the portfolio. Here they are in order of expected impact:

Add affiliate links to existing high-traffic posts on Sites 2, 3, and 4. All three sites have traffic that is not being monetized. This is the lowest-effort revenue move available.
Build internal linking on Site 2. Visitors arriving from organic search on Site 2 have no clear path to related content. Adding contextual links between posts would extend session time and signal topical relevance to search engines.
Embed digital products on the highest-traffic pages of Site 1. Site 1 already has a few digital products. Placing them inside the posts that receive the most traffic converts existing readers into buyers without requiring new content or new traffic.

Find Your X

Alston built four sites simultaneously with a full-time job and no prior blogging background. Some of those sites are growing. Some are stalled. All of them are teaching him something about what works and what does not. If you are trying to figure out where to start, or whether blogging, YouTube, affiliate marketing, or something else fits what you already know and the time you actually have, the best first step is getting clear on the path that matches your situation.

Find your starting point at finder.platformproof.com. Answer a few questions about your skills, schedule, and goals, and get a recommendation built around what you already bring to the table.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Project 24 and how does it work?

Project 24 is a course membership from Income School, created by Jim Harmer and Ricky Kesler. The model is built around a 60-step process for creating blog posts in a specific format. If you follow the steps consistently, the promise is that you can replace a full-time income with passive income from your blog within 24 months. The membership also now includes a YouTube course and the Acabado WordPress theme.

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

Based on this 10-month update, Site 1 with 95 posts was averaging around 600 monthly pageviews, which is below the Income School trajectory for a site that size. Site 2, which was left alone for months, showed its best month in June at 209 pageviews after about nine months. Traffic growth is real but slower than most people expect in the first year, especially if early keyword research was weak.

Why is Bing and Yahoo organic traffic higher than Google in the early months?

Bing and Yahoo tend to index and rank newer or smaller sites faster than Google. Google applies more scrutiny to new domains and typically takes six to twelve months before it begins ranking a site’s content meaningfully. If your early traffic reports show Bing leading organic, that is not a problem. It is a sign your content is getting indexed. Google usually follows, especially once your site has age and backlinks.

What is the Blog to Social plugin and does it actually help?

Blog to Social is a WordPress plugin that automatically distributes your new posts across connected social media accounts, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. In this update, social traffic ranks second or third across multiple sites. It does not replace SEO, but it gives new posts an immediate distribution pulse beyond search and keeps your profiles active without manual effort.

Can you run multiple niche sites at the same time while working full time?

Technically yes, but the quality of attention drops quickly. Alston started with the intention of running four to five sites at once while employed full time. By month six or seven, he had scaled back because the workload was unsustainable. The honest answer is that most people will manage one or two sites well, or spread too thin and under-develop all of them.

What happens when you stop publishing on a niche site?

Site 2 and Site 4 both went months without new content and still grew their traffic. Site 2 hit its best month (209 pageviews) after not being touched for three or four months. Existing posts continue to age and rank. This is one of the core arguments for blogging as a passive income model: content that is already indexed keeps earning traffic without ongoing publishing effort, as long as the niche remains relevant.

Why does PageSpeed score matter for a blog?

Google uses page speed as a ranking signal when two pages compete for the same keyword. A site scoring 53 on Google PageSpeed Insights is at a disadvantage against a competitor scoring 85 or 90. After Alston switched to the Project 24 Acabado theme, his PageSpeed score on Site 1 jumped from 53 to 85. That difference may not move rankings overnight, but it removes a structural penalty and improves the experience for mobile visitors, who make up the majority of most blog traffic.

Is Project 24 worth it if you are just starting out?

The honest answer depends on your willingness to do keyword research carefully from the start. The blogging mechanics in Project 24, the 60-step framework, the Acabado theme, and the YouTube course, are all solid foundations. But as this 10-month update shows, bad keyword choices in month one create a traffic ceiling you will still be dealing with in month ten. The program gives you the system; the results depend on how well you execute the keyword research step before you write your first post.

Sources

Alston Godbolt, Project 24 Income School 10-Month Update (YouTube, g8nNWBJqCpc)
Income School / Project 24: incomeschool.com
Google PageSpeed Insights: pagespeed.web.dev
Blog to Social WordPress Plugin: blogtosocial.com
Quora as a referral traffic source for niche blogs