Project 24 Income School June 29 – July 6 Update on 4 Sites

Running four niche websites at once is not glamorous. There are no viral posts, no overnight explosions, and no screenshots of a Stripe dashboard going parabolic. There are spreadsheets, bounce rates, and traffic sources that make no sense when you first look at them. That is what the Project 24 Income School method actually looks like in the early months, and that honesty is exactly why it is worth documenting.

This post walks through a real weekly update covering June 29 through July 6, pulling exact numbers from four sites built using the Project 24 framework. Some numbers are encouraging. Some are puzzling. All of them are real, and every one of them teaches something useful about what actually moves the needle when you are building niche sites from scratch.

What You’ll Walk Out With

A plain-English breakdown of what Project 24 is and how the 60-step process works for beginners
Real weekly traffic numbers for four separate niche sites, including page views, unique visitors, and average time on page
Why one site has 8-minute average session times while another sits at 1 minute 16 seconds, and what that gap signals
Why Google was absent from one site’s traffic sources while showing up for another site in the same week
How one automation plugin fans content out to every social network the moment you hit publish, including a scheduling trick most bloggers skip
The case for creating YouTube videos for your blog content, backed by actual session-depth data from this week
Why the local directory site concept can work, but requires proof-of-traffic before you can sell ad space
How to figure out which type of niche site fits your current situation, starting with finder.platformproof.com

What Is Project 24? The Short Version

Project 24 is a course created by Jim Harmer and Ricky Kesler of Income School. The name comes from the core premise: follow their step-by-step process and you can replace your full-time income within 24 months. When Alston first signed up on September 7, 2018, the program focused entirely on blogging. Since then it has grown into a broader online success curriculum that includes YouTube strategy as well.

The process itself runs 60 steps. Step one is registering a domain name and getting hosting. That intentional simplicity matters because the course is built to hold a beginner’s hand through every stage. You do not need to already understand SEO, keyword research, or content calendars before you start. The framework walks you through each decision in sequence so you never get stuck wondering what to do next.

The sites in this update are all either directly following that 60-step track or were built using the same principles as a foundation. Four sites, four different niches, four different stages of growth, all measured against the same Project 24 timeline.

Site 1: The Oldest Site With the Deepest Content Library

This is the first site Alston built, launched in September 2018 when he joined Project 24. By the time of this update it had grown to around 100 published blog posts, making it the largest content library across all four sites. The first 30 posts went live within 45 days of launch. After a publishing pause of a few months, the site picked back up in mid-January with a consistent writing schedule.

For the week of June 29 through July 6, Site 1 pulled 151 total page views and 144 unique views. The average time on page came in at 8 minutes and 36 seconds. That is a strong number. A reader who stays for over eight minutes is reading, not skimming. They are engaged with the content, which suggests the articles are genuinely answering the questions people searched for when they landed.

The bounce rate sat at 90 percent and the exit rate was also around 90 percent. Those numbers look alarming on the surface but are fairly normal for informational blog content, especially when readers find exactly what they need and leave satisfied. The more telling data point was the traffic source breakdown: 62 sessions from organic search, 41 from direct, 25 from social, and 1 from referral.

Here is the puzzle with Site 1: organic search was the top traffic source, but Google was completely absent from the search engine breakdown. Bing showed up. Yahoo showed up. Facebook sent traffic. YouTube sent traffic. Search Encrypt and Cocora both appeared. But Google did not register at all for this site during this tracking period. That gap is worth investigating, because organic traffic coming entirely from secondary search engines while the dominant search engine has not indexed or ranked the content yet suggests the site has not fully entered Google’s trust cycle.

One other notable detail: YouTube visitors went to more pages per session than visitors from any other source that week. That cross-medium effect is real. When someone watches a video about a topic and then clicks through to the blog post, they are already warmed up. They trust the creator and they want more depth. That extra engagement shows up directly in session behavior.

The site was still running the old X Theme at the time of this update. The new theme released by Jim and Ricky was available but still in beta with known bugs. Alston chose to wait for the official release before switching, at which point he planned to run a full page speed comparison as a before-and-after test across all four sites at once.

Geographic breakdown for Site 1: United States, United Kingdom, Australia, India. That mix matters for affiliate marketing. Visitors from developed markets like the US, UK, and Australia tend to be closer to buying decisions. Visitors from developing markets may be researching rather than purchasing, which is useful context when deciding which products to feature prominently and which affiliate links to prioritize in the content layout.

Site 2: Smaller Library, Bigger Niche, Google Already Watching

Site 2 had about 40 published posts at the time of this update, less than half the content volume of Site 1, but it operates in a significantly larger niche. For the week of June 29 through July 6, the site recorded 97 page views and 95 unique views. Average time on page came in at 1 minute and 16 seconds, a sharp drop from the 8-plus minutes on Site 1. Bounce rate was 95.40 percent with an exit rate of 89.69 percent.

The lower engagement time is worth watching. It could mean the content is thin, or it could mean readers are finding quick answers and leaving as satisfied skimmers rather than deep readers. Without more data on which specific posts drive the most time-on-page, it is hard to know whether this is a content quality issue or a content format issue. The Project 24 methodology would suggest going back to the posts with the lowest engagement times and assessing whether they are answering the right question at the right depth.

The big positive for Site 2: Google has found this site. The traffic source breakdown for the week showed organic at 42 sessions, direct at 33, social at 9, and referral at 1. The breakdown by search engine included Google at the top, followed by Facebook, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and Yahoo Canada. Compared to Site 1 where Google was completely missing, Site 2 is already inside Google’s view. That is an important milestone for any niche site, because Google traffic is the one source that compounds over time without requiring ongoing effort to maintain.

Site 2 also runs a plugin called Blog to Social. Every time a new post goes live, or even when existing content gets updated, the plugin automatically sends it to every connected social media network. The premium version adds a scheduling feature that lets you queue posts to go out twice a week across different networks for up to 52 weeks. That means one article can generate 104 separate social touchpoints without any manual work after the initial setup. For a site trying to grow its organic footprint while also staying visible on social, that kind of automation removes a significant time burden.

Geographic traffic for Site 2 came from the United States, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and India. A similar buyer-quality pattern to Site 1, with the top four sources representing established markets where affiliate commissions tend to be higher and conversion rates stronger.

Site 3: The Local Directory Experiment

Site 3 is the outlier in this group. While the other three sites are traditional niche content blogs built around the Project 24 model, Site 3 was built as something closer to a local business directory, described as a Yelp-style resource for the Kenosha, Wisconsin area. The business model was to attract local traffic and then sell ad space to restaurants and other local businesses in the area.

The traffic numbers for this week reflect the challenge with that approach. Total page views for the week came in at 16, and the monthly total was around 64, a significant drop from prior months. Traffic sources for the week included organic search from Google (which has found this site), direct traffic, Facebook, and Yahoo. The geographic data confirmed the local intent: visitors came from Wisconsin, Illinois, and one from Boise, Idaho.

The fundamental problem with the local directory model is the proof-of-traffic requirement. A restaurant or local business considering paying for ad space on a website will want to see meaningful traffic numbers before committing dollars. With 16 weekly page views, that conversation is difficult. The site needs to build its audience first, which means the ad revenue model is further out than the affiliate model on the other sites. That does not make it a bad idea, but it does mean the revenue timeline is different and the growth strategy needs to focus on content volume and local search optimization before sales conversations make sense.

Site 4: The Personal Brand Site and the Attribution Mystery

Site 4 is alstongodbolt.com, the personal brand and YouTube-connected site. For the week of June 29 through July 6, the site recorded 41 page views, 40 unique views, and an average time on page of 22 minutes and 27 seconds. That last number stands out immediately.

Twenty-two minutes on a page is not a typical blog session. It suggests visitors are either watching embedded video content, reading very long-form posts in their entirety, or both. For a site connected to a YouTube channel where the content strategy involves linking back from video descriptions, this makes sense. The YouTube audience arrives already invested, and they stay longer because they want the full picture.

Bounce rate came in at 80.95 percent, the lowest of the four sites. That is another positive signal. Fewer visitors leaving after one page means more people are clicking through to additional content, which is the behavior you want from a site that is trying to build a consistent readership rather than just capture one-time search traffic.

The traffic source breakdown showed direct, social, referral, Facebook, and YouTube. Alston noted in the video that direct traffic figures are likely undercounting YouTube referrals because some YouTube-sourced visits get misattributed when the tracking does not capture the referrer correctly. This is a common analytics quirk, particularly when people click links from within the YouTube mobile app, where referrer data can drop entirely and the visit registers as direct.

Not sure which type of site to build?

Answer a few questions and get a clear starting point at finder.platformproof.com.

The Numbers Across All Four Sites at a Glance

Here is what one week of data looks like side by side across all four sites:

Site 1: 151 page views, 144 unique, 8 min 36 sec avg session, 90% bounce, ~100 posts, Google absent from rankings
Site 2: 97 page views, 95 unique, 1 min 16 sec avg session, 95.40% bounce, ~40 posts, Google present
Site 3: 16 page views, 64 for the month, local directory model, Google present, traffic concentrated in home state
Site 4: 41 page views, 40 unique, 22 min 27 sec avg session, 80.95% bounce, YouTube-connected personal brand

The most important takeaway from this side-by-side view: time on page and bounce rate tell very different stories depending on the content type and audience source. Site 1 has the most content and the longest sessions despite having the highest bounce rate. Site 4 has the fewest posts but the deepest engagement per session. That gap comes almost entirely from the YouTube connection. Audiences who arrive from video already understand and trust the creator. They read more, stay longer, and bounce less.

Key Lessons From Managing Four Sites at Once

Running multiple sites simultaneously reveals patterns that you would never see from a single site. Here are the practical lessons from this week’s data:

Google trust is not guaranteed by content volume alone. Site 1 has more posts than the other three combined, but Google is not ranking it yet. Site 2 with 40 posts is indexed and showing up in Google results. Volume matters, but niche relevance, site authority, and on-page signals all play a role. More posts does not automatically mean faster Google recognition.
YouTube is an underrated traffic source for blog content. Visitors from YouTube spent more time on page and visited more pages per session than any other source on Site 1 this week. If you already create video content, linking back to the corresponding blog post in the description is one of the most effective things you can do to improve session quality.
Social automation removes a real time cost. Blog to Social on Site 2 handles all social distribution automatically. The 52-week scheduling feature in the premium version turns one piece of content into a two-year publishing calendar across every network. That frees up time to write more content instead of manually posting.
Geography matters for affiliate revenue. Traffic from the US, UK, Australia, and Canada generally converts at higher rates than traffic from developing markets, not because those audiences are more interested but because purchasing power and affiliate program structures favor developed markets. Knowing where your traffic comes from helps you decide which affiliate offers to feature prominently.
The local directory model needs proof of traffic before monetization talks make sense. Site 3 is building toward an ad-sales model, but with 64 monthly page views, that conversation is premature. The path forward is more content and stronger local search presence first, revenue conversations second.
Direct traffic is often misattributed YouTube traffic. Analytics tools frequently log YouTube mobile app clicks as direct visits because the app does not always pass referrer data to the destination site. If your direct traffic spikes after a video upload, that is almost certainly YouTube traffic wearing a disguise.

Honest Drawbacks of Running Multiple Sites on Project 24

The Project 24 model works, but running four sites simultaneously against the same framework creates real operational pressure that is worth naming plainly.

Content volume requirements are significant. The recommendation is two to three pieces of content per week per site. Across four sites, that means eight to twelve articles per week, every week, indefinitely. Even if each post only takes a few hours, that is a substantial weekly commitment on top of a full-time job or other responsibilities. Anyone who underestimates this burden before starting ends up with inconsistent publishing schedules, which delays the organic growth that Project 24 depends on.

The 24-month timeline is a goal, not a guarantee. The framework works when you follow it consistently. It does not produce results on a predictable schedule because Google’s indexing and ranking decisions are outside your control. Some sites enter Google’s trust cycle within a few months. Others, like Site 1 in this update, have 100 posts published and still have not appeared in Google results. Patience is not optional.

Email list building is frequently skipped and it hurts. The reason most affiliate marketers plateau early is that they depend entirely on search traffic and never build an email list. Once you stop publishing or Google changes its algorithm, traffic evaporates. An email list is traffic you own. Tools like ClickFunnels let you collect subscriber emails and build that owned channel in parallel with organic SEO growth. Starting this early matters more than most beginners realize.

Theme transitions carry risk. Waiting for the Project 24 theme to exit beta before applying it to all four sites is the cautious and right call, but it means months of running on an older theme that may have slower page speeds. Page speed affects both user experience and search rankings. The before-and-after page speed test planned after the theme switch will reveal exactly how much the delay cost, but that data will only be useful for future decisions, not past ones.

Find Your X

The four sites in this update represent four different approaches: a broad content library in a competitive niche, a smaller site in a larger market, a local directory built around geography, and a personal brand tied to a YouTube channel. None of these is the single right answer. The right model depends on your topic knowledge, your publishing capacity, your target audience, and how you plan to monetize.

If you are trying to figure out which of these paths fits your situation, start at finder.platformproof.com. Answer a few questions about what you already know, what kind of time you can commit, and what outcome you are working toward, and you will get a clear picture of where to start.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the “24” in Project 24 actually mean?

The 24 refers to the stated goal of replacing your full-time income within 24 months of following the program’s step-by-step process. Jim and Ricky at Income School built the curriculum around that timeline, though individual results depend heavily on how consistently you publish content and how competitive your chosen niche is.

How many steps are in the Project 24 process?

The Project 24 process runs 60 steps. Step one is registering a domain name and getting hosting. The steps are designed to be completed in order and are written for beginners, so each stage builds on the previous one without requiring you to already understand SEO or technical website management.

Why would Google not rank a site that already has 100 posts?

Content volume alone does not guarantee Google rankings. A site needs to establish authority in its niche, earn backlinks from credible sources, demonstrate engagement signals that tell Google the content is useful, and pass technical checks for speed and usability. A site with 100 posts that Google has not indexed yet may have issues with the niche’s competitiveness, thin content on individual posts, or a lack of external links pointing to it. Publishing consistently while also building domain authority through external sources is the path forward.

Is an 8-minute average time on page actually good?

Yes, for long-form blog content, 8 minutes and 36 seconds is a strong engagement signal. It indicates that readers are consuming the article rather than bouncing immediately after seeing the first paragraph. Typical blog posts average somewhere between 1 and 3 minutes of time on page. An 8-minute session strongly suggests the content is thorough, well-matched to search intent, and genuinely useful to the people who find it.

What is the Blog to Social plugin and is it worth paying for?

Blog to Social is a WordPress plugin that automatically distributes your content to your connected social media profiles whenever you publish or update a post. The free version handles immediate posting. The premium version adds a 52-week scheduling feature that lets you set posts to go out to different networks on a recurring schedule, so a single article can generate ongoing social touchpoints without any manual work. For someone managing multiple sites with limited time, the automation is worth evaluating relative to how active your social channels are.

Why do YouTube visitors spend more time on a blog post than other sources?

YouTube visitors arrive warm. They already watched a video about the topic, which means they already trust the creator and already understand the subject at a basic level. When they click through to the related blog post, they are looking for more depth, not just a surface answer. That intent difference shows up directly in session behavior: more pages per visit, longer time on page, lower bounce rates compared to cold search traffic arriving from Google or Bing.

Can a local directory site work as a Project 24-style business?

A local directory can work, but the monetization model is different from affiliate blogging. Ad sales to local businesses require proof of meaningful traffic before those conversations become credible. A site with 64 monthly page views cannot yet command advertising rates that make the business viable. The path forward is to focus on building local search rankings through consistent content about the area, its businesses, and local topics before attempting to sell ad inventory. The model works but requires patient audience-building first.

Why is email list building so important for affiliate marketing sites?

Affiliate sites that depend entirely on organic search traffic are vulnerable to algorithm changes. When Google updates its ranking criteria, sites can lose significant traffic overnight with no warning. An email list is traffic you own regardless of what search engines do. Building that list from day one, using tools like ClickFunnels to capture subscriber emails and send follow-up sequences, creates a parallel channel that keeps working even when search rankings shift. Most affiliate marketers who plateau early skipped this step when they were starting out.

Sources

Project 24 weekly update video: June 29 through July 6, Alston Godbolt YouTube channel
Income School Project 24 course by Jim Harmer and Ricky Kesler
Blog to Social WordPress plugin
ClickFunnels email marketing platform