Project 24 Income School: My 8-Month Update (Traffic, Earnings & Lessons Learned!)

Eight months in. Two blogs. Zero shortcuts. That is the reality of building a content site with Income School’s Project 24 model, and it is exactly what Alston walked through in this update. Site one launched September 7, 2018. Site two followed October 24. By the time April rolled around, the two sites together had logged nearly 3,500 combined page views, a real traffic number from a standing start with no paid ads and no existing audience.

If you are somewhere in months two through ten of your own blog and the traffic feels punishingly slow, this breakdown is worth your time. The numbers are honest, the timelines are real, and the pattern Alston describes maps closely to what Income School itself predicts in the Project 24 framework. Slow, then suddenly not slow.

What You’ll Walk Out With

The month-by-month traffic curve for two P24 blogs from launch through month eight
Real numbers on how traffic splits across direct, social, organic, and referral sources early on
Why a “dip” of 67 page views month-over-month is less alarming than it looks when you do the math
How niche breadth (hyper-focused vs. mass market) affects organic growth speed
The role of Quora, Pinterest, and the Blog to Social plugin in driving early traffic before Google kicks in
An honest read on whether two simultaneous blogs is a smart move or a distraction
What “on track” actually looks like at the 8-month mark inside the P24 model
Not sure which content business model fits your skills and schedule? finder.platformproof.com gives you a clear answer in under two minutes.

Site One: The Full Traffic Picture at 8 Months

Site one started September 7, 2018. Over the following eight months it accumulated 2,928 total page views and 2,582 unique views. Average time on page sat at 1 minute and 50 seconds, and the bounce rate landed at 80.81 percent. Those are the headline numbers. The more interesting story is in the monthly breakdown.

September came in at 329 page views. October dropped to 215. November slipped further to 148. December held at 157. Then something shifted: January jumped to 417, February to 446, March to 643, and April pulled back slightly to 576.

That early September spike is almost certainly Alston himself checking the site repeatedly in the first weeks of excitement. He admits as much. December onward is the more honest picture. And that picture shows a clear upward trend from month four through month seven, which lines up with what the P24 model predicts: posts start to get indexed, some start to rank, and the needle begins to move.

The April dip from 643 to 576 looks dramatic on a graph but the math tells a different story. That is a difference of 67 page views over a 30-day month, which works out to roughly two page views per day. Two page views. When you frame it that way, a slight shift in seasonal search interest or a few posts that had a good month in March is a fully sufficient explanation. No crisis, no collapse.

Where the Traffic on Site One Actually Came From

At the 8-month mark, traffic sources on site one broke down like this: 705 direct, 619 social, 192 organic, 26 referral. If you are new to reading Google Analytics, that direct number can look encouraging or confusing depending on how you interpret it.

Alston flags something worth knowing: a portion of “direct” traffic in Analytics is actually organic search that fails to identify itself as such. So the organic number of 192 is likely an undercount. The true organic total may be meaningfully higher.

Breaking the social and referral numbers down further, the top sources looked like this: Facebook 293 sessions (combining desktop and mobile), Quora visits from profile link placement, YouTube 87, Bing 86, Yahoo 55, DuckDuckGo 31, LinkedIn 23, Google 20.

Two things stand out here. First, Google is only sending 20 sessions while Bing is sending 86 and DuckDuckGo is sending 31. That is typical for a young site in a competitive niche. Google tends to be the last major search engine to trust a new domain. Bing and DuckDuckGo index and rank newer content more readily. Second, visitors arriving from DuckDuckGo spend an average of 2 minutes and 24 seconds on the site. YouTube visitors average 2 minutes and 7 seconds. Google visitors, though fewer, are reading more pages per session, averaging 2 pages per visit. These are engaged readers, not accidental clicks.

The Blog to Social plugin is responsible for much of the social traffic. Alston upgraded from the free version to premium during this period, and the results show in the Facebook and broader social numbers. Quora is working as a passive traffic driver through a simple tactic: putting the blog URL in the profile bio so that anyone clicking through from a Quora answer lands on the site.

Site Two: A Different Niche, A Different Pace

Site two launched October 24 and got its first 30 posts up by early January 2019. After that Alston stepped back from it until March, which is why the content library sits at only 40 to 41 total posts by the time of this update.

Traffic on site two: October 6 page views, November 30, December 84, January 62, February 54, March 144, April 97. Total: 487 page views, 435 unique views. Average time on page was 42 seconds, bounce rate 90.56 percent, exit rate 73.2 percent.

Those engagement numbers are weaker than site one, which makes sense. Alston has done far less promotional work on site two: roughly 10 YouTube videos compared to about 22 on site one, no active Quora presence, and a less established Pinterest connection. The site has been more or less on autopilot.

Traffic sources on site two: 131 direct, 129 social (almost entirely Facebook via Blog to Social), 47 organic, 2 referral. Organic as a proportion of total traffic is actually higher on site two than site one despite site two having far fewer promotional activities. Alston attributes this to the niche itself. Site two targets a much broader, more general product category. Hundreds of millions of searches are happening daily in that space. Even a young site with thin authority can pick up organic scraps from a high-volume niche faster than a hyper-focused niche can generate searches at all.

The Post Age Problem: Why the Numbers Look Worse Than They Are

This is the insight that matters most for anyone measuring their own P24 progress. When Alston says he has 93 posts on site one, that does not mean 93 posts that have had 8 months to rank. He got his first 30 posts up by October 15. He took a week off, started site two, then came back to site one in mid-January. That means roughly 60 percent of his posts on site one are less than 2 to 3 months old at the time of this recording.

Under the Project 24 model, posts are not expected to perform meaningfully until they have had 6 to 12 months for Google to build trust in them. Comparing your 8-month traffic to what a fully mature site would look like is comparing apples to months. The relevant question is not “how is my site doing at 8 months?” but “how are my oldest posts doing compared to where they should be in the P24 curve?”

Alston describes his trajectory as “on track or slightly behind.” Given that the majority of his content is still new, and that organic traffic began noticeably picking up (from one or two organic searches per day to four or five per day) in the weeks before this recording, that reads as an optimistic and plausible assessment.

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Honest Drawbacks: What This 8-Month Update Reveals About the P24 Model

Alston is transparent enough that the drawbacks surface on their own if you read the numbers carefully.

The timeline is genuinely long. Eight months of consistent posting, social sharing, and Quora activity produced just under 3,000 page views on the primary site. That is not enough traffic to monetize meaningfully through display ads. The P24 model requires you to commit to 24 months before expecting income to be significant. For most people that means a year or more of unpaid content work.

Two sites at once is expensive in time. Alston fell “woefully behind” on YouTube for site two and admits he was not posting on Quora for it either. Running two blogs simultaneously under P24 requires proportionally more time than running one. If your goal is to prove out the model before committing fully, one site with deep focus is almost certainly a better proving ground.

The bounce rate is high on both sites. Site one at 80.81 percent, site two at 90.56 percent. High bounce rates on informational blogs are not necessarily alarming since a reader who finds exactly the answer they needed and leaves has “succeeded” from a user experience standpoint. But a 90 percent bounce rate on site two suggests that either the content is not fully delivering on its promise or the traffic arriving is not well matched to the content.

Google is the last to arrive. Only 20 Google sessions in 8 months on site one. Bing and DuckDuckGo are more forgiving of young domains. If your strategy assumes Google traffic as the primary driver, the early months will feel particularly slow. Social and Quora traffic serve as a useful bridge while Google builds trust in your domain.

Real-Numbers Breakdown: What Each Traffic Source Cost to Build

Alston did not spend money on ads. All traffic came from either content creation, plugin automation, or manual effort on external platforms. Here is what each source required:

Facebook / Social (619 sessions on site one): Automated via the Blog to Social plugin (upgraded to premium). Once set up, each new post automatically pushed to connected social profiles. Time cost per post: near zero after setup. The plugin handles distribution.

Quora (notable referral traffic): The primary tactic was placing the blog URL in the Quora profile bio. Alston also posted answers on Quora actively. Each answer is a compounding asset since Quora answers continue to rank in Google and send profile clicks indefinitely.

YouTube (87 referral sessions on site one): About 22 YouTube videos produced for site one over 8 months. These serve a dual purpose: they drive direct referral traffic from video description links and they build audience trust that makes viewers more likely to visit the blog independently.

Bing and DuckDuckGo (117 combined organic sessions): No deliberate effort beyond publishing quality posts. These search engines index new content faster and reward it earlier than Google, making them the primary organic source in the first year of a new domain.

Google (20 organic sessions): Entirely passive. At 8 months, Google has not yet extended meaningful authority to either domain. The notable shift in the weeks before this video, moving from one organic Google search per day to four or five per day, signals that authority is beginning to build.

Find Your X

The P24 / Income School model works for a specific type of person: patient, willing to write consistently for 18 to 24 months before income becomes meaningful, and comfortable with a niche that has real search demand. If that describes you, the framework is solid. If your timeline is shorter or your niche is too narrow, the model will feel like a slow grind with no payoff. The key is knowing which model actually fits your situation before you commit a year of effort to the wrong one. The Platform Proof Finder at finder.platformproof.com matches you to the right starting point based on your skills, schedule, and income goals. Takes under two minutes.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Project 24 by Income School?

Project 24 is a course and community created by Income School that teaches bloggers how to build niche content sites that generate passive income within 24 months. The model focuses on writing informational posts that rank in search engines, monetizing through display ads and affiliate links, and growing YouTube channels alongside the blog to multiply traffic sources.

How much traffic should a P24 blog have at 8 months?

Income School publishes a general traffic curve, and Alston describes himself as “on track or slightly behind” with roughly 2,928 page views on site one after 8 months. The honest answer is that results vary significantly by niche competitiveness, post quality, how actively the blogger promotes on social and Quora, and how many posts have had sufficient time to age into ranking positions. Do not benchmark against someone in a different niche.

Why does traffic drop in some months even when you’re publishing consistently?

With a small overall traffic base, any minor shift in seasonal search demand or small algorithm fluctuations creates visible swings in your monthly numbers. As Alston points out, his March-to-April drop of 67 page views works out to about two views per day. The variance at low traffic volumes is noise, not signal. The trend line over six or more months matters far more than any single month comparison.

Should I run one blog or two when starting with Income School?

Alston’s experience suggests that splitting attention between two blogs in the early months makes both sites harder to grow. Site two received far less YouTube support, no Quora work, and fewer posts, and the engagement metrics reflect that. The P24 model recommends getting one site to 100 posts before expanding. Starting a second site before hitting that milestone is possible but it stretches your time and typically means both sites grow more slowly than one focused effort would.

Does niche size affect how fast you get organic traffic?

Yes, meaningfully. Alston describes site one’s niche as “hyper-focused” and notes that organic traffic has been slow to build there. Site two targets a broader product category with what he estimates as hundreds of millions of daily searches. Despite having fewer posts and less promotion, site two picks up a higher proportion of organic traffic because there is simply more search volume for young content to capture. A hyper-focused niche can generate highly engaged traffic once it ranks, but it takes longer to reach ranking positions because the total search pool is smaller.

Which traffic sources work best for a brand-new blog?

In the first 6 to 12 months, social sharing via automation plugins (like Blog to Social), Quora profile links and active answers, and YouTube video descriptions are the most reliable early traffic bridges. Bing and DuckDuckGo tend to rank new content faster than Google and provide the bulk of early organic sessions. Google organic traffic typically begins to appear meaningfully in months 6 through 12 and becomes the dominant source after the site establishes domain authority.

How many posts do you need before the P24 model starts working?

Income School’s own guidance targets 100 posts as the milestone where organic traffic starts to compound reliably. Alston has 93 posts on site one by month 8, with approximately 60 percent of those posts being less than 3 months old. The model requires posts to age, not just exist. Getting to 100 posts faster does not shorten the timeline if those posts are all brand new. The clock on each post starts when it is published, not when the blog launched.

When can you expect to make money with a P24 blog?

Income School’s “Project 24” name reflects the 24-month target for meaningful income. At the 8-month mark, the traffic Alston is showing is not sufficient for significant ad revenue (most ad networks pay $3 to $10 per 1,000 page views, so 3,000 total page views over 8 months is in the single-digit dollar range). Affiliate commissions can arrive earlier if you have specific buying-intent posts that rank. The more honest timeline for income that covers a part-time salary equivalent is 18 to 30 months for most bloggers following the P24 process consistently.

Sources

Alston Godbolt, “Project 24 Income School: My 8-Month Update (Traffic, Earnings & Lessons Learned!)” on YouTube, youtube.com/watch?v=uqNqiWjh1DA
Income School / Project 24 at incomeschool.com
Blog to Social plugin at blogtosocial.com
Quora profile traffic strategy at quora.com