Project 24 Income School Review: July 6-12 Update – Earnings & Growth on 4 Sites

Running four blogs at the same time while tracking every metric is not glamorous. For the week of July 6th through July 12th, four sites operating under the Project 24 framework hit different milestones, ran into different walls, and told very different stories inside Google Analytics. Some of those stories are encouraging. One of them, the Bing situation on Site 1, is genuinely puzzling. All of them are honest.

Project 24 is a course created by Jim and Ricky that lays out a 60-step process for building a blogging business that earns through affiliate marketing, digital products, and eventually YouTube. Each week, these updates track the actual numbers: page views, traffic sources, time on page, bounce rate, and the slow grind toward that first 1,000-page-view month. This is what one week looked like across all four sites.

What You’ll Walk Out With

The exact page view and unique visitor counts for all four sites during July 6-12
Why Site 1 gets traffic from Bing and barely a single daily visit from Google despite having ~100 posts
How the Blog to Social plugin automates social distribution across five platforms for an entire year
The difference between a site where Google organic works and one where it doesn’t, shown side by side
Why YouTube subscribers keep growing even when no new videos are being uploaded
What a bounce rate of 88% tells you (and what it doesn’t)
The honest drawbacks of following Project 24 when your early keyword research was off
How to figure out which online model fits your skills and situation at finder.platformproof.com

The Project 24 Framework: What These Four Sites Share

Project 24 is built around a specific philosophy: do the work right from the start, follow a structured 60-step process, and the traffic compounds over time. The course, created by Jim and Ricky, teaches bloggers the exact types of posts to write, how to do keyword research that actually converts, and how to structure content so it ranks without tricks. The promise is that if you follow the framework, you will reach a point where your content generates passive income through affiliate commissions and digital product sales.

The four sites in this update all began at different times, cover different niches, and sit at different stages of the journey. Site 1 started September 7th and has roughly 100 blog posts. Site 2 launched October 25th and has about 20 posts. Site 3 is also in the 20-post range. Site 4 is alstongodbolt.com, which has fewer than 10 posts but sits in a competitive niche. Each week, the traffic numbers tell you something different about where a site is in that 24-month journey.

Site 1: The 100-Post Site and the Google Puzzle

Site 1 is the oldest and the most written. Started on September 7th, it now has right around 100 blog posts. During the week of July 6th through July 12th, the site recorded 191 page views and 167 unique views. Average time on page was 1 minute and 59 seconds. Bounce rate came in at 88.06% and the exit percentage was 70.16%.

To put the page view count in daily terms: 191 divided by 7 comes out to about 27 page views per day. That is an improvement over June, which averaged about 22 page views per day. Project that forward at 27 per day and you get roughly 810 page views per month, getting close to that 1,000-page-view month milestone that Project 24 identifies as a meaningful early benchmark.

The traffic source breakdown is where things get interesting. Organic search leads the way at 73 users, followed by social, direct, and referral. So far, that sounds normal. But when you look at which search engines are sending that organic traffic, the picture shifts. Bing is number one. Then direct. Then Yahoo. Then Facebook and DuckDuckGo. Google sits at the bottom, sending roughly one visit per day. One.

That is not what the Project 24 framework is designed for, and it is not what you want. Google dominance is the goal. The most likely explanation, based on what has been shared throughout this channel’s history, is that the early keyword research on Site 1 was not as tight as it needed to be. That is not a fatal flaw, many bloggers go through exactly this phase, but it does mean that the traffic growth will be slower and more erratic than it would be on a site where Google organic is working from the start.

One more notable thing about Site 1’s traffic: the site is actively being targeted by hack attempts. Security measures are in place, including a plugin that sends email notifications whenever someone tries to break in. The traffic data from countries like Singapore that appear unusual in analytics are likely bot traffic from those attempts rather than genuine readers.

Blog to Social: The Plugin Doing the Quiet Work on Site 1

A significant portion of Site 1’s social traffic comes from a plugin called Blog to Social. Every time a new blog post is published, the plugin automatically distributes it across five social media platforms: LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. That automation alone eliminates a step that most bloggers either forget to do or do inconsistently.

The premium version of Blog to Social takes it further. It lets you schedule posts to go out on your social media accounts on a recurring basis, not just when new content is published, but on a set schedule for up to 52 weeks. That means one batch of existing content can keep circulating across your networks for an entire year without any additional manual effort. For a site that has around 100 posts, that is a meaningful content amplification tool even when no new posts are being written.

The social traffic numbers are not massive; the majority of Site 1’s traffic still comes from organic search. But having the automation in place means that every new post gets a distribution push immediately and older posts keep cycling through. That compounding effect is exactly the kind of system-building that Project 24 encourages throughout its curriculum.

Site 2: Where Google Organic Is Actually Working

Site 2 started on October 25th, roughly six weeks after Site 1. It has about 20 blog posts and covers a broader, larger niche. During July 6-12, the site recorded 61 page views and 53 unique views. Time on page was 1 minute and 1 second. Bounce rate was 80%.

At 61 divided by 7, that comes out to roughly 8 to 9 page views per day. That is down slightly from the previous month, so month-over-month the trend is slightly negative, but the traffic source story is almost the opposite of Site 1. On Site 2, Google organic leads. Google has no problem with this site. The remaining traffic comes from social and then direct.

That is the contrast worth pausing on. Both sites are following the same Project 24 methodology. But the keyword research decisions made at the start of each site have produced dramatically different results when it comes to Google’s opinion of the content. Site 1, which has five times as many posts, is barely visible to Google. Site 2, with a fraction of the content, is getting organic Google traffic as the primary source. Keyword selection at the outset matters more than post volume in the early months.

The other surprise on Site 2 is YouTube. The associated YouTube channel only has 10 videos. Despite that small library and despite not uploading new content recently, people are still subscribing to the channel. That is enough motivation to continue the plan of adding YouTube videos to the niche. People are clicking, finding value, and subscribing, which means there is an audience being built even without aggressive publishing.

Site 3: Slow Start on the Local Niche

Site 3 covers a local niche and also has roughly 20 blog posts. During July 6-12, it averaged just over 1 page view per day. On several days that week, the page view count was zero. That is a slow start by any measure.

The traffic sources for Site 3 are direct and referral, with Blog Drive showing up as a referral source. Geographic breakdown shows visitors coming from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Singapore. The Singapore traffic, similar to Site 1, likely includes bot or hack-attempt traffic rather than genuine readers in that location.

A local niche site takes longer to get traction for a specific reason: the pool of potential readers searching for that topic is smaller than a broad national or international niche. That is a trade-off. A local niche has less competition, which means it is easier to rank, but the ceiling on organic traffic volume is lower. Project 24’s framework accounts for this by guiding bloggers on how to pick niches that balance competition with search volume, and a site at 1 page view per day at 20 posts is still within the normal early range for a local site.

Site 4: AlstonGodbolt.com in a Competitive Niche

The fourth site in this update is alstongodbolt.com itself. For the week of July 6-12, the site recorded 47 page views, about 6 page views per day. The site has fewer than 10 blog posts and sits in a competitive niche, which makes those 47 views notable.

Traffic sources are direct, social, and referral. In the weeks before this update, some organic traffic was coming in. During this specific week, that organic traffic had not appeared. The geographic breakdown shows visitors from the United States, India, Turkey, Australia, Brazil, and Singapore. The YouTube channel associated with this site has more videos than Site 2’s channel, which explains why YouTube shows up as a traffic driver, the existing video library keeps pulling people in even without new uploads.

A competitive niche with fewer than 10 posts generating 6 page views per day is not a bad position. It signals that some of the content is hitting, that the social and direct traffic is building a small but real audience, and that YouTube is doing work as a discovery channel even before organic search fully kicks in. The path forward is clear: keep adding posts with tighter keyword targeting and keep the YouTube channel active.

Not sure which online income model fits your skills and situation?

Answer 5 questions and get a personalized recommendation at finder.platformproof.com.

How to Read Your Own Weekly Traffic Numbers

Looking at a Google Analytics report once a week is one thing. Knowing what to actually do with the numbers is another. Here is the step-by-step approach this update demonstrates, applied to any blog following a long-term content strategy.

Calculate your daily average. Take your weekly page view total and divide by 7. This removes the noise of individual high or low days and gives you a trend number you can compare week over week. 191 divided by 7 equals 27 per day for Site 1. 61 divided by 7 equals about 9 per day for Site 2.
Project to monthly and compare to your milestone. Multiply the daily average by 30. If you are tracking toward the 1,000-page-view-per-month milestone, this tells you how far you are. At 27 per day, Site 1 is projecting to about 810, close but not there yet.
Check your traffic source breakdown for warning signs. Google organic should lead on a healthy content site. If Bing is leading and Google is at the bottom, that is a signal about keyword choice, not content quality. Fix the input (keyword research) to change the output (Google ranking).
Look at time on page alongside bounce rate. A bounce rate of 88% sounds alarming, but if time on page is 1 minute and 59 seconds, that is a reader who arrived, read a meaningful chunk, and left, not a reader who bounced in three seconds. Context matters.
Track month-over-month, not just week-over-week. A single week’s dip or jump can be noise. The trend from June to July on Site 1, from 22 per day to 27 per day, is the signal worth paying attention to.
Set up automated social distribution before you need it. Blog to Social handles five platforms automatically on post publish plus allows scheduling for 52 weeks of recurring posts. Install and configure it once, and it works without you. Social traffic is a bonus on top of organic, not a replacement for it, but it is worth having.

Honest Drawbacks: What Project 24 Doesn’t Fix on Its Own

Project 24 is a solid framework. Jim and Ricky have built it from real blogging experience, and the 60-step curriculum is detailed enough to remove most of the guesswork from starting a content business. But following a good framework does not guarantee every decision made inside it is a good one. The evidence from these four sites is instructive.

The biggest issue on Site 1 is self-diagnosed in the video: the early keyword research was not tight enough. A hundred posts is a lot of work. If a significant portion of those posts were written for keywords that Google has decided not to reward, whether because they are too competitive, because the intent doesn’t match the content, or because the site hasn’t built enough authority yet, then the traffic ceiling stays low regardless of how much content is published. Project 24 teaches keyword research. Applying that teaching poorly in the early months is a recoverable mistake, but it does mean the payoff timeline stretches out.

The second honest drawback is the time cost of running four sites simultaneously. Each site needs content, needs keyword research, needs ongoing attention. The video mentions that no new posts have been added to Site 1 for a month or two. That is not necessarily wrong, sometimes you let a site coast while you build another, but it does mean that the path to 1,000 monthly page views on Site 1 is getting extended with each week that passes without fresh content.

The third drawback is the Google-versus-Bing situation. Bing sending more traffic than Google on a site with 100 posts is unusual. It is not a sign that the content is bad. It may be a sign that the site’s topical authority is not yet built out enough in Google’s eyes for the keywords being targeted. Building topical authority requires consistency, internal linking strategy, and time, all things Project 24 addresses, but none of which happen overnight.

Find Your X

Project 24 works for a specific type of person: someone patient enough to write consistently for 12 to 24 months before expecting meaningful passive income, someone willing to do honest keyword research and revise their approach when early decisions don’t pan out, and someone who wants to build a long-term asset rather than a quick flip. The four-site experiment documented in these weekly updates shows what that commitment looks like in practice, good weeks and slow weeks, sites that Google rewards and sites it hasn’t warmed up to yet, plugins doing quiet automation work in the background.

If you are trying to figure out whether blogging, affiliate marketing, YouTube, or a different model is the right fit for your skills and schedule, the quickest way to find out is to answer five questions at finder.platformproof.com. The tool gives you a personalized recommendation based on your actual situation, no guessing required.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Project 24 and who created it?

Project 24 is a blogging and content business course created by Jim and Ricky of Income School. It is built around a 60-step process that walks beginners through starting a blog, doing keyword research the right way, writing content that ranks, and eventually monetizing through affiliate marketing and digital products. The name refers to the goal of replacing your income within 24 months.

How many page views did Site 1 get during July 6-12?

Site 1 recorded 191 page views and 167 unique views during that week. That works out to approximately 27 page views per day, which is an increase from the June average of about 22 per day. At that daily rate, the site is projecting to around 810 monthly page views, approaching but not yet at the 1,000-per-month milestone.

Why is Bing sending more traffic than Google to Site 1?

The most likely reason is that the early keyword research on Site 1 did not target terms that Google rewards for that site’s current authority level. Bing and other smaller search engines tend to be less selective, so they send traffic to content that Google has not yet decided to rank. This is a recoverable situation, but it means revisiting keyword strategy for future posts on that site rather than continuing to publish under the same approach.

What is the Blog to Social plugin and how does it work?

Blog to Social is a WordPress plugin that automatically distributes new blog posts to connected social media accounts at the moment of publication. The platforms it covers include LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. The premium version adds a scheduling feature that lets you set existing posts to recirculate on those platforms on a schedule of your choosing, up to once a week for 52 weeks per post. It is a set-it-and-forget-it amplification tool for bloggers who want social distribution without manual effort.

What were the traffic numbers for Site 2?

Site 2 recorded 61 page views and 53 unique views during July 6-12. Average time on page was 1 minute and 1 second, and bounce rate was 80%. That comes out to approximately 8 to 9 page views per day, which is slightly below the prior month’s average. Unlike Site 1, Site 2 gets Google organic as its primary traffic source, which indicates that the keyword strategy on that site is working as intended.

Is a bounce rate of 88% bad for a blog?

Not necessarily. Bounce rate measures the percentage of visitors who view only one page before leaving. For a blog, where most content is a single long article, a high bounce rate is expected, readers arrive, read the post, and leave. The more important number to look at alongside bounce rate is time on page. Site 1’s 1 minute 59 second average suggests that readers are engaging with the content before leaving, not abandoning it in the first few seconds.

How does ClickFunnels fit into the blogging strategy described here?

ClickFunnels is recommended in the video as an email marketing and lead generation tool. It combines landing page builders, email autoresponders, and copywriting tools into one platform. The case made for it is that email marketing converts at twice the rate of other marketing types, so building an email list from your blog traffic is one of the highest-impact things you can do early in the blogging journey. ClickFunnels is one tool that handles multiple parts of that process.

How long does it realistically take for a blog to reach 1,000 monthly page views following Project 24?

The timeline varies based on niche competitiveness, keyword selection, and publishing consistency. Site 1, which started in early September and has about 100 posts, is approaching but not yet at 1,000 monthly page views roughly 10 months in. Site 2 started six weeks later and has significantly fewer posts but has Google organic working. There is no universal timeline, the quality of keyword research in the early months has a larger effect on the speed of growth than raw post count does.

Sources

Project 24 course by Jim and Ricky of Income School (60-step blogging framework)
Blog to Social WordPress plugin (social media automation and scheduling)
ClickFunnels (email marketing, lead generation, and autoresponder platform)
Google Analytics (traffic source, page view, and engagement data for July 6-12)
YouTube Analytics (subscriber and view data for niche YouTube channels)