Project 24 Income School Update: 4 Sites, Real Numbers, and What Is Actually Working (June 22-28)

Running four blogs at once sounds like a great idea until you are staring at Google Analytics and watching Bing outperform Google on a site with 100 published posts. That is where I landed during the week of June 22 to June 28, and in this update I am pulling back the curtain on all four sites: the raw traffic numbers, the traffic sources, what is working, and what is stubbornly not working yet.

I have been a member of Project 24 by Income School since September 6, 2018. The strategy is straightforward: produce genuinely helpful content, target the right keywords, be patient, and let organic search traffic build over time. Simple in concept, harder in execution. These weekly updates are my honest scoreboard.

What You’ll Walk Out With

The real traffic numbers across all four of my sites this week
Why Bing and Yahoo are outranking Google on a 100-post site and what that actually means
How ten YouTube videos made five months ago are still sending traffic to a site I barely touch today
What a local travel site about Kenosha, Wisconsin teaches about keyword competition and niche selection
Why a competitive affiliate marketing site with only 10 posts is still appearing in Google search results
What Project 24 has added for members since I joined and why the value keeps growing
The seasonal niche factor that could shift your entire revenue timeline by months
Not sure which niche or online business model fits your specific situation? finder.platformproof.com can point you in the right direction in under two minutes.

Site 1: The 100-Post Workhorse

This is my largest site and the one I have been building the longest. The first post went live on September 7, 2018. I published 35 posts in the first 45 days, then went quiet, then came back in early January. By the end of May I had reached 97 posts, and by the week of this update I was sitting at roughly 100 published pieces of content.

Here are the raw numbers for the week: 131 pageviews, 123 unique views, an average time on page of 3 minutes and 8 seconds, a bounce rate of 93.1%, and an exit percentage of 87.79%. The time-on-page number is genuinely encouraging. Over three minutes per visit means readers are actually reading, not bouncing in under ten seconds and leaving empty-handed.

The traffic source breakdown is where things get interesting. Organic search has taken the lead over direct traffic, which is exactly what you want to see in the early stages of a Project 24 site. Social traffic comes in third and referral fourth. But when you drill one level deeper to see which search engines are responsible for that organic traffic, the picture is strange: Bing is leading, followed by Yahoo, Facebook, DuckDuckGo, Quora, Google, my own website, and Yahoo UK. Google, the engine every blogger ultimately wants, is sitting in sixth place.

I described this in the video as Google having a “personal vendetta” against me. The more accurate explanation is that most of the content on this site is between four and six months old. Google applies a longer evaluation window before ranking newer content, especially for domains that have not yet accumulated significant inbound authority. Bing and Yahoo have shorter trust cycles for new content, which is why they surface it faster. The encouraging signal is that organic search as a category is winning overall. Once Google catches up to where Bing already is, the traffic curve should sharpen considerably.

One other element worth slowing down on: this niche peaks in November and December. If you are building a blog in a seasonally weighted space, whether that is holiday gifts, travel planning, tax preparation, or academic calendars, the traffic you earn in June and July understates your eventual ceiling by a wide margin. The best traffic window for this site is still five or six months ahead. Patience is not optional here; it is baked into the strategy.

On the security side, I have been dealing with login hack attempts. Multiple countries showed up in my analytics that have no obvious reason to visit a site in this niche. I was receiving email notifications of failed login attempts in waves, sometimes for an hour straight. I have since installed additional security measures to block those attempts. If you run a WordPress site, a login attempt limiter and ongoing log monitoring are not optional. The attempts are automated and they do not stop on their own.

Site 2: 40 Posts, YouTube Traffic, and a Surprise From Google

My second site has around 40 published posts. I have not given it much attention this week, though I plan to install the new Project 24 WordPress theme that Jim and Ricky released for members. The raw numbers for the week: 52 pageviews, an average time on page of 3 minutes and 24 seconds, and a bounce rate of 96%.

Traffic sources break down as direct first, organic second, social third, and referral fourth. But there is a detail hiding in the organic breakdown that is worth pausing on. Google is actually sending traffic to this site. Why does that matter? Because Google apparently does not connect this domain to me as the owner. My largest site with 100 posts is struggling to get Google’s attention, but this second site, running on a separate domain, is already indexing and showing up in search results. That tells me the challenge with site one is domain authority and age, not content quality. The content can be indexed. Google just needs more time to trust the source.

The other detail that deserves its own spotlight: I made 10 YouTube videos for this site five months ago and then stopped completely. I have not created a single video for it since that batch. Yet during this week, I received 3 visits from YouTube. That sounds like a small number, but the behavior of those visitors is anything but small. People who arrive from YouTube visit multiple pages per session and stay on the site longer than visitors from any other traffic source.

This is the clearest argument I have seen firsthand for using YouTube even when video is not your primary strategy. You do not need to become a full-time creator or publish on a weekly schedule. Ten videos made five months ago are still working today. That is passive traffic from passive content, which is the exact premise of the Project 24 model applied to video instead of text.

Traffic geography for site two: United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Ireland, India, Luxembourg, and Nigeria. The dominant English-speaking markets are well-represented, which is ideal for affiliate marketing since advertiser CPMs and purchase conversion rates are highest in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia.

Site 3: Kenosha, Wisconsin and the Local Travel Niche

This one might catch you off guard. I run a local travel site dedicated to Kenosha, Wisconsin, the city where I live. It has around 20 published blog posts. Believe it or not, Kenosha is considered a travel destination. People come from surrounding areas in the summer, partly for the lakefront and partly, as I mentioned in the video, for the cheese. The numbers for this week: 16 pageviews, 14 unique views, a bounce rate of 84%, and an exit percentage of 81.25%.

The top-performing post on this site is about movies filmed in Kenosha. The second most-visited post answers the question of how many bars there are in Kenosha. The answer, according to the article, is around 101. That is the kind of hyper-specific local question that no major publication is competing for and that a resident or curious visitor will search for directly. It ranks because no one else bothered to answer it well.

Here is the traffic source insight that stands out most for this site: Google is the top traffic driver here. A site with 20 posts in a local niche is ranking on Google while my 100-post site is still waiting. The lesson is keyword competition, not content volume. A local Kenosha travel site is competing against almost nobody. A general affiliate marketing or personal finance site is competing against sites with millions of pages and years of authority. Local and hyper-specific niches have lower traffic ceilings, but the runway from zero posts to first Google rankings is dramatically shorter.

The broader traffic source breakdown shows Google leading, followed by Bing, Facebook, and a social platform listed as t.co (which is Twitter). The geographic breakdown shows most traffic from the United States, then India, South Korea, Sweden, and Singapore. The non-US traffic on a local Kenosha site does not make organic sense, which suggests it is likely bot traffic or low-level automated crawling rather than genuine visitors looking for bar counts in Wisconsin.

Site 4: AlstonGodbolt.com in a Competitive Niche

The fourth site is this one, alstongodbolt.com. The niche is affiliate marketing and making money online, which is among the most competitive content categories that exists. I have roughly 10 total blog posts live at this point. The numbers for the week: 46 pageviews, 41 unique views, and an average time on page of 34 seconds.

The time on page is significantly lower here than on my other three sites. That is expected for a newer site in a niche where readers arrive skeptical and bounce quickly if they do not immediately find what they were looking for. The traffic sources show direct first, social second, organic third, referral fourth. YouTube is showing up as a meaningful driver within the organic and social breakdowns, reinforcing the same pattern I described for site two.

The encouraging part: Google is surfacing this site despite only having around 10 posts in one of the most crowded niches online. That is a confirmation of what Project 24 teaches about targeting specific, answerable questions rather than broad competitive terms. A small number of well-researched posts aimed at precise low-competition keywords can earn search visibility even when you are outgunned on every metric that typically determines domain authority.

On a lighter note: the day after I installed the new Project 24 WordPress theme on this site, I received a phone call from someone who claimed to be from California but was clearly calling from India. They wanted to help fix my website because, in their words, it looked “kiddish.” I found that amusing. The theme looks fine.

What Project 24 Has Added Since I Joined

I joined Project 24 on September 6 or 7, 2018. Since that date, here is what Income School has added for members beyond what was in the original program:

A free WordPress theme built specifically for Project 24 members, the one I installed on alstongodbolt.com this week
A YouTube creation tutorial series covering how to find success on the platform, currently around 6 to 7 videos
Partnerships with display advertising companies so members can monetize beyond standard Google AdSense
An active blog from Jim and Ricky with ongoing strategy content tied to current search conditions
A podcast with regular episodes covering blogging, YouTube, and online business
The core course material, now organized into roughly 14 mini-courses covering every phase of building a content site from keyword research through monetization

At the time of this update, I have completed about 75% of the full course material and I am applying it directly as I go. The YouTube creation course alone could be packaged and sold as a standalone product at a comparable price to the full membership. The fact that it was added for existing members at no extra cost says something about how Income School views its obligation to the people inside the program.

If you have not joined and blogging is something you are seriously considering, the webinar is free to watch. I am an affiliate for Project 24, so if you use my link and decide to join, I will earn a small commission. The reason I promote it is simple: I am actively building sites on the method and you can see the actual results above, including the frustrating parts.

Not sure whether blogging, YouTube, or another model fits your background and goals?

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

Traffic Source Takeaways Across All Four Sites

Looking across all four sites together, several patterns repeat and are worth stating plainly.

Bing and Yahoo are underrated for new sites. On my largest site, Bing is the top search engine by volume. Income School acknowledges in its course material that Bing tends to index and rank new content faster than Google does. If you are in month two or three of a new blog and seeing non-Google search traffic, that is a positive signal: your content is findable and relevant, even before Google fully trusts the domain. Do not dismiss Bing traffic as lesser. In the early months it may be your only search data point.

YouTube traffic has outsized quality. Across two of my four sites, visitors who arrive from YouTube spend more time on page and visit more pages per session than visitors from most other sources. Someone who watched a video from you first arrives warm. They already know your voice and they arrived at the blog curious rather than skeptical. The behavioral difference shows up clearly in the data.

Local niches rank on Google faster. My 20-post Kenosha travel site ranks on Google. My 100-post general niche site is still waiting. The difference is not content quality; it is competition density. If you want search traction in a shorter time frame, a local or extremely specific niche will get you there before a broad national topic will. The ceiling is lower, but the runway is shorter.

Direct traffic dominates early-stage sites. Three of my four sites list direct traffic as either the top or second source. This is typical when your primary promotion channel is social media or YouTube, when subscribers click through from email, or when regular readers bookmark the site. Direct traffic is not bad, but organic search is the goal because it is the only source that grows without requiring you to keep showing up and promoting every single day.

Honest Drawbacks of Running Four Sites at Once

Most weekly update videos in this space skip the part where the creator admits what is not working. I want to do the opposite.

Running four sites simultaneously while producing two YouTube videos per day means that none of the sites are getting the focused attention that would accelerate results. Site two has 40 posts and I have barely added anything to it this week. The Kenosha travel site has 20 posts and I did not mention adding new content to it either. Effort spread across four properties means each property moves slower than it would with concentrated focus on a single domain.

The bounce rates across all four sites are high. Site one sits at 93.1%, site two at 96%, and site three at 84%. High bounce rates are not automatically a failure on informational content. A reader who finds the answer to their question and then leaves has had a good experience, even if they bounced. But a 96% bounce rate alongside a 3-minute average time on page suggests most visitors are getting value from one article and not exploring further. Better internal linking, related post sections, and clear calls to action within articles can lower that number over time.

Google is not cooperating with site one yet. That site has around 100 posts and organic search overall is winning, but within organic, Bing is carrying the load that Google should be handling. The Project 24 model predicts this ramp period explicitly. It tests patience because the gap between doing the work and seeing the reward is real and it is months, not days. The key is trusting the data signals that are positive, such as rising organic share, strong time on page, and Bing traction, while waiting for Google to catch up.

Find Your X

The video wraps with a reminder that blogging is one vehicle inside a much larger map of options for building income online. Project 24 is a solid method for building content sites. But a content site built around the wrong niche, or built by someone who would be better positioned in a different model entirely, will grind slowly and quit early.

If you are watching four-site update videos and still not sure which direction fits your skills, your time, and your goals, that is the question worth answering before you buy any course or register any domain. Visit finder.platformproof.com and answer a few straightforward questions. It will match you with the most logical starting point for your specific situation instead of leaving you to guess.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take for a new blog to show up on Google?

Based on the Project 24 model and my own experience across four sites, most posts take between 6 and 12 months before Google ranks them in a meaningful position. Bing and Yahoo tend to index and rank new content faster, which is why new sites often see non-Google search traffic before Google kicks in. Google applies a longer trust-building window, especially for domains under a year old in competitive categories. A local niche site can appear on Google in a shorter window because there are fewer competing pages fighting for the same keyword.

Is Project 24 by Income School worth the cost?

Based on what I have seen since joining in September 2018, the value has grown rather than declined over time. The membership now includes the original blogging course organized into roughly 14 mini-courses, a YouTube creation course covering 6 to 7 video lessons, a free WordPress theme for members, partnerships with display ad companies, a regularly updated blog, and a podcast. Jim and Ricky keep adding content without charging more for it, which is not the norm in the online course space. If you are serious about blogging as a long-term income strategy, the material is practical and regularly updated to reflect current search conditions.

Should I start one blog or multiple blogs at the same time?

Most experienced content marketers recommend starting with one site and building it until it earns consistently before adding a second. I am running four simultaneously, which is why each one grows more slowly than it would with full focus on a single property. The advantage of multiple sites is diversified traffic risk and the ability to test different niches in parallel. The disadvantage is that none of them gets the concentrated effort that would accelerate results. If you are brand new to blogging, starting with one site will teach you faster and produce results sooner.

Why is email marketing so important for affiliate marketing?

Email marketing converts at roughly twice the rate of most other marketing channels. When someone gives you their email address, they have opted in to hear from you specifically, which means your messages arrive in front of a pre-qualified audience who already trusts you enough to hand over their inbox. Compare that to social media, where algorithms decide who sees your content and organic reach can collapse overnight with no warning. An email list is an asset you own outright. A social media following is an audience you are renting from a platform that can change the rules at any time.

Do I need a YouTube channel to make a blog successful?

No, but YouTube can help in ways that are not visible until you see the behavioral data. I made 10 videos for one of my sites five months ago and then stopped producing for that channel entirely. Those videos are still generating visitors to the site today, and those visitors are staying longer and reading more pages per session than visitors arriving from other sources. YouTube does not have to be your primary focus to be useful. Even a small library of videos tied to your blog’s core topics can drive warm, high-quality traffic for years without requiring ongoing work.

What is a reasonable bounce rate for a blog?

For purely informational content such as how-to articles, local guides, and listicles, bounce rates between 70% and 90% are common and are not necessarily a signal that something is wrong. A reader who finds the answer they were looking for and then leaves has had a good experience, even if the analytics record it as a bounce. Where bounce rate becomes a concern is when it is paired with very low time on page, under 30 seconds, which suggests visitors are landing and immediately deciding the content does not match what they expected. My sites average between 3 and 4 minutes on page despite their high bounce rates, which suggests individual articles are delivering real value.

How do I protect a WordPress site from brute-force login attempts?

The fundamentals are not complicated, but they require action before the attacks happen rather than after. Install a plugin that limits failed login attempts and locks out repeat offenders (Wordfence and Loginizer are two well-regarded options). Use a strong and unique password for every admin account. Enable two-factor authentication. Keep WordPress core, themes, and plugins updated because outdated software is one of the most common entry points for automated attacks. Changing the default login URL from the standard /wp-admin path also reduces the volume of automated attempts that bots can find. I was receiving wave after wave of login attempt notifications over the course of about an hour before installing proper restrictions. The attempts stopped once the limits were in place.

Is a local travel blog a good niche for someone just starting out?

Local travel can be a strong starting niche precisely because competition is so thin. A site covering things to do in Kenosha, Wisconsin is not competing against national travel publications or major blogs for any of those specific local keywords. Google can surface your content faster, and the questions you answer are concrete and searchable: how many bars are in this city, what movies were filmed here, where should visitors eat on a Saturday. The monetization ceiling on a hyperlocal travel site is lower than a national niche, but the time from first post to first Google ranking is much shorter. For a first site where the main goal is to learn the process without spending a year in the dark, a local niche reduces that frustrating early period considerably.

Sources

Project 24 by Income School (incomeschool.com): blogging and YouTube course membership platform referenced throughout
Google Analytics: traffic data for all four sites during the week of June 22 to June 28
YouTube Studio: referral traffic data from YouTube to site two and alstongodbolt.com
Wordfence and Loginizer: WordPress login security plugins referenced in the security section