Project 24 Income School: Real Traffic Numbers Across 4 Sites (Week of Sept 15–21, 2019)

One year into Project 24 and Alston Godbolt is not guessing. He is pulling up the actual numbers, sharing actual pageview counts, actual bounce rates, and actual traffic sources from four different sites, all of them following the same Income School content marketing method. This is not a success story with the hard parts edited out. This is a September 15 through September 21, 2019 snapshot of what real content marketing looks like while it is still building.

The week tells a few stories at once. One site with nearly 100 blog posts is still waiting for Google while Bing and Yahoo carry the traffic load. Another site with fewer than 15 posts and no images is quietly outperforming everything else on a per-post basis. And a simple theme swap explains a bounce rate gap so wide it would make you rethink every website decision you have ever made. If you are considering Project 24, or already in it and wondering whether the grind is actually working, these four sites give you something real to compare against.

What You’ll Walk Out With

A clear breakdown of all four sites Alston tracks, including pageviews, bounce rate, session time, and top traffic sources for the week of September 15 through September 21, 2019
The reason Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo tend to send traffic before Google does during the first year of a new site
How the free Project 24 WordPress theme caused a 75-point drop in bounce rate compared to a paid theme on a similar site
Why a local travel site with no YouTube channel still pulls organic traffic using Project 24 keyword methods
What makes Site 4 the pound-for-pound winner despite having fewer than 15 posts and zero images
The automated social posting plugin that explains why Facebook keeps showing up in every traffic report across all four sites
How to read your analytics to tell whether visitors are buyers or browsers based on the countries they come from
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What Project 24 Is and Why Alston Joined

Project 24 is a course built around content marketing, which is the practice of using keyword research to answer questions, solve problems, and meet consumer needs through blog posts and videos. Once people find the content through organic search, you monetize it with affiliate links, your own digital products, or physical merchandise. The course was developed and sold by the Income School team through their YouTube channel.

Alston joined on September 7, 2018. He already had a basic understanding of affiliate marketing. He knew how to find affiliate links and how to place them on a page. What he did not understand was how to do keyword research in a way that would actually bring in organic traffic rather than just posting content and hoping for the best. He had watched a range of affiliate marketing videos online and kept running into channels that felt primarily interested in selling him something rather than actually answering his questions.

The Income School YouTube channel felt different. The creators were willing to answer questions in depth, they went back to respond to comments, and the approach felt transparent rather than promotional. Alston describes himself as analytically inclined rather than creatively inclined, and a course that promised a formulaic, step-by-step process appealed to him far more than broad, vague promises about passive income. He signed up the same day he discovered the channel, created his first blog, and had his first 30 videos uploaded within 45 days.

The 60-Step System and What Has Been Added Since Launch

At the time Alston joined, Project 24 provided a 60-step guide to building a content website. The steps walked you through everything from initial setup to niche selection to hitting specific publishing targets. The benchmarks built into the course called for 30 blog posts, 10 YouTube videos, and a set of Pinterest pins as part of building out each individual website. That structure was what Alston used to get his first site to 30 posts and then to 100.

Since Alston joined, Income School has continued adding to the program. Two additions are worth knowing about. First, they introduced a free WordPress theme available to all Project 24 members. The theme scored a 99 on Google PageSpeed Insights, which is one of the factors Google uses to determine where sites appear in search results. A faster-loading site is a better-ranking site, and the Project 24 theme was built specifically to perform well on that metric. Second, the program now includes a full YouTube course that was not part of the original package when Alston started in 2018.

The free theme is licensed for unlimited websites, which is a meaningful practical benefit for anyone running multiple sites the way Alston does. Many commercial WordPress themes restrict you to one or five site installs. If you are building six or seven properties under the same method, an unlimited theme license eliminates a recurring cost that would otherwise add up across the portfolio. Alston notes that the course itself is regularly updated and that members are notified when changes go live, which he contrasts favorably with courses that go stale after their initial launch.

Site 1: The Anchor Site One Year In

Site 1 is the one Alston launched on September 7, 2018, the same day he joined the course. As of the week covered in this update, it has between 95 and 100 blog posts and approximately 35 YouTube videos connected to it. The YouTube channel for this site has 42 subscribers. Alston publishes to it weekly, though he missed one post during the period covered here.

The numbers for the week of September 15 through September 21: 418 pageviews, 213 unique visitors, roughly two pages per visit on average, an average time on page of 30 seconds, a bounce rate of 18.58 percent, and an exit rate of 43.78 percent. The low bounce rate is one of the most important signals in this set of numbers. It means visitors who land on one page are clicking through to other pages on the site rather than leaving immediately. This directly increases the number of affiliate links any given visitor encounters during a session.

Traffic sources on Site 1 break out with organic search leading the way, but the top organic sources are not Google. Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo collectively rank higher than Google in the organic search split. Facebook and YouTube also send meaningful traffic. Google itself is ranked eighth in the traffic source list. For a site that is just over a year old with nearly 100 posts, this pattern is consistent with what Income School warns its students to expect.

The top countries sending traffic to Site 1 are the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. Alston identifies this mix as a strong signal of buyer intent. Visitors from these developed, English-speaking countries are more likely to click affiliate links and make purchases than visitors from regions where the average purchasing power does not align with the products being recommended.

Why Bing and Yahoo Beat Google in Year One

Google is the dominant search engine by volume, but it is also the most competitive and the slowest to trust new sites. A brand-new domain with no external links and no established authority takes time to earn ranking power in Google. During that waiting period, Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo tend to index and rank new content faster. The competition on those platforms is lower, which means a new site’s posts can appear on page one of Bing while still buried on page ten of Google for the same keyword.

This matters for how you read your analytics during the first year. If you are checking your dashboard and feeling discouraged because Google is not sending meaningful traffic yet, look at whether alternative search engines are. Traffic from Bing or Yahoo is still traffic. Those visitors still click affiliate links. Alston’s Site 1 is a concrete example: 418 pageviews in a single week from organic search sources, with Google ranked eighth. The content is clearly ranking and driving clicks. Google just has not fully caught up yet.

YouTube is also showing up as a consistent traffic source on Site 1. The strategy is simple: read your blog posts on camera, upload the video to YouTube, and include a link back to the full post. Viewers who land on the YouTube video and want more detail click through to the site. This means every blog post can also function as a video script, and every video can point viewers back to a page with affiliate links already placed. The cross-channel traffic appears in Alston’s analytics as a named source, confirming that the approach produces measurable results rather than just theoretical benefit.

Site 2: What a 75-Point Bounce Rate Gap Looks Like

Site 2 launched around October 25, 2018, about six weeks after Site 1. It operates in a broader niche and has between 30 and 40 blog posts and 10 YouTube videos. The YouTube channel for this site has 10 subscribers. This site uses X Theme, a paid WordPress theme that Alston installed on all of his sites when he first started building them, before he discovered the free Project 24 theme.

The weekly numbers: 160 pageviews, 155 unique visitors, an average time on page of 2 minutes and 59 seconds, and a bounce rate of 93.33 percent. Compare that bounce rate directly to Site 1’s 18.58 percent. That is a gap of 74.75 percentage points. The content type is similar. The method is identical. The only structural difference Alston identifies between the two sites is the theme. Site 1 uses the free Project 24 theme optimized for page speed and internal navigation. Site 2 uses X Theme.

A high bounce rate means that visitors are landing on one page and leaving without clicking through to anything else on the site. From an affiliate marketing perspective, that is a serious problem. If a visitor reads one post and leaves, they only see the affiliate links on that one page. Lowering the bounce rate means more pages per session and more opportunities for the visitor to click a recommendation. Site 2’s average time on page is actually better than Site 1’s, which suggests the content is being read, but the site structure is not encouraging people to stay and browse further.

Traffic on Site 2 runs with Google organic at the top, then direct, then social. Google leads on this site, which likely reflects the broader niche. A topic with more potential entry-point keywords may earn Google rankings faster than a narrow specialty niche. The country mix also shows first-world audiences at the top, confirming that the site is attracting the right kind of visitor even if the bounce rate is limiting the number of pages they see per session.

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Site 3: The Local Travel Experiment with Learn Kenosha

Site 3 is different from the others in both origin and monetization strategy. It is a local travel site called Learn Kenosha, and it predates Alston’s involvement with Project 24. The original plan for the site was to generate revenue through display advertising. After Alston joined the course in 2018, he started applying the same keyword-targeted blogging approach to the travel site, adding content beginning in January 2019 with the intent to build organic search traffic first and then either sell that traffic to local businesses or pitch local advertising on the strength of the audience numbers.

The weekly numbers for Learn Kenosha: 26 pageviews, 23 unique visitors, 51 seconds average time on page, and a bounce rate of 70 percent. The site has between 15 and 25 blog posts and no YouTube channel. Alston has identified YouTube as a long-term opportunity specifically for this site. He notes that no one is creating YouTube videos about local events in the Kenosha area, which he sees as an opening. For local sites, YouTube content about area events and attractions could capture an audience that does not currently have a video home on that topic.

Traffic on Learn Kenosha is led by Google organic, followed by direct visits, and then Facebook. The Facebook traffic across all four of Alston’s sites comes from a premium plugin called Blog to Social. The plugin automatically distributes each new blog post to connected social media accounts at publish time and can also schedule repeat posts to go out at intervals across a 52-week cycle. Once you connect your social accounts and configure the plugin after launching each new site, the social distribution runs automatically. This is why Facebook appears as a consistent traffic source across all four sites in this update, regardless of whether Alston has actively posted to social media on any given week.

Alston also makes a practical observation about traffic quality for a local site. If a visitor to Learn Kenosha is coming from outside the United States, there is very little chance they are a genuine person interested in Kenosha travel content. For a local city site, international traffic is much more likely to represent bot activity or spam rather than real readers. Traffic quality matters alongside traffic quantity, and for a local property the geographic source of that traffic is a primary indicator of whether the visits have any real value.

Site 4: The Pound-for-Pound Winner in the Portfolio

Site 4 is the youngest of the four and the most revealing in terms of what actually drives performance in content marketing. It has fewer than 15 blog posts. It has no images on any of its pages, only a logo. Affiliate links were only added to the site roughly two months before this update was recorded. By every conventional measure of what a well-developed content site should look like, Site 4 should be the weakest performer in the group.

The weekly numbers: 200 pageviews, 179 unique visitors, an average time on page of 5 minutes and 19 seconds, and a bounce rate of 86.13 percent. Site 4 pulled 200 pageviews from fewer than 15 posts during the same week that Site 1 pulled 418 from nearly 100. On a per-post basis, Site 4 is far ahead of everything else in the portfolio. The average session time of over five minutes is also the highest of the four sites, meaning readers are spending more time per page on a site with zero images than they are on sites that are more fully built out.

Traffic is led by Google organic, then direct, then Bing, then Yahoo. The countries sending visitors include the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. These are exactly the buyer-country profiles you want at the top of your traffic source breakdown. The combination of deep engagement time and high-value geographic traffic suggests this site found a keyword category where there is genuine demand and relatively low competition, and that the content is answering questions well enough to hold attention for several minutes per visit.

What Site 4 demonstrates is that page design and visual polish are far less important than keyword targeting and content quality. A plain site answering specific questions that people are actively searching for will outperform a polished site answering broad questions that nobody is typing into a search bar. Site 4 has found a niche with the right demand profile, and the numbers show it clearly even at fewer than 15 posts.

What the Four-Site Comparison Actually Tells You

Reading across all four sites from this one week of data, several patterns emerge that are useful no matter which stage of building you are in.

Theme choice is a conversion decision, not a cosmetic one. The 75-point bounce rate gap between Site 1 and Site 2 traces directly to the WordPress theme. A theme built for speed and internal navigation keeps visitors on the site long enough to see more affiliate links. A slower theme with less internal navigation sends them away after one page.
Expect Bing and Yahoo to move before Google does. New domains earn trust on alternative search engines faster. Track your organic traffic sources by platform and do not conflate Google being slow with the content not working. Site 1 is a year old, has nearly 100 posts, and Google is still ranked eighth. The alternative engines are carrying the weight while Google authority builds.
YouTube cross-traffic is a real, measurable benefit worth adding. Site 1 shows YouTube as a named traffic source. Reading your blog posts on camera and linking back to the post is low-effort content production because the script is already written. Each video extends the reach of something you already created.
Per-post efficiency reveals niche fit better than total pageview count. Site 4 with fewer than 15 posts outperforming Site 1 with nearly 100 posts on a per-post basis is the clearest signal in this update. More posts are better, but only if each post targets a question that has real search demand and manageable competition.
Country mix is a proxy for buyer intent. US, UK, Canada, and Australia at the top of your traffic source breakdown means the audience has purchasing power aligned with the affiliate products you are recommending. Tracking this alongside total pageview counts gives a more honest picture of monetization potential than raw traffic alone.
Automate your social distribution once per site and leave it running. The Blog to Social plugin setup Alston uses takes time to configure once per new site and then runs on autopilot. Every post gets sent to connected social accounts automatically, and the 52-week scheduling means content gets recycled without ongoing manual work.

Honest Drawbacks of the Project 24 Approach

The timeline is longer than most people expect when they start. Alston joined on September 7, 2018, and this update covering September 15 through September 21, 2019 is just past the one-year mark. His largest site has 418 pageviews in a week, not a day. Site 3, which started adding Project 24 content in January 2019, pulled 26 pageviews for the same week. If you need income to arrive quickly, content marketing is not structured to deliver that. The model rewards patience and consistent publishing over a period that is measured in years, not weeks.

Google trust takes time to build regardless of how much content you publish. Site 1 at one year old with nearly 100 posts is still seeing Google ranked eighth in its organic traffic split. Bing and Yahoo are carrying the organic search load while Google authority accumulates. Income School has openly discussed this dynamic with their audience, noting that the 24-month mark is often when Google traffic becomes the primary source for a well-built site. That is a long runway for anyone who checks their analytics weekly and wants to see Google numbers improving faster.

Managing multiple sites at once amplifies the complexity significantly. Alston is running six or seven sites and only covering four in this update. Keeping track of keyword targeting, publishing schedules, analytics review, and theme updates across that many properties is a real operational load even when the individual tasks are straightforward. The method works well for systematic thinkers who are comfortable with repetitive, structured work. It is harder for people who approach projects casually or who struggle to maintain publishing consistency across more than one property at a time.

The course itself carries a cost that Alston does not specify in this video. The free theme and free YouTube course are genuine add-ons that improve the value of the membership, but Project 24 is a paid program. Anyone who is not prepared to stay consistent for at least 12 months before expecting meaningful organic revenue will find it difficult to recoup that investment. The method works on a timeline that rewards people who can think in years rather than quarters.

Find Your X

Alston’s approach to Project 24 works because it fits how he thinks. He describes himself as analytically inclined, and a system that provides a step-by-step framework for evaluating competition and hitting publishing benchmarks matched his natural working style. Not everyone operates the same way, and not every online income model fits every person’s situation, schedule, or existing skills.

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Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it realistically take to see Google traffic with Project 24?

Based on Alston’s data, alternative search engines like Bing and Yahoo tend to send meaningful traffic within the first year. Google authority builds more slowly, and Income School has consistently communicated that the 24-month mark is when Google typically becomes the primary organic source for a well-built site. Site 1 in this update is just over one year old with nearly 100 posts and Google is still ranked eighth in the organic traffic breakdown. That is a real, documented data point, not an estimate.

Do you need a YouTube channel for Project 24 to work?

No. Site 3, the Learn Kenosha travel site, operates without a YouTube channel and is still building organic traffic through blogging alone. However, Site 1 shows that YouTube can become a measurable traffic source when you record your blog posts as videos and link back to the original post. Income School added a full YouTube course to Project 24 after Alston joined, making it easier for members who want to pursue the cross-channel strategy. It is an option, not a requirement.

Does the WordPress theme really affect traffic and earnings that much?

The data from these four sites makes a strong case that it does. Site 1 with the free Project 24 theme has an 18.58 percent bounce rate. Site 2 with X Theme has a 93.33 percent bounce rate. The content method is identical. The niche type is similar. The only documented structural difference is the theme. A 75-point gap in bounce rate means visitors on Site 1 are visiting roughly six times as many pages per session as visitors on Site 2 before leaving. More pages per session equals more affiliate link impressions per visitor.

Can you run multiple niche sites simultaneously under this method?

Alston is running six or seven sites at once and covering four in this update, so yes, it is possible. Each site requires consistent content publishing to build authority, and the workload scales with the number of properties. The free Project 24 theme is licensed for unlimited sites, so you are not paying a per-site theme fee as the portfolio grows. The time investment is the primary constraint, not the tooling cost.

Why does Facebook appear as a traffic source across all four sites?

Alston uses a premium WordPress plugin called Blog to Social that automatically sends each new blog post to connected social media accounts at publish time. The plugin also supports scheduling repeat posts to go out at intervals over a 52-week period. Once configured on a new site, the social distribution runs automatically. This is why Facebook appears consistently as a traffic source across all four sites regardless of whether Alston is actively managing social media on any given day.

How do you tell if your audience is made up of buyers or browsers?

Alston uses the country breakdown in his analytics as one signal of buyer intent. The United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia showing up at the top of the traffic source list is what he wants to see. These are markets where visitors have purchasing power that aligns with the affiliate products being promoted and where English-language product recommendations are contextually relevant. Sites 1 and 4 both show this mix, which Alston reads as a positive signal for monetization potential over time.

Is Project 24 still worth joining if you are starting in 2025?

This video covers 2019 data, and the content marketing environment has changed meaningfully since then with AI-generated content becoming more common and Google updating its quality signals multiple times. What Alston’s numbers show is that the core principles of keyword research, consistent publishing, and page speed optimization produced real traffic in 2019. Whether those same principles apply with the same efficacy in 2025 is something worth researching with current Income School content before committing to the membership cost.

How does a local niche site fit into the Project 24 framework?

Site 3, Learn Kenosha, is a local travel site that was originally built before Project 24 as an ad revenue play. After joining the course, Alston began adding keyword-targeted blog posts to build organic search traffic and then plans to either sell that traffic to local businesses or pitch local advertising deals on the strength of the audience data. Standard affiliate links are less applicable for a local audience, so the monetization path shifts toward local business partnerships. The keyword research and publishing approach is the same; the revenue model is different.

Sources

Alston Godbolt, Project 24 Income School weekly update video, week of September 15 through September 21, 2019
Income School YouTube channel, Project 24 course overview and curriculum description
Google PageSpeed Insights, site speed scoring and ranking signal documentation
Blog to Social plugin, automated social media distribution for WordPress