Income School Project 24: July 2019 Update on 4 Sites (Real Traffic Numbers)

Ten months into Income School’s Project 24 program, Alston sits down with four websites open on his screen and walks through every one. No cherry-picking the good performer. No glossing over the site that collected only 19 Google users in a full calendar month. The real July 2019 numbers are on the table — pageviews, traffic sources, bounce rates, time on page, and an honest look at what is working and what is not.

This update is worth paying attention to because it shows something most income-blogging content does not: what the gap between Project 24’s expectations and actual results looks like in month 10, why a six-post site can outperform a 97-post site on Google, and how one bad habit in the first 35 posts can push your timeline back eight to ten months. If you are thinking about joining Project 24 or are already in it and wondering whether slow growth is normal, this breakdown is for you.

What You’ll Walk Out With

The July 2019 traffic numbers for all four sites: pageviews, unique views, average time on page, and bounce rate
Why one 97-post site got only 19 Google users in a month while a 6-post site got 137
How Amazon Prime Day creates a traffic spike for small niche blogs
The two-step fix Alston is using to try to get Google to notice his flagship site
Why bad keyword research in your first 35 posts can cost you eight to ten months of progress
How YouTube becomes a competitive advantage when the top bloggers in your niche do not make videos
The original plan behind the local travel site and why it pivoted into a Project 24 content site
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What Is Project 24?

Project 24 is a content marketing course built around a 60-step blogging framework created by Income School. The promise behind the program is specific: follow the steps, publish content consistently, and you can replace your full-time income with passive income within 24 months. The name comes directly from that timeline.

The course focuses on helping people create blog content that actually helps readers rather than content that reads like a long sales pitch for affiliate products. That is a real distinction, because a lot of beginner blogging advice pushes people to stuff posts full of affiliate links and keyword repetition, which tends to produce content that search engines and readers both distrust.

Alston joined on September 7, 2018. Since then, Income School has added two major resources to the program: a free WordPress theme designed for speed and readability, and a full YouTube course to help members build video channels alongside their blogs. By July 2019, Alston was using both and managing four separate websites at very different stages of development.

Site 1: The Flagship With 97 Posts and a Google Mystery

The first site is the oldest. Alston launched it on September 7, 2018, the same day he joined Project 24. By the July 2019 update, it had 97 blog posts and 29 YouTube videos connected to it, making it the largest and most developed of the four sites.

July 2019 traffic numbers: 1,035 pageviews, 973 unique views, average time on page of 4 minutes and 4 seconds, bounce rate of 91.19%, and an exit percentage of 85.51%. That pageview count is roughly 300 to 400 higher than recent previous months, which makes July the strongest month this site has seen.

Now for the part that does not add up. When you look at where the organic search traffic is coming from, Google is eighth on the list. The top organic sources are Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo, then Facebook, Quora, YouTube, and only then Google. In 31 days, just 19 users arrived from Google. That is not a rounding error — that is a genuine signal that something specific is preventing this site from ranking in the world’s dominant search engine.

Alston’s hypothesis is page speed. The current WordPress theme may be loading slowly enough that Google’s crawlers are deprioritizing the site in rankings. This is a known issue in blogging: a theme that looks fine to a human can still carry enough code weight to drag down Core Web Vitals scores, which Google uses as part of its ranking criteria.

The fix is a two-step process. First, switch to the new Project 24 WordPress theme, which is built with speed in mind. Second, resubmit the homepage in Google Search Console so Google crawls the updated, faster version. Within one to two weeks of making that change, Alston expects to know whether page speed was the actual bottleneck or whether something else is at play.

Alongside the theme switch, the content plan for this site is to continue publishing YouTube videos on a set schedule — one per week, automatically uploaded on Mondays at 9:00 a.m. — and to keep adding blog posts at one to two per week. Alston notes that his competitive advantage in this niche is that the established bloggers in the space do not make YouTube videos. If the same topics that get written about in blog posts also get covered in video form, the site has a path to capturing search traffic that the competition is not competing for.

Geography for site 1: United States leads, followed by the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. That is a standard English-language spread and suggests the content is landing with a broad international audience, even if Google itself is not sending them yet.

Site 2: 40 Posts, Google Ranks It Well, but the Niche Is Dry

The second site launched on October 25, 2018, about seven weeks after the flagship. Alston built it because he was personally trying to research a topic and could not find good information online anywhere. Rather than give up on the research, he built the resource himself and turned it into a blog. By the time of this update, the site had around 40 blog posts, with the 30th post going up in the first week of January 2019.

July 2019 numbers: 390 pageviews, 368 unique views, average time on page of 2 minutes and 18 seconds, bounce rate of 91.67%, and an exit percentage of 86.15%.

Traffic sources for site 2 are the inverse of site 1. Here, Google organic leads the way. The order runs Google organic, then direct traffic, then Facebook, Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and YouTube. The 40-post site is outperforming the 97-post site on Google by a significant margin, which Alston attributes at least partly to better early keyword research on this site and possibly to the niche being one where there is less established competition.

The trade-off is that the niche is dry. The content is functional and useful, but it does not generate excitement or community engagement. Alston has around 10 YouTube videos on the companion channel for this site and is uncertain whether he will continue adding more. Dry content that people read once to get an answer does not translate naturally into video that people come back to watch repeatedly.

Countries sending traffic: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and India. The India audience is notable and fits the niche, suggesting some international search volume that the content is capturing.

Site 3: Six Posts, 137 Google Users, and What Amazon Prime Day Does to a Small Blog

Site 3 is the smallest of the four by post count — only six blog posts — and it produced some of the most interesting data in this update.

July 2019 numbers: 225 pageviews, 205 unique views, average time on page of 3 minutes and 42 seconds. The time-on-page figure is the highest of the four sites, which suggests readers are actually consuming this content rather than landing and bouncing immediately.

Traffic is almost entirely organic search, followed by direct, referral, and social. When you break down the organic sources, Google is dominant here — 137 users from Google in the month, followed by direct traffic, Bing, and Yahoo. That 137-user Google figure stands in sharp contrast to site 1, which has 16 times as many posts but pulled in only 19 Google users in the same period.

Part of what drove site 3’s July traffic was Amazon Prime Day. For anyone unfamiliar, Amazon Prime Day runs for two to three days each year and features steep discounts on products across categories. During that window, a large volume of people search for buying guides, product comparisons, and recommendations — which is exactly the kind of content that small niche blogs often publish. If your blog covers a niche where the products you write about are available on Amazon, a well-timed buying guide or comparison post can catch a wave of purchase-intent traffic that it would not normally see.

The effect is real but temporary. The traffic spike comes from people in an active buying mindset, and it drops off once the sale window closes. Still, for a six-post site, capturing that kind of traffic is a strong validation that the niche and keywords are solid.

Countries sending traffic to site 3: United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and Singapore. Singapore appearing in the list is unusual and suggests there is a pocket of interest in this niche from Southeast Asia specifically.

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Site 4: The Kenosha Travel Site That Started as a Business Directory

The fourth site has a different backstory from the others. Alston created it in July 2018, before he even joined Project 24. The original concept was to build something like a local Yelp or TripAdvisor for Kenosha, Wisconsin, where he lives. The idea was to sell ad space to local businesses, creating a directory where people in the area could find places to eat, things to do, and services nearby.

The problem with that plan was practical: to attract local businesses willing to pay for ad space, the site needed traffic. And to get traffic, the site needed content. So Alston started adding blog posts, and once he joined Project 24, the content strategy for this site followed the same framework as his others. By July 2019, it had somewhere between 10 and 25 blog posts covering travel-related content about Kenosha and the surrounding area.

At the time of filming, Kenosha had a tall ships or large ships event drawing visitors from across the Midwest. That kind of event-driven local interest is exactly what a travel and tourism site can capture with the right content.

July 2019 numbers: 80 pageviews, 76 unique views, average time on page of 24 seconds, and a bounce rate of 89.23%. The 24-second average time on page stands out immediately. The other three sites all show readers spending minutes on page. Twenty-four seconds is barely enough time to read a headline and scroll through a paragraph. That number suggests the pages are not matching what people are searching for, or the content is not compelling enough to keep readers past the opening lines.

Traffic sources for site 4: direct traffic leads, followed by organic search, social, and referral. The direct traffic leading suggests a core group of people are returning to the site directly rather than finding it through search, which makes sense for a local site where some community members may have bookmarked it or found it through a local event or social post.

Alston includes this site in the Project 24 update because the content follows the same principles, even though its original purpose was different from a traditional affiliate or advertising blog. The plan going forward for all four sites is consistent: add the new Project 24 WordPress theme, continue publishing YouTube videos where it makes sense, and keep adding content.

Why Keyword Research Is the Hidden Variable in Project 24

Alston is direct about one thing in this update: he knows he is behind the Project 24 timeline for site 1, and he knows why. In the first 35 blog posts he published, the keyword research was poor. He was writing about topics that were either too competitive for a new site to rank for, or too obscure to drive meaningful traffic, or both.

The consequence is not just a few weeks of slower growth. Alston estimates that missing keyword research in those early posts set his timeline back eight to ten months. That is a significant delay on a program that is already asking you to commit 24 months to see full results. If you lose eight to ten months in the first 35 posts, you have now effectively signed up for a 32 to 34-month journey instead of a 24-month one.

Project 24 gives members a rough estimate of where their traffic should be at various points in the timeline. Alston acknowledges that his flagship site is below those benchmarks, but he believes the game plan — theme change, YouTube expansion, better content targeting — puts him back on a path toward the results he is looking for.

The lesson here is not that Project 24 does not work. It is that the 60-step framework has to be followed in order, and keyword research is one of the steps where beginners most commonly cut corners. Choosing topics that sound interesting but have no realistic path to page-one rankings for a new domain is one of the most expensive mistakes a blogger can make, and the cost does not show up until months later.

YouTube as a Competitive Advantage When Bloggers Are Not Filming

One of the more interesting strategic points in this update is Alston’s observation about YouTube. For site 1’s niche, the established bloggers with the most authority are not making YouTube videos. They are focused entirely on written content, which means there is a gap in the video search results for topics in that niche.

If Alston can build a YouTube channel around the same topics his blog covers, he is competing in a space where the well-established players have no presence. A new blogger trying to out-rank a five-year-old authority site on Google faces an uphill battle. That same blogger posting videos on YouTube about the same topics is competing against far fewer established channels, which means it is easier to appear in YouTube search results and recommendations.

YouTube also brings traffic back to the blog. When viewers click through from a video to the companion blog post, that counts as referral traffic and can push up the overall pageview numbers — which is likely part of what drove site 1’s referral category in the July traffic breakdown.

The plan to publish one YouTube video per week, on Mondays at 9:00 a.m. automatically, is an attempt to treat the video channel as seriously as the blog — not as an afterthought, but as a parallel content track. Income School’s addition of a YouTube course to Project 24 signals that they see this combination as a meaningful accelerator for members who are willing to do both.

Honest Drawbacks of the Project 24 Approach

Project 24 is a real program with a real framework, and Alston’s results after ten months are honest proof that it takes longer than most people expect and requires more than just following steps. Here are the genuine drawbacks this update reveals.

The 24-month timeline is a best-case scenario. Alston joined in September 2018 and by July 2019 his largest site was getting about 1,035 pageviews per month. That is real progress, but it is well below what you would need to replace a full-time income. The timeline stretches if you make early mistakes — and most beginners do.

You need multiple sites to learn faster. Alston is running four sites simultaneously. That is a heavy workload, but it lets him compare what works across different niches and see patterns he would miss with just one site. Most people joining Project 24 start with one site. That is fine, but the learning curve is steeper when you do not have comparison data.

Google can ignore a site for reasons that take weeks to diagnose. Site 1 has 97 posts and gets 19 Google users per month. That is not a traffic problem you can solve by publishing more content. It requires diagnosing a technical issue — in this case, possibly page speed — and then waiting for Google to re-crawl. That wait adds more weeks to an already long timeline.

Not every niche works well with video. Site 2’s dry content niche is getting traffic from Google on written content, but the companion YouTube channel has around 10 videos and may not grow further. If you are in a niche that does not produce engaging video content, you give up the YouTube-as-competitive-advantage strategy that is working for site 1.

Early keyword research mistakes are expensive. As Alston makes clear, getting keyword research wrong in the first 35 posts cost him eight to ten months. There is no shortcut to recovering from that. You either accept the delay or start over with a new site built on better research.

Find Your X

Project 24 is one path to building online income through content. It works best for people who enjoy writing, can commit to a multi-year timeline, and are willing to do the keyword research correctly from the start. But it is not the only path, and it is not the right fit for everyone.

If you are trying to figure out which online income model actually fits your skills, schedule, and financial goals, the Platform Proof Finder can help you narrow it down. Answer a few questions about what you already know how to do, how much time you have, and what kind of income you are working toward — and get a specific recommendation rather than a generic list of options.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Project 24 from Income School?

Project 24 is a 60-step content marketing course that teaches bloggers how to create niche websites designed to generate passive income. The name refers to the program’s stated goal of helping members replace their full-time income within 24 months through blog traffic and affiliate revenue. Members get access to the step-by-step framework, a WordPress theme, and as of 2019, a YouTube course as well.

How much traffic should a Project 24 site have after 10 months?

Project 24 provides members with rough traffic benchmarks at various stages, but Alston acknowledges being behind those benchmarks at month 10. His flagship site was at 1,035 pageviews in July 2019. The specific benchmarks vary by niche competitiveness and how closely members follow the keyword research process from the start. Missing that research step early can push results back significantly.

Why is a site getting traffic from Bing and Yahoo but not Google?

This usually points to a technical issue rather than a content issue. If Bing and Yahoo are indexing and ranking the same pages that Google is ignoring, it suggests that Google may have a specific objection to the site — commonly page speed, crawl errors, or thin content signals. Switching to a faster WordPress theme and resubmitting the site in Google Search Console is the standard first step in diagnosing this.

Does Amazon Prime Day actually help small blogs?

Yes, if the blog covers a niche where Amazon sells relevant products. Prime Day drives a surge in purchase-intent searches — people actively looking for buying guides and product comparisons before spending money during the sale. A small niche blog with well-optimized product content can capture a meaningful traffic spike during those two to three days even if it does not rank highly the rest of the year.

How important is keyword research when starting a new blog?

Keyword research is the most important early decision a blogger makes, and mistakes there are slow to show up and expensive to fix. Alston’s experience shows that poor keyword choices in the first 35 posts delayed his traffic results by eight to ten months. The posts do not disappear — they just do not rank, which means all the time spent writing them produces minimal traffic return until you build enough overall domain authority to compensate.

Should I start a YouTube channel alongside my blog?

It depends on whether your niche has a YouTube audience and whether the established bloggers in your niche are already on video. If the top blogs in your niche are not creating videos, that gap is an opportunity. YouTube search and Google search are different systems, and ranking in YouTube for the same topics you cover in writing can bring a second stream of traffic to your site. Income School added a YouTube course to Project 24 specifically because this combination is producing better results for members who use both.

Is it worth running multiple websites at once?

Running multiple sites is a heavy workload but has real learning benefits. When you can compare how different niches respond to the same content strategy, you spot patterns much faster than with a single site. The risk is spreading your writing time too thin across sites, which slows the growth of all of them. Alston’s approach — varying post frequency and YouTube activity based on which site has the most upside — is a practical way to manage the workload without abandoning any of the sites entirely.

Can a local travel or tourism blog make money through Project 24 methods?

It is possible but more limited than a broad niche blog. Local travel content has a built-in geographic ceiling — only people interested in visiting or living in that specific city are your audience. Alston’s Kenosha site started as a business directory concept before pivoting to content-based traffic. The 24-second average time on page in July 2019 suggests the content was not yet matching what visitors were actually searching for, which is a common problem with local sites that have not yet narrowed their keyword focus.

Sources

Income School Project 24 — July 2019 video update by Alston Godbolt (YouTube, uploaded 2019)
Google Analytics data shared in the video: pageviews, traffic sources, geographic breakdown for all four sites
Amazon Prime Day 2019 — two to three day sale event referenced as a traffic driver for site 3
Income School Project 24 program details — 60-step framework, WordPress theme, YouTube course additions