Project 24: Organic Search Growth Breakdown for Sites 1 and 2 (Real Data and Insights)

Nobody talks about the boring part of building a blog. They show you the income reports from month 18 and skip straight past the months where nothing seems to happen. This video is one of the rare ones that shows you what the quiet phase actually looks like in the data, because Alston pulled up the Google Analytics for two real Project 24 sites and walked through the numbers out loud.

Site one launched September 7, 2018, with 92 blog posts following the Income School content formula. Site two launched October 24, 2018, with roughly 40 posts at the time of this update. Neither site is printing money yet. But both sites are doing exactly what Income School said they would do in the early months, and that alone is worth unpacking.

What You’ll Walk Out With

The exact traffic numbers for two real Project 24 sites in their first few months
An explanation of the early bot-traffic spike that confuses new bloggers
How Income School’s three-tier content format affects organic ranking speed
Why a 91 percent bounce rate on a brand-new site is not a crisis
The seasonal factor that makes niche selection matter more than people realize
What “ghost town phase” means in real numbers and how long it actually lasts
A clear-eyed look at whether Project 24 is delivering on its promises so far
If you want to know which blogging model fits your actual skills and schedule, start at finder.platformproof.com

Site One: 92 Posts, September 2018 Start, Real Numbers

Site one started September 7, 2018. By the time this video was recorded, it had 92 blog posts live and had been running for several months. The organic search traffic started just under 20 visits in September, dipped shortly after that, and then began a slow upward climb.

At the time of recording, the site was sitting at approximately 46 organic visitors for the month with six or seven days remaining. The full Analytics snapshot showed 166 users, 164 new users, 179 sessions, an 83 percent bounce rate, and an average session duration. Most of the posts were somewhere between 20 and 35 weeks old at that point.

That data tells a clear story. The site is not viral. It is not growing explosively. But it is growing, and the trajectory matches what Income School describes in their training. The posts are old enough to be past the initial indexing window but not yet old enough to reach full ranking potential. Income School’s model generally tells students that meaningful search traffic tends to show up somewhere around the 10 to 12 month mark for most niches, so being at month four or five and seeing consistent upward movement is a positive signal, not a red flag.

Alston also noted that this particular site is seasonal. The niche is tied to cold weather activity, so traffic will likely pick up significantly as temperatures drop. That kind of seasonal boost is something niche selection research should surface before you build, and it is worth factoring into how you read your early-month data.

The Early Bot Spike: Why Your First Week Looks Inflated

Something interesting shows up in the data for both sites: an early spike in traffic right after launch. If you look at a new site’s Analytics in the first week or two, you will often see a small burst of visitors that then drops off before the real growth begins.

Alston identified this as bots. When you launch a new domain and start publishing content, Google and other search engines immediately dispatch crawlers to figure out what the site is about. Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo do the same thing. These crawlers show up in your organic traffic counts, which inflates the early numbers slightly. Then once the crawlers finish their initial assessment, traffic drops back near zero as you wait for your posts to actually rank.

This is one of the most common sources of confusion for people new to blogging. They see traffic on day five, get excited, and then watch it fall to almost nothing by week three. They think something is broken. In reality, the crawlers finished their job, and now the waiting game begins. Organic search works on a delay, and the people who quit during that delay never find out if their posts would have ranked.

The Project 24 Content Formula: Three Tiers of Post Length

Income School’s Project 24 uses a specific framework for how to structure your content library. Alston described it this way: roughly one-third of your posts should be around 1,500 words, one-third should be around 2,500 words, and one-third should be around 3,500 words.

The thinking behind this structure is that different types of search queries need different depths of answer. A quick comparison question does not need 3,500 words. A comprehensive how-to guide for a competitive keyword probably does. Matching post length to query intent helps the post rank for what it is actually trying to target.

Alston mentioned that he initially tried a shorter post format called “response posts” and then went back and rewrote those because he was not happy with how they turned out. That kind of honest course correction is worth noting. Following a methodology does not mean every decision you make inside that methodology will be perfect on the first try. The process has room for iteration, and going back to improve underperforming content is a built-in part of how serious bloggers manage their sites over time.

At 92 posts across three tiers, site one had a serious content library for a site that was only a few months old. Building at that pace requires consistent weekly output, and it shows why people who join Project 24 are advised to commit time each week rather than treating the blog as a passive set-and-forget project in the early months.

Site Two: A Niche You Don’t Love and What That Does to Your Timeline

Site two launched October 24, 2018, but there is an important wrinkle: Alston did not actually finish building it out until the first week of January. The gap between launch and completion was several months, and the reason was that the niche was not personally interesting to him. He chose the topic because he saw it as a business opportunity, not because he had any passion for it.

That slowed everything down. When you are writing about something you genuinely do not care about, the writing takes longer, the research feels heavier, and the motivation to push through hard weeks is weaker. The site ended up with roughly 40 posts at the time of the video, with about 10 of those added in the most recent week before recording.

The organic numbers for site two reflected that slower build: 55 total organic pageviews, 49 unique pageviews, a 91 percent bounce rate, and a 22 second average time on page. These are lower than site one, and the bounce rate is higher, but neither of those numbers is surprising for a site that is newer and still in the process of building out its content library.

Alston’s plan going forward was to pause site one temporarily and put more focus on site two, specifically to push it toward 100 blog posts. The logic is that you need a critical mass of content before organic search really starts rewarding you, and site two was further behind on that count.

Why Organic Search Is the Only Metric That Matters Long Term

Alston made a point in this video that gets skipped over in a lot of blogging content: organic search is the lifeblood of a blog. Without it, you are fighting uphill every single day.

Social media traffic can work. Alston mentioned Pinterest and LinkedIn as platforms where readers tend to have decent buying power, which can convert even without search volume behind it. But social traffic requires ongoing output. You have to keep posting, keep engaging, keep feeding the algorithm. The moment you slow down, the traffic slows down with you.

Organic search is different. A well-ranked blog post continues delivering traffic for months or years without additional promotion. That compounding effect is why bloggers who stick with the process long enough eventually see income that does not require them to be active every single day. The posts do the work while you are doing other things.

The tradeoff is patience. You do not see that compounding effect in month two or month four. You see it in month ten, month fourteen, month twenty. People who abandon blogs in month five are leaving before the payoff window opens.

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

Answer seven questions and get a specific recommendation at finder.platformproof.com.

What Income School Said Would Happen and What Is Actually Happening

One of the most useful parts of this video is Alston’s honest assessment of whether Income School’s predictions are matching reality. His answer was yes, with specifics.

Income School tells students to expect a ghost town phase in the beginning. Minimal traffic. Crawlers showing up, then disappearing. Numbers that feel discouraging if you do not understand why they look that way. And that is exactly what both of Alston’s sites experienced in their early months.

That kind of accuracy matters when you are evaluating a paid course. If a course tells you “expect X” and you experience X, that is evidence the methodology is grounded in reality. If the course tells you “expect X” and you experience Y, that is a red flag worth paying attention to. Alston’s position after several months was that Income School’s description of the process had matched his actual experience, which is a stronger endorsement than any income screenshot.

He also mentioned that Income School’s YouTube channel provides a large amount of free content, and that the paid Project 24 membership roughly doubles or triples the depth of what they give away for free. That ratio matters if you are on the fence about whether to pay. The free content alone gives you a solid foundation; the paid version is for people who want to compress the learning curve and get more specific tactical guidance.

Honest Numbers Breakdown: What the Metrics Actually Mean

Let’s put the numbers in plain terms so you can compare them to your own situation if you are building a blog right now.

Site One at several months old:

92 blog posts live
166 users in the tracked period
179 sessions total
83 percent bounce rate
Approximately 46 organic visitors for the month with days still remaining
Seasonal niche, expected strong traffic bump in colder months

Site Two at a few months old:

Approximately 40 posts live (10 added in the most recent week)
55 total organic pageviews
49 unique pageviews
91 percent bounce rate
22 second average time on page

A high bounce rate on a new blog is not automatically a problem. Many informational posts answer a question and then the reader leaves, satisfied. That is actually a good user experience. The metric to watch alongside bounce rate is average session duration. If people are spending time on the page before leaving, the content is working. If they hit the page and leave in two seconds, something is wrong with the content or the match between the headline and what was delivered.

The 22-second average time on page for site two is worth watching. That is low and suggests either the content is not holding readers or the site is attracting visitors who were looking for something slightly different. At 40 posts, there is still room to tighten the content strategy and improve.

Find Your X

Blogging is one of several ways working adults build income online. It fits some people well and others poorly, depending on how they like to work, what they know, and how patient they are willing to be. If you want a clear-eyed answer to whether blogging or something else fits your specific situation, the free tool at finder.platformproof.com walks you through seven questions and gives you a concrete recommendation based on your answers, not a generic list of options.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Project 24 by Income School?

Project 24 is a membership program from Income School that teaches people how to build niche blogs and YouTube channels that generate passive income. The “24” refers to the goal of replacing your income within 24 months. The program includes training, community access, and tools. Income School also publishes a large amount of free content on their YouTube channel for people who want to learn the methodology before committing to the paid program.

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

Based on this video and Income School’s own guidance, meaningful organic traffic typically begins appearing between 10 and 14 months after a site launches, though that timeline varies by niche competitiveness, content quality, and how many posts are published. Alston’s sites at four to five months were showing early upward movement, which aligns with Income School’s description of the process. Most students should not expect significant traffic in the first six months.

What is the Project 24 content format for blog post lengths?

Income School’s Project 24 recommends building a content library where roughly one-third of posts are around 1,500 words, one-third are around 2,500 words, and one-third are around 3,500 words. The idea is to match post length to query intent. Shorter informational posts answer simple questions. Longer posts target more competitive or complex keywords that require thorough coverage to rank.

Why does a new blog get traffic in the first week and then drop off?

When you launch a new site, search engine crawlers from Google, Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo visit the site to index the content. Those crawler visits appear in your Analytics as organic traffic, which inflates your first-week numbers. Once the initial crawl is complete, that artificial traffic disappears and you are left with only real human visitors. On a new site with no rankings yet, that often means near-zero traffic. This is normal and expected, not a sign that something is wrong.

Is it a problem if I don’t love the niche I chose for my blog?

It can slow you down significantly. Alston’s site two launched in October but was not finished until January because the topic did not interest him. Writing content consistently is easier when you have genuine curiosity about the subject. That said, plenty of bloggers operate in business-first niches and do fine. The key variable is whether you can maintain output through the months when traffic is slow. If the topic bores you, those months become much harder to push through.

How many posts do you need before organic search really kicks in?

There is no universal number, but Project 24 students are generally advised to publish consistently toward 100 posts over the first year. Alston’s plan was to build both sites to that number. The reasoning is that more content gives search engines more signals about what your site covers, increases the total number of keyword targets you are competing for, and improves the chances that some posts will break through and start ranking. A site with 40 posts is harder to assess than a site with 100.

Does a high bounce rate mean my blog content is bad?

Not necessarily. A high bounce rate on informational blog content is common because readers often find the answer to their question and leave. Site one had an 83 percent bounce rate, and site two had a 91 percent bounce rate. Neither of those numbers alone indicates bad content. The more telling combination is bounce rate plus average time on page. If readers are spending 90 seconds or more before bouncing, they read what you wrote. If they bounce in under 10 seconds, the page did not deliver what the search query led them to expect.

Is Project 24 worth paying for, or can you learn enough for free?

Alston’s assessment was that Income School’s free YouTube content is already substantial, and that the paid Project 24 membership roughly doubles or triples the depth and specificity of what they share publicly. Whether that is worth the cost depends on how much you value compressed learning versus free research. The free content is enough to start. The paid content is for people who want a more structured path and access to the community. Both can work; the question is what fits your learning style and budget.

Sources

Alston Godbolt, Project 24 organic search update video (YouTube: d7VrU8iY5l0)
Income School Project 24 membership program: incomeschool.com
Google Analytics organic traffic data for site one (September 2018 launch) and site two (October 2018 launch), as shown in video