Project 24 Weekly Update (April 13-19): Traffic, Earnings & Monetization Progress!

Week four of April 2019, and the numbers are finally starting to make sense. Two niche sites. Two completely different stages of growth. One total earnings figure that just cracked ten dollars for the first time. If you are somewhere in your first year of Project 24 wondering whether any of this actually works, this update is the honest answer you need to see.

This is the Project 24 weekly update covering April 13 through April 19, 2019. Site one is the more established build, sitting at 91 published blog posts and pulling in real organic traffic. Site two is the scrappy younger build with 38 posts and an almost vertical bounce rate. Both are real. Both are messy. Both are moving in the right direction. Here is everything that happened this week.

What You’ll Walk Out With

The exact pageview and unique visitor counts for both sites this week
A breakdown of every traffic source driving visits: social, direct, organic, referral, and Quora
The actual dollar amounts from Google Adsense and Amazon Associates to date
How site one stacks up against the Project 24 traffic timeline (spoiler: slightly behind, and that is okay)
The specific content and monetization plan for site two going into the summer
An honest take on what Project 24 and Income School actually give you versus what you still have to do yourself
The one reason Quora traffic outperforms most social referrals on a per-session basis
A free tool to find your best online income path at finder.platformproof.com

Site One Traffic This Week: 121 Pageviews and the Math Behind It

For the week of April 13 through 19, site one pulled 121 pageviews and 111 unique views. The average time on page was 41 seconds, bounce rate sat at 83.3 percent, and the exit percentage was 54 percent. Those numbers look rough at first glance, but context matters here.

Divide 121 pageviews by seven days and you get roughly 17 pageviews per day. Multiply that by 30 and you are looking at a projected 510 pageviews for the month. Compare that to March, when site one logged a total of 407 pageviews for the entire month. That is genuine month-over-month growth, and it is happening while still being in the early stages of the build.

The Project 24 timeline, as of the version Alston checked during this update, suggests that around this stage a site should be hitting approximately 750 pageviews per month. Reverse engineering that number: 750 divided by 30 days is 25 pageviews per day. At 17 per day this week, site one is about 8 pageviews per day behind pace. Through the 20th of April, site one had logged 395 pageviews, putting the daily rate at 19.75. That is closer to the target, but still a gap worth watching.

Importantly, site one has 91 published blog posts at this point. No new YouTube videos have been pushed for that site this week. The traffic growth is coming entirely from existing content finding its audience, which is exactly the passive income model Project 24 is built on.

Where Site One’s Traffic Actually Comes From

The traffic source breakdown for site one this week reveals something worth paying attention to: social traffic is now the biggest single channel, and organic search is climbing steadily.

Of the roughly 60 users who visited, approximately 30 percent came from social sources. That bucket includes Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and any other platform that self-identifies as social in the analytics. Another 15 percent came from direct traffic, meaning people typed in the URL or had it bookmarked. Organic search, the channel that matters most for long-term income, accounted for 14 percent. Referral traffic, which includes YouTube, made up the remainder.

Looking at the specific source list, Quora deserves its own mention. Alston’s strategy on Quora is deliberate: find questions related to the blog’s topic, answer them with a relevant excerpt from an actual blog post, then link back to the site. The result this week was that Quora visitors were viewing nearly two pages per session and spending about one minute and six seconds on the page. Those engagement numbers are stronger than most social traffic typically delivers, because someone who clicked a Quora link already has context and intent from the answer they just read.

Other specific sources in the breakdown: Facebook, Yahoo (organic), DuckDuckGo (organic), Bing (organic), YouTube, Ahrefs (likely a site audit crawl showing up as referral), and something listed as Yelp Sales, which Alston noted he was unsure about. The organic search sources are what matter most here, and having Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and Bing all showing up as distinct sources signals that the content is getting indexed across multiple search engines, not just Google.

Site Two: 38 Pageviews and the Challenge of Starting from Zero

Site two is younger and smaller, and the numbers reflect that. For the same week, it pulled 38 pageviews and 38 unique views. Average time on page was 19 seconds, bounce rate was 97.2 percent, and the exit percentage was 94.7 percent.

At 38 pageviews divided by seven days, that comes out to roughly 5.4 pageviews per day. Projected across a full month: about 150 pageviews. The Project 24 timeline at this stage calls for approximately 200 pageviews per month, which means site two is running behind schedule. That gap is understandable given that the site only has 38 blog posts at the time of this update, with seven new posts added during that week alone.

The traffic sources for site two are much simpler because there are fewer entry points. Three channels account for all of it: direct (24 of 35 users), Facebook (9 of 35 users), and Google organic (2 of 35 users). The bounce rate and average time on page for site two reflect what you see with very new content: people arrive, look, and leave quickly. The content has not had enough time to rank or build any meaningful repeat readership.

The plan for site two is to get it to 100 published posts, then add affiliate links and recommended product pages. The goal is to have enough content built and indexed before the holiday shopping season so that any ranking progress translates into real monetization. Right now the site has no affiliate products listed at all, which means even if traffic jumped tomorrow, there is nothing to convert it into income.

The $10.22 Milestone: First Real Money from Two Sites

Here is the earnings breakdown as of this update. Google Adsense has paid out a total of $4.54 to date. Amazon Associates has paid out $5.65. Combined total: $10.22.

Ten dollars and twenty-two cents. That is a number that feels both small and significant at the same time. Small because it is obviously not income you can live on. Significant because it is proof of concept: two websites, built on content, are generating real dollars from real visitors who took real action. Nobody paid for ads. Nobody sent a sales email. The content did the work.

The stated goal going into the rest of the month is to reach $25 total by April 30. That would require more than doubling the earnings in about ten days, which is ambitious. But the logic holds: as content ages and ranks higher, as affiliate products get added to site two, and as traffic continues its upward trend, the conversion opportunities multiply.

What is worth noting here is the source of these earnings. Adsense revenue on low-traffic niche sites is typically pennies per day. The Amazon Associates number, $5.65, almost certainly came from a small number of qualified clicks, possibly one or two purchases. At this stage, that is valuable data about which content is drawing buyers rather than just browsers.

How Project 24 Actually Works: The Direction It Provides

Alston is direct about why he recommends Project 24 in this update. The program works, in his view, because it gives you complete direction. Without it, the alternative is listening to five or six different voices online and attempting five or six different approaches, none of which connect into a coherent system. Project 24 replaces that chaos with 60 structured steps and a clear timeline so you know where you should be at any given point.

At the time of this update, Project 24 includes over 13 separate courses inside the membership. There is also a community forum where members can share updates, ask questions, and get feedback from others working through the same process. Members also get access to group discounts on tools. The combination of structured curriculum, peer community, and accountability through the timeline is what sets it apart from the broader pool of affiliate marketing gurus who teach methods they may not be actively using themselves.

That last point is not a throwaway observation. A lot of the content in the make-money-online space comes from people who make their money teaching how to make money, not from actually running niche sites. The Project 24 model, and this weekly update series specifically, is the opposite of that: transparent, real-time, with real numbers including the low ones.

Not sure if blogging, content sites, or another method fits your skills and situation?

Get a personalized match in two minutes at finder.platformproof.com.

Honest Drawbacks: What This Update Reveals About the Hard Parts

This update is encouraging, but it also surfaces some real challenges that anyone considering Project 24 should understand before signing up.

The timeline gap is real. At 17 to 20 pageviews per day on site one, Alston is running behind the Project 24 benchmark of 25 per day at this stage. That is not a failure, but it is a reminder that the timeline is a projection, not a guarantee. Your content quality, your niche competition level, and how consistently you publish all affect where you land against those benchmarks.

Site two is almost entirely dark. A 97.2 percent bounce rate on a site with 38 posts is telling. The content is not connecting yet, either because it has not ranked, because the traffic coming in from direct and Facebook is not the right audience, or because there is nothing on the page to give visitors a reason to stay. Adding affiliate products and improving internal linking are the next logical moves.

$10 after months of work is honest, not motivating. The number is proof of concept, but it also illustrates how long the ramp is. Project 24’s model requires patience measured in months, not weeks. If you need income in 30 days, this is not the path. If you can invest 12 to 18 months of consistent content creation before expecting meaningful returns, the model has real legs.

You still have to do the work yourself. The 60-step framework is valuable, but it does not write the blog posts, do the keyword research, or build the internal links. Project 24 provides direction. You provide execution. How productive you are personally is what determines how closely your results match the timeline.

A Practical Roadmap for Site Two Going Forward

Based on what the update reveals, here is the logical sequence for getting site two to a productive state before the holiday season:

Publish to 100 total posts, continuing the pace of five to seven new articles per week
Add a recommended products or resources page with at least 10 affiliate-linked items relevant to the niche
Build internal links between existing posts so that Quora and Facebook visitors land on a page that connects to three or four other pages on the site
Watch the organic search percentage on site two: right now it is two users out of 35. That number needs to grow from a handful to double digits before monetization will hold up
Track the Project 24 timeline monthly, not just weekly, to get a cleaner picture of trend direction rather than reacting to single-week swings

Find Your X

Project 24 is one model. It works best for people who have patience for slow organic growth, enjoy writing, and want income that does not require showing up on camera or pitching anyone directly. But it is not the only path, and it may not be yours.

If you want to know which online income method fits your actual skills, schedule, and financial runway, use the free tool at finder.platformproof.com. It takes two minutes and gives you a specific recommendation based on where you actually are, not where a generic course assumes you should be.

Frequently Asked Questions

What exactly is Project 24 and how does it work?

Project 24 is a membership program from Income School designed to help people build niche content websites that generate passive income within 24 months. It provides a structured 60-step process, a projected traffic timeline, over 13 internal courses, and access to a member community. You build a blog around a specific topic, publish content targeting low-competition keywords, and monetize through display ads and affiliate commissions as traffic grows.

How long before a Project 24 site makes real money?

Based on Alston’s real experience, meaningful income takes well over a year to develop. By the April 2019 update, after months of publishing across two sites, total earnings were $10.22. The model is built on organic search traffic that compounds over time as content ages and ranks. Anyone expecting income in the first three to six months will likely be disappointed unless they have unusually fast-ranking content in a low-competition niche.

How many blog posts do you need before a niche site takes off?

There is no universal number, but Project 24 targets 100 posts as a meaningful threshold. Site one had 91 posts at the time of this update and was showing steady organic growth. Site two had 38 posts and was still almost entirely dependent on direct and social traffic. The pattern suggests that organic search traction tends to build more noticeably once a site reaches a critical mass of indexed content, somewhere in the range of 60 to 100 posts for most niches.

Is Quora a good traffic source for niche sites?

It depends on how you use it. Alston’s Quora strategy was to answer relevant questions using portions of actual blog posts, then link back to the full article. The result was nearly two pages per session and over a minute of average time on page, which is stronger engagement than most cold social traffic delivers. Quora works best when the answer you provide has genuine value independent of the link, and the link extends the answer rather than replacing it.

Should a new niche site use Google Adsense or Amazon Associates first?

Most Project 24 members start with Adsense because it activates automatically with any traffic, requiring no specific buyer intent. Amazon Associates requires visitors to click product links and make purchases, which only happens consistently once organic traffic is high enough and the content explicitly reviews or recommends products. In this update, Adsense had generated $4.54 and Amazon $5.65, suggesting that even at low traffic levels, the affiliate clicks were converting. Adding Amazon early on review-style content is worth doing; waiting until 100 posts to add it is probably leaving early money on the table.

What does the Project 24 timeline actually predict for traffic?

The timeline Income School provides projects where a site should be in terms of monthly pageviews at various points in the build. At the stage Alston was in April 2019, the benchmark for site one was approximately 750 pageviews per month (about 25 per day) and around 200 pageviews per month for site two. Alston’s site one was tracking closer to 510 projected pageviews and site two closer to 150, both slightly behind benchmark. The timeline is a planning tool, not a guarantee, and real results vary based on niche competition, content quality, and publishing consistency.

How do you handle running two niche sites at the same time?

Alston’s approach in this period was to treat the two sites as separate builds with different priorities. Site one, the more established build with 91 posts, received less active attention during this week since publishing had paused. Site two, with 38 posts, was in active content creation mode with seven new posts added that week. Running two sites simultaneously is possible but demands clear sequencing: build one to a self-sustaining point before splitting attention. At this stage, site two was still too early to monetize, so the focus was on volume of content rather than conversion optimization.

What is the biggest mistake people make with Project 24?

The most common failure mode is impatience. People join, publish 20 to 30 posts, see low traffic numbers, and stop before content has had time to rank. Organic search results for new sites typically take six to twelve months to materialize, sometimes longer in competitive niches. A second common mistake is treating the 60-step framework as the entire job, rather than as a guide for what the job requires. The steps tell you what to do; you still have to do it consistently, on your own schedule, for a long time before the compound effect shows up.

Sources

Alston Godbolt, Project 24 Weekly Update video (April 13-19, 2019), YouTube: https://youtu.be/MWM1IggBVh4
Income School, Project 24 program timeline (version referenced April 2019)
Google Analytics data for sites 1 and 2, as shown in video (April 13-24, 2019)
Google Adsense earnings dashboard, as shown in video (to-date total: $4.54)
Amazon Associates earnings dashboard, as shown in video (to-date total: $5.65)