Why My Blog Isn’t Making Money Yet (Project 24 Update)

I finished my first 30 blog posts. I hit the six-month mark. And I still have not reached Pete day. If you follow Income School and Project 24, you know Pete day is the moment your blog traffic takes off and the money starts coming in. I thought I was on track. I thought the 30 posts would do it. But sitting here looking at my analytics, I can tell you exactly why it did not happen and why it probably will not happen for another month or two at least.

The good news is I figured out the problem. It comes down to one decision I made early on that I should not have made. I am going to walk you through it using a football analogy that makes the whole thing crystal clear. If you are just starting your blog or you have fewer than 20 posts live right now, this could save you months of wasted effort.

What You’ll Walk Out With

The exact Income School Project 24 post structure: 30 posts across three size categories
Why 30 posts across multiple sub-niches gets you nowhere fast
The football niche analogy that explains proper niching down in plain terms
What I am doing to fix my mistake: the 100-post plan and why it should work
How the Warrior Challenge works (60,000 words in February) and where I stand
Why I hired a writer and what I am hoping to learn from that experiment
How to find the right niche depth for your own blog using finder.platformproof.com

The Project 24 Formula: What I Was Supposed to Do

Income School’s Jim and Ricky have a specific framework for building a blog that makes money. The core idea is 30 posts in a niche before you expect real traffic. Those 30 posts are split into three categories by length.

The first category is small posts at around 1,500 words. You write 10 of these. They cover narrow, low-competition questions in your niche. The second category is medium posts at around 2,500 words. You write 10 of these as well. They go deeper on topics that have more search volume. The third category is pillar posts at 3,500 words or more. These are your big comprehensive pieces that establish authority. You write 10 of those too.

That is 30 posts total. The claim from Income School is that if you follow this framework in the right niche, traffic will start climbing around the six-month mark. That point is what they call Pete day, named after a day when Pete and Jim first saw their blog traffic jump in a meaningful way.

I did the 30 posts. I put in the work. But I did not see the jump. And now I know exactly why.

The Mistake: I Did Not Niche Down Far Enough

Here is the problem. I spread my 30 posts across too many sub-topics inside my niche. Instead of going deep on one specific area, I went shallow across several. That means Google never saw me as the authority on any single topic. I was just another blog writing a little bit about everything.

To make this concrete, let me use a football analogy. Imagine you want to build a blog about football. Football is way too broad. Everyone is writing about football. You cannot compete there. So you niche down to offense. That is better, but offense is still very competitive. There are tons of sites covering offensive football strategy.

So you go one level deeper into spread offense. Now you are in a much more specific territory. Spread offense has a defined set of questions, a defined audience, and far fewer sites competing for that space. If you wrote all 30 of your posts about spread offense, covering its purpose, its history, its advantages and disadvantages, the coaches who invented it, how it works at the NFL level versus college, and how it has evolved over the decades, you could realistically dominate that search space.

But that is not what I did. I wrote some posts under spread offense, some under wishbone, some under T-formation, some under I-formation. So instead of dominating one column in that niche tree, I put a few posts in each column. Google looked at my site and saw a generalist, not a specialist. Generalists do not rank well in competitive spaces.

The Three-Level Niche Tree You Should Visualize

Think of your niche as a tree with three levels. At the top you have the broad category, which in the football example would just be football. That level is far too competitive for a new blog to rank in.

The middle level is the sub-niche. In the football example, that is offense. You have spread offense, wishbone, T-formation, I-formation, and others inside that middle column. Still competitive, but more manageable.

The bottom level is where you want to plant your flag. Pick spread offense and go all the way down. Within spread offense, you can write about the purpose of the spread, its advantages over older formations, its disadvantages, who invented it, which college programs run it best, how the NFL has adopted it, how it differs by conference, and so on. You could write 30 posts just on spread offense without running out of ideas. And if you did, you would own that topic in Google’s eyes.

Once you have dominated spread offense, you can move back up one level and do 30 posts on wishbone. Then 30 on T-formation. Then 30 on I-formation. Over time, you build authority across the entire offense sub-niche. Eventually you can move all the way up and compete for the broad football keyword. But you get there by going narrow first, not by starting at the top.

You Can Even Niche Down Further Than That

Here is something I did not fully appreciate when I started. Even within spread offense, you might find room to go one level deeper. Income School calls this niching down to a rating system or a specific variant.

In the football example, you might find that you can write a cluster of posts specifically about the AIAID system of spread offense from the 1980s. Or spread offense in the NFL versus spread offense in college. Or the spread as run by a specific coaching tree. These are even more specific entry points with even less competition. You find your foothold there, establish authority, and work outward.

The rule of thumb: at the bottom of the niche tree, you should either be by yourself or face very little competition. If you still see dozens of established sites ranking for your topic, you have not gone far enough down.

Not sure which niche depth is right for your blog?

Answer a few questions at finder.platformproof.com and find out what you should be building first.

What I Am Doing to Fix It

My current plan is to push to 100 blog posts on my primary site. But this time, I am being intentional about the structure. Instead of spreading across sub-niches, I am going back and building out proper clusters. I am doing 30 posts on spread offense, then moving to wishbone for 30 more, then continuing from there.

This approach should give Google a clear signal about what my site is actually about. Once I have depth in one area, the internal linking also gets stronger. Posts can reference each other in meaningful ways instead of existing as isolated pieces that do not connect.

If you are in a similar spot, here is a quick diagnostic. Look at your published posts and ask: do 30 of them cover the same specific sub-niche? If not, you have probably spread too thin. Go back and fill in the depth before you move sideways.

The Warrior Challenge: My February Word Count

On top of fixing my niche strategy, I am also running the Warrior Challenge for February. The goal is 60,000 words of content in a single month. That includes both blog posts and YouTube videos. Every YouTube video counts as 2,000 words toward the total, regardless of how long the video actually is.

With five days left in February, I am sitting at 55,670 words. I need about 4,330 more words to hit 60,000. My plan is to publish three more YouTube videos before the end of the month. That would add 6,000 words to my count from video alone, plus whatever blog writing I finish. I should hit the target.

The Warrior Challenge is not an official Income School thing. It is more of a personal production goal. But it has pushed me to create more consistently than I would have on my own, and that matters more than any single tactic when you are building a content site from scratch.

The Writer Experiment: Comparing My Output to Someone Else’s

I have also brought in a writer to help me ramp toward 100 posts faster. He is writing about a completely different sub-niche within my primary site, not the same topics I am covering. That is intentional.

I want to see two things from this experiment. First, can I hit 100 posts faster with outside help? The answer is almost certainly yes. Second, how does my writing compare to a professional writer’s output in terms of reader engagement and search performance? That is the more interesting question.

Within three to four months I should have enough data to make a real comparison. His posts will have had time to index and attract traffic. Mine will have as well. By looking at which posts perform better, I can learn whether my writing style is working or whether I need to change something. Am I writing at the right level for my audience? Are my posts clear enough? Do they hold attention? The data will tell me things reader feedback cannot.

Honest Drawbacks of the Project 24 Approach

Project 24 is a solid framework, but it is not without real costs. Here are the things I wish someone had told me before I started.

It is slower than advertised for people who niche incorrectly. Income School says you can replace your full-time income in 24 months if you follow the steps. I followed the steps but made the niching mistake, which means my timeline is longer than 24 months. That is on me, not on them, but it is still a reality worth knowing before you start.

The 30-post milestone is not magic. Completing 30 posts does not automatically trigger Pete day. The posts have to be in the right niche depth and have to cover the topic comprehensively. Thirty posts spread across a broad niche will not perform the same way 30 posts covering one tight sub-niche will. The number matters less than the focus.

You will not know you made the niching mistake until months in. That is the most frustrating part. I did not realize I had gone too broad until I had already published 30 posts and waited six months for traffic that did not come. There is no early feedback signal that tells you the direction is wrong. You just have to wait and see.

Post quality matters as much as post count. The Project 24 word count targets are a floor, not a ceiling. A 1,500-word post that actually answers a question well will outperform a 1,500-word post that pads the count with filler. I suspect some of my early posts were on the thin side in terms of real value, and that has not helped my ranking situation.

Find Your X

The hardest part of starting a blog is knowing where to start. Not the platform, not the tools, not the monetization method. The niche. Getting that right saves you months of work that goes nowhere. If you are not sure where to go deep or what topic you can actually own, visit finder.platformproof.com and work through the questions. It is built to help working adults figure out what they should be building online given what they already know and what they actually want their life to look like.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Pete day in Project 24?

Pete day is Income School’s term for the point when a blog’s traffic takes off and starts climbing consistently. It is named after a day when Pete and Jim saw a noticeable jump in traffic on one of their early blogs. Income School uses it as a milestone goal for bloggers following the Project 24 method, typically expected around the six-month mark if the blog is on the right track.

How many posts do you need before a blog starts making money?

Income School recommends 30 posts as the first major milestone. But the number alone is not enough. Those posts need to be in a narrow, focused sub-niche where you have a realistic chance of ranking. A blog with 30 posts in a single tight niche will outperform one with 100 posts scattered across too many topics. Focus on depth first.

What does niching down mean for a blog?

Niching down means narrowing your topic until you are covering a specific area that has real search demand but limited competition. Instead of writing about football generally, you write about spread offense specifically. Instead of writing about personal finance, you write about budgeting for single parents in their 30s. The more specific you are, the easier it is to rank and the more clearly defined your audience becomes.

Can I go too narrow with my niche?

Yes. If your sub-niche is so small that there are not enough search queries to fill 30 posts, you have gone too far. The test is whether you can generate at least 30 distinct post topics within the sub-niche without stretching. If you run out of ideas at 10, go one level broader. If you can easily list 50 ideas, you are probably in a good spot.

What are the three post types in Project 24?

Income School divides the 30 posts into three categories by length. Small posts are around 1,500 words and cover narrow, low-competition questions. Medium posts, which Income School calls staple posts, are around 2,500 words and go deeper on topics with more search volume. Pillar posts are 3,500 words or more and serve as the comprehensive cornerstone pieces on your most important topics. The recommended split is 10 posts in each category.

Is hiring a writer worth it for a Project 24 blog?

It depends on your goal. If speed to 100 posts is the priority, a writer can help you get there faster. The risk is that the writer’s content may have a different style or quality level than yours, and you will not know how that affects performance for several months. Running the writer on a separate sub-niche, as I am doing, lets you compare results without contaminating your main content cluster. It is a reasonable experiment but not a shortcut to skip doing the work yourself entirely.

What is the Warrior Challenge?

The Warrior Challenge is a personal content production goal, not an official Income School program. The target is 60,000 words of content in a single month, counting blog posts at their actual word count and YouTube videos at a flat 2,000 words each regardless of length. It is designed to push bloggers and creators to produce at a higher volume than they would otherwise. I hit 55,670 words with five days left in February during this update.

What should I do if my blog is not making money after six months?

First, check your niche depth. Go through your published posts and ask whether they cluster tightly around one specific sub-topic or whether they spread across multiple adjacent areas. If they spread, that is likely your issue. Second, check your post quality. Are you actually answering the questions your readers have, or are you hitting a word count target without real substance? Third, check whether your posts are indexed. Sometimes traffic issues are technical before they are strategic. Work through those three things before assuming the method does not work.

Sources

Income School Project 24: niche blogging framework referenced throughout this video
Alston Godbolt: personal Project 24 experience, 30-post milestone, warrior challenge update (this video)
Warrior Challenge framework: 60,000-word monthly production goal for content creators