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Income School’s Project 24 Review – Is Blogs Still Worth it in 2024? (Ricky Kesler and Jim Harmer)

March 15, 2024

Income School Review

Project 24 by Ricky Kesler and Jim Harmer is an online course in the Income School education platform that teaches people how to create a business that replaces their day jobs within 24 months by blogging and creating YouTube channels. There are a variety of video courses within the Project 24 affiliate marketing course to help you make money online and achieve financial freedom. 

The downside of starting an affiliate marketing business is that you don't know how much you are going to get in commissions each month. You have to pay for traffic, which can get expensive if you don't know what you're doing, and companies can change their affiliate offers whenever they want. This makes it difficult for you to earn a long-term recurring income that you can rely on. Local lead generation uses free traffic to generate a passive income each month after you create and set everything up. 

Income School Project 24 Review: Pros and Cons

Pros

They keep Income School updated to ensure they're teaching you how to always stay profitable, whether you're blogging or creating a YouTube channel.

Ricky and Jim have made millions through their affiliate niche websites.

The private forum-style community is a valuable resource for any Project 24 member because the community is very engaging.

Live mastermind sessions each week.

Cons

There are few recent success stories of students.

Some of the SEO methods taught in this course are unorthodox.

Creating niche blogs and YouTube channels isn't a business model that's going to earn you a passive income.

Price:

The Project 24 affiliate marketing course costs $449 for the first year and $249 each year after.

Refund Policy:

No refunds.

Training:

27 total courses within the Project 24 library covering topics such as blogging, YouTube, marketing, monetization, and more.

Origin:

The domain name, IncomeSchool.com, was bought in 2013. The platform was created in 2015 and Project 24 started in 2018.

Reputation:

Rickey and Jim have been making money online for 20 years and have earned multiple 7-figures. They have a good reputation in online marketing.

What is the Project 24 Affiliate Program?

The Project 24 Affiliate Program is an affiliate program that rewards you for bringing new customers to Income School with your affiliate link. New affiliates start at $50 per standard referral and there are opportunities to make up to $100 per standard referral. Commissions are paid on the 15th of each month and only paid out using PayPal. To become an affiliate, you must be an Income School Project 24 member. You must prove that you have at least 2,000 page views per month on your site and/or 2,000 subscribers on YouTube. They will also require you to share your plan on how you will promote Project 24.

What is Project 24 Reddit?

Project 24 on Reddit has good more good reviews than bad. Some of those reviews are shown below.

What is Project 24 Review Reddit?

The Project 24 review on Reddit that stands out was posted two years ago. They said the information found in the program is valuable. But it isn't anything that couldn't be found for free on YouTube. They also said that after Jim and Ricky started putting other people in management roles within the team of helping students, the value of the course dropped because it felt less personal.

This next person said that this course ignores link building, social media and more. They also said that many students in the forum would complain their sites were losing ranking because of the Google updates.

Who are Jim Harmer & Ricky Kesler?

Ricky Kesler and Jim Harmer are the founders and creators of Income School and Project 24. Ricky is from Meridian, Idaho and graduated from Meridian High School. In 2004, he attended Brigham Young University for his Bachelors in Chemical Engineering. Three years later, in 2007, Ricky worked as an assistant at Pond's Plumbing and Heating. In 2009, he worked as a Marketing intern and a Process Engineering intern at the Celanese manufacturing plant.

Ricky signed up at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - Kenan Flagler Business School in 2013 and got his MBA. He worked as a manager at HP and then as a research engineer and strategic marketing & business analyst at Celanese. Although he wanted to start his own business, he didn't know what exactly to do. 

Jim Harmer is from Rexburg, Idaho and started a web design startup called Journey Advertising. In 2009, he got into photography and in 2011 attended the Ave Maria School of Law, as well as the University of Idaho College of Law. All the while, he started his photography business, Improve Photography. That business venture proved massively successful as he gained over 1 million followers on social media and was one of the 40 most photographers online. Jim even wrote a book.

Work Energy is a book by Jim Harmer that shares his life experience with internet marketing. He helps you find the things that motivate you and that make you successful to build upon them. Though Jim was having outstanding success with his photography business, he realized he was making more money blogging than he was as an attorney. This made him want to continue blogging. 

In 2015, Jim and Ricky started Income School to teach others how to drive massive amounts of traffic to websites and earn an income online. Project 24 came to life in 2018. On their Income School YouTube channel, they post videos weekly about SEO, blogging, and online marketing.

They also share more tips and strategies that are currently working on The Income School Members podcast.

Blogging Mistakes that Cost Ricky and Jim $300,000

Not Adding New Blog Posts: Being inconsistent in adding blog posts to a personal blog is a costly mistake committed by Ricky and Jim. It's common for bloggers lose focus or fail to follow through with their content plans.

Overproduction of Content Across Many Sites: Producing too much content is also another costly mistake that Ricky and Jim learned the hard way. 

Ineffective Search Analysis: Ricky and Jim made a crucial mistake when they targeted low competition search phrases without considering topical authority. This led to a decline in site performance following a Google algorithm update.

Premature Sale of Blogs: They sold their blogs too early, before fully capitalizing on their potential. 

Delay in Starting New Sites: Ricky and Jim experienced a delay in starting new sites after selling their previous ones. This slowed them down, especially with AI swiftly catching up. 

Not Focusing on E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) and Early Monetization: They neglected the importance of establishing E-A-T early on in business. They did not provide author bio and profiles, which has led to many missed opportunities.  

Imbalance in Focus Between Content Production and Other Aspects: They focused heavily on content production at the expense of other important aspects of the business, like web design. 

Not Exploring AI Content Creation Sooner: Ricky and Jim emphasized the importance of leveraging AI in blog content creation. They regret not diving into it sooner, which could have helped them keep up with their content goals more efficiently.

What's not mentioned in the interview: Blogging is an extremely competitive industry as 3.2 million new blogs are published daily. Among those that try blogging, only 37% make at least $100 monthly income. 

What do you get with Income School Project 24 Training Course?

With the Income School Project 24 training course, you get access to a library of courses that helps you use the power of content to generate an income online. Included in the Income School Project 24 membership are the top two courses, The Blogging Course and The YouTube System. All of the courses are kept up to date on the latest strategies and methods. The courses you have access to are shown below.

1) The Blogging System (15 courses)

With this course, they teach you how to choose the right profitable niche, perform keyword research, create content for your niche site, and monetize it. They show you their Search Analysis method, which helps you pick topics for your article so that you're never without ideas for a blog post. The goal is to create a successful niche website.

2) The YouTube System (7 courses)

The goal of this course is to help you grow a YouTube audience quickly and sustainably. Within this section, you learn how to create content, how to create your own information product, market it for unique views, and sell it. You also learn how to build authority to your site, and how to make money through your channel with affiliate marketing. This system works for someone with an established channel.

3) Marketing (3 courses)

In this section, you learn how you can promote your blog and YT channels. Some important ways to do so are...

  • Affiliate Links
  • PPC advertising
  • Social Media marketing
  • SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

4) Monetization (5 courses)

This group of courses shows you how to monetize your blogs and YouTube channels. Some ways to do so are...

  • Affiliate marketing
  • Email Marketing
  • Paid channel memberships
  • Patreon accounts and more.

Other Project 24 Courses

  • Monetize with Patreon
  • 10-Day Info Products
  • Answer Targets for Winning Snippets
  • 60 Steps to a Successful Site (Income School's old blogging course that taught their original 60 steps to creating a successful blogging site. It isn't their flagship course anymore, but it has been updated and still contains some valuable information).
  • Video Editing with Final Cut Pro
  • Monetize with Ads

Within your Project 24 dashboard, they also give you a list of tasks for you to accomplish each month to keep you on track.

What is The Project 24 Style?

The Project 24 style of creating content is to answer a user's question in the most direct and comprehensive way. Providing a complete answer, it is easier to gain Google's trust, which helps your ranking.

What is Project 24 Channel Makers?

Project 24 Channel Makers is another name for the Project 24 YouTube training. This program is sold on the Channel Makers sales page. 

What is Acabado?

Acabado is a WordPress theme by Income School that was designed to help improve site ranking by increasing page speed, improving SEO, and making it more mobile friendly.

With Acabado, you have anti-bounce protection, unique home page customization options, Pinterest image optimization, and more. Acabado costs $67 per year or $179 for 100 years. 

What is the Project 24 Free Download?

The Project 24 Free Download is available on several websites, but none of them seems legit. 

Are blogs still relevant in 2024?

Blogs are still relevant in 2024, and you can be lucrative if you publish authoritative content regularly. On average, bloggers make between $38,000 and $52,000. Some bloggers are making 6 and 7 figures. 

Although I maintain my blog, it's not the most passive income. There's content that needs to be created, edited and ranked. To build up the authority of a blog site takes many months and years. I started this blog in 2018 and have been consistently building its authority.

Traffic to your blog will make you money, but blogging won't pay you thousands of dollars overnight. It's a long-term play for any content creator. For that reason, many people choose local lead generation as their first business over affiliate marketing and blogging.

Is Project 24 worth it?

Project 24 is worth it if you want to learn how to make money with affiliate marketing through blogging and creating content on a YouTube channel. There are many videos that cover everything you need to know to create a successful blog and YouTube channel. Some comments online have said you can learn everything in this course for free by searching through their YouTube channel. Income School will at least teach you everything in an organized way and provide support. Their successful students are proof what they teach can work.

Income School Project 24 Success Stories

Jonah reached a monthly income of $2.4K. Project 24 was his first experience with blogging. His blog reached 60K page views per month and can still work at his full-time job. What he appreciates about Project 24 was that they keep the course content up to date and the private community is very helpful. Jonah said this course will teach you everything you need to know to build a successful blog. 

With the help of the P24 team, Lisa could also build her site and reach almost 60K site visitors per month. She did a parenting blog and has monetized it through ads, Amazon, and other affiliate programs. She went from having no experience creating a site, let alone a blog, to making anywhere between $500 and $2000 per month

Income School Project 24 Alternatives

The Affiliate Lab, by Matt Diggity, teaches you how to build, rank, and monetize your authority niche website. This course takes things a step further by showing you how to flip your sites for between 32X-40X the monthly revenue your site generates. Matt is an SEO expert who teaches some of the best ranking techniques to help you rank your affiliate website. There are over 100 training videos and you get templates, SEO tools, and more. 

Price: The Affiliate Lab costs $997.

More info: The Affiliate Lab review.

Authority Hacker Pro by Gael Breton and Mark Webster teaches you how to create and rank authority sites in their Authority Site System. The course creators teach you content creation, how to build links, how to generate more revenue, and more. There are over 400 training videos, SOPs, templates, plugins, and more. There is also a private Facebook group where they provide support for their students. 

Price: Authority Hacker costs $1,997.

More info: Authority Hacker Pro Review.

https://ippei.com/entre-institute/

The Super Affiliate System by John Crestani teaches you all the ways you can make money with affiliate marketing on Clickbank in this 12 week course. John is a successful affiliate marketer who dives deep when teaching Facebook and Native ads, although they can be expensive. There are over 50 hours of video training and they provide you with tools, funnels, landing pages, and emails. Each week, John holds live weekly webinars.

Price: Super Affiliate System costs $997.

More info: Super Affiliate System 3.0 review.

passive income geek review

Passive Income Geek by Morten Storgaard is an affiliate marketing course that has a focus on effective SEO methods. The course teaches you how to create a long-term blog that earns from affiliate marketing and display ads. This is a great course for those looking for long-term sustainable passive income strategy to affiliate marketing.

Price: Passive Income Geek costs an initial $399 for the first year and $199 per year after that.

More info: Passive Income Geek Review

fullstaq marketer

Fullstaq Marketer by Keala Kanae is a training program designed for beginners, with a focus on using paid ads for traffic. Its target audience are individuals who haven't chosen a niche, need technical assistance, and new to affiliate marketing in general.

Price: Fullstaq Marketer price for the Business Launch Challenge is $39, $15,000 for the Elite Mastermind package, $8,000 for Master Labs, $5,000 for Conversion Labs, $3,000 for Traffic Labs, and $997 for Fullstaq Accelerator.

More info: Fullstaq Marketer Review

For a complete list of alternatives to the Project 24 course, which include Wealthy Affiliate, read my article on the best affiliate marketing courses.

Is affiliate marketing profitable in 2024?

Affiliate marketing is still profitable in 2024. According to one study, affiliate marketing was valued at over $12 billion in 2022. Of all the online business models that you can choose from, affiliate marketing has a low barrier of entry and doesn't require much to get started.

The thing with affiliate marketing is that you need to rank globally for your search terms. Therefore, you need to generate more traffic than the thousands of affiliate marketers worldwide you're competing with if you want to see a worthy return. Also, you shouldn't expect to see any commissions from your blogs and YouTube channels for the first 6-12 months because it takes time to build your authority. When you finally get money, it won't be something you can predict each month.

Whether you're starting a blog or a YouTube channel, you'll need to publish content often. If you are running paid ads on Facebook, you need to set aside a good amount of funds to split test and see what format, copy, image, and call to action offers the best conversions. If you want to learn more about Facebook monetization, you can check the FB Income School 2.0.

With affiliate marketing, you can still make money if you're patient, but there is too much instability and unpredictability.

There is More Control with a Local Lead Generation Business than Affiliate Marketing

With local lead generation, you're in much more control over how much money you make and when you get paid. You choose who you work with, the niche you're going to get into, and if you don't think your client is taking care of your leads, you can forward them to another.

The websites I create rank first on Google for the keywords relevant to the niche I get into. For example, this tree care site has been paying me ever since 2015 because I ranked it and it continues to generate leads each month.

I don’t have to worry about competing with thousands of marketers when I can focus on 10-15 local small businesses. Once my site ranks, it keeps its rank with very little to no maintenance.

In 2020, even during the Covid-19 pandemic, I continued to build more lead gen sites. With local lead generation, you can get into pandemic-proof niches that continue to pay you on autopilot. There are over 7000 students who are in the coaching program that are building lead generation sites and working on ranking and renting them to local business owners. Those business owners are happy to receive more customers every month and pay you for it.

To learn the skills that will allow you to live a financially free life, click here to learn more about the local lead generation training program.

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Ippei Kanehara
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$52K per month providing lead generation services to small businesses

Ippei.com is for digital hustlers, industry leaders and online business owners.

His #1 online business recommendation in 2024, is to build your own lead generation business.

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