This is the definitive Income School Project 24 review.
We’ve collected 18+ reviews from verified Project 24 students.
And I’ve personally been a paying member since 2019, spending 30+ hours going through Income School’s free and premium training materials.
(Have you taken this course? Add your rating!)
If you want to know:
- What exactly Project 24 teaches
- How it compares to other courses
- If it’s possible to get a discount for Project 24
- What are the common criticisms of Income School
- If the whole thing is legit or a scam
Then you’ve come to the right place.
Jump to…
About the Author
Hey, I’m Niall Doherty.
I quit my last 9-to-5 job back in 2010.
Since then, I’ve earned my living online in various ways. Over the last 3 years (through 2022) I’ve earned $536,000 from my laptop, mostly via affiliate marketing.
I’m on a mission to accurately rate and review all the best affiliate marketing courses. My team and I have spent 900+ hours investigating these courses and getting feedback from real students.
All that to say: we know a thing or two about such courses and making money online.
The Best Affiliate Marketing Course?
We’re on a mission to find the best affiliate marketing course, based on our own extensive research plus feedback from real students.
Income School’s Project 24 is a solid course but not the best we’ve seen…
🏆 Best Affiliate Marketing Courses 🏆
That said, you can’t really go wrong with Project 24.
Not when students are getting results like this…
How does Income School help you make money?
Launched in 2015, Income School is primarily a website and YouTube channel about building blogs and YouTube channels that generate significant income.
Project 24 is Income School’s premium training, featuring dozens of courses designed to help students build a successful blog or YouTube channel.
If your main interest is blogging, the P24 Blogging System will show you how to pick a niche, set up a blog, research and create content, and then monetize with display ads and affiliate marketing.
If you prefer YouTube, the P24 YouTube System shows you how to choose a topic, create videos, grow your audience, and earn income in multiple ways.
Who is Project 24 for?
Project 24 is a solid course for anyone looking to start a profitable blog or YouTube channel.
Here’s how the training is described on the sales page…
Project 24 was designed to help people at every level to improve their skills as Content Creators and Internet Entrepreneurs to better provide for themselves and their families
You can get a good feel for Income School and their teaching methods via their popular YouTube channel.
Here’s a video of Ricky from Income School teaching Search Engine Optimization…
Be aware that building up a successful blog or YouTube channel takes a lot of time and commitment, regardless of how you learn.
Income School makes no secret of this, noting on their sales page…
We use the name “Project 24” to refer to the goal of some people to create a business in 24 months that replaces their day job, but this is a goal and not a promise or guarantee of this success. Creating a successful business requires skill, hard work, and time.
We’ve heard from a few students that P24 is great for beginners, but not so much for advanced content creators…
I feel like the success I’ve had blogging was because I binged every podcast episode plus did the course and then pieced together what I needed to know for action. It was what I needed to get going, but I did not renew my membership.
Validated Reviewer
If you’re just starting out trying to make an income through blogging, Project24 has everything you need to get you going… [but it is] lacking some advanced info (e.g. link building).
Validated Reviewer
Does Income School have a good reputation?
- Yes.
I started following and researching Income School in 2019 and have been consistently impressed with the results they have achieved on their own websites and YouTube channels, as well as the quality of their training.
When looking at affiliate marketing courses, what won me over was Income School’s authenticity and honesty… On the odd occasion when they change their mind on something, they will never be too proud to admit they missed the mark. That’s what I like about them, they have integrity. I trust them completely.
Daniel Jones
Income School was started by Jim Harmer and Ricky Kesler, both from Idaho in the United States. They began building niche websites in 2010 and launched Income School in 2015.
Jim left in 2021, so Ricky now runs the show.
Both Jim and Ricky have been invited to speak at conferences such as FinCon and WordCamp, alongside well-known and respected online entrepreneurs like Ramit Sethi, Sharon Epperson, Nathan Barry, and JD Roth.
Most niche site owners prefer to keep their sites secret, worried that they’ll invite competition if they reveal too much. In contrast, Income School reveal on this page many of the sites they own and operate.
And here’s Jim on YouTube showing exact keywords and traffic data for one of their niche sites…
They’ve also built at least three YouTube channels to 100,000+ subscribers…
But not only do they share their successes.
They also share their failures 😱
Like this one:
That’s not to say that Income School is without controversy.
They have ruffled some feathers in SEO circles by speaking out against paid keyword tools and active link building.
I personally don’t agree with their stances on these topics – IMO, paid keyword tools and active link building greatly increase your odds of success in competitive niches – but one could argue that it simplifies their training and makes it more beginner friendly.
As one student wrote in his review of Project 24…
The biggest difference and advantage to P24 is that it focuses on writing quality content that people are looking for, unlike some other courses that seem to focus on technical SEO aspects and link building that can overwhelm beginners.
Kevin S
Are Income School students getting results?
It’s easy enough to find students of Project 24 reporting impressive results.
For example…
There’s also this page on the Income School website that shows how many P24 students have achieved earnings in excess of $1000/month and $4000/month.
The success rate isn’t huge when you consider how many people have signed up to Project 24 over the years,3 but my impression is that the training proves effective for most people who put in the work consistently.
How much does Project 24 cost?
The price of Project 24 is listed as $449 for the first year and $249 per year thereafter.
So if you stay in the course for a full 24 months, you’ll spend a total of $698 for the training.
There are some additional expenses beyond that, which unfortunately are not made clear on the Project 24 sales pages 😕
- To follow the P24 Blogging System, you’ll have to spend money on a domain and hosting (less than $100 per year). But so long as you plan to research and write all your own content, that’s essentially it.
- If you want to follow the P24 YouTube System, you’ll have to spend a bit more. Check out the “Starter Gear Setup” on this page. They do a good job of keeping their recommendations budget-friendly, but you’re still looking at about $400 additional expense, even if you use your existing smartphone camera.
Overall, I consider these additional expenses very reasonable; other blogging and YouTube courses are going to recommend spending at least as much to get started.
Income School Project 24 Discount?
I’ve searched high and low for a discount or coupon code but have yet to find mention of one anywhere, and there’s no place to enter a discount code on the P24 checkout.
Sorry guys: it’s full-price or nothing.
Refund Policy
For the most part, Project 24 does not give refunds.
Per their Refund Policy page:
Because of the nature of the Product, we can’t provide refunds for Project 24.
No partial refunds are given should you terminate a subscription before your renewal date; however you will retain access to Project 24 until the end of your payment term.
One exception is noted on that page…
The Project 24 return policy applies to new signups as well a renewals. However, if a members forgets or neglects to cancel their account prior to renewal, we will gladly cancel their account and refund their renewal fee as long as they request it in writing within 30 days of their renewal date.
I’m not a big fan of this refund policy, especially when a competing course like The Authority Site System has a 30-day no-questions-asked money-back guarantee.
That said, I’ve seen few complaints about the refund policy from Project 24 students; the vast majority of people who buy the course seem to end up satisfied with their purchase.
How is Project 24 structured?
Project 24 is actually dozens of courses in one, covering many aspects of content creation and digital marketing. You get access to all the courses when you sign up.
The course dashboard looks like this once logged in…
As you can see above, there are two main paths or tracks…
- The Blogging Course
- The YouTube System
Jump into a course and you’ll end up on a lesson page like this…
The lessons are almost entirely video – talking heads and screencasts – though some also have brief text notes or timestamps.
Overall the training is well structured, but as of this writing there is no search function, so it can be tough to locate a specific lesson quickly. (There is a search function in the community forum, however.)
Also, I didn’t see subtitles or closed captions on any of the videos, which may be a deal-breaker for non-native English speakers or those hard of hearing 😕
You also get access to the P24 private community when you sign up…
While I have heard occasional complaints about the community, it is quite active and most students seem to find it valuable…
The community on Discourse is probably worth the money itself with the tons of experience that people share. There have been many cases where members have shared their tips that have either helped save money, boost traffic, or even increase affiliate sales.
Kevin S
When you join Project 24 you also get access to the following…
- 2 Member-Only Podcasts
One for Blogging and one for YouTube, 3 episodes per month each. - Regular Live Masterminds
Usually several of these each month, most of which have archived recordings. There are regional online meetups (eg. Midwestern US), new member meetups, Q&A’s with experts, content idea workshops, etc. - Premium WordPress Theme (Acabado)
Income School created their own premium WordPress theme which sells for $67 per year. They use it on most of their own sites. Project 24 members get it for free. Read more about it here. - The Download Center
A bunch of things in here, such as a custom-built monetization plugin for WordPress, content templates, helpful spreadsheets, etc. - My Story Page
“The My Story page is where you will track your success with your blog or your YouTube channel. You will be able to put all of your income and views in the tool to make sure you’re on track with your goals.” - Jim Harmer’s book Work Energy
It has great reviews on Amazon. P24 members can read or listen to it for free.
Green Lights 🟢
Here are a few things to like about Project 24:
- Frequent student success stories
- Clear instruction, easy to follow step by step.
- Several courses in one, covers a lot of ground.
- Ricky and team walk their talk
- No hype or sleazy sales tactics
- White hat throughout
- Many students love the community
- Minimal additional expense
- Regularly updated
Red Flags 🚩
A few things about P24 that might give you pause:
- Students tend to struggle with the workload
- No refunds
- Lacking some advanced info (eg. off-page SEO)
- No mention on sales page of expenses beyond the price of the training
- Recurring annual expense to keep access to the training
- No search functionality; hard to find specific lessons.
Other things you should know
- As mentioned, Income School is known for NOT relying on paid keyword tools to build a successful blog. Their argument is that such tools don’t provide accurate data, which is true. But the keyword research method taught in Project 24 doesn’t appear to be any more accurate. And it takes longer. Students do achieve success with the P24 method but I’d argue that it’s not quite as efficient as using a premium tool like Ahrefs or Semrush.
- Income School are also known for their stance against link building, but IMO this is largely semantics. Ricky’s words in the community forum…
Our E-A-T course teaches some of the same tactics that others are calling link building. I didn’t realize that until after we taught them in our course.
We teach those tactics because they’re effective at building authority. But I don’t like calling them or thinking of them as link building, because if my goal is to get a link then that’s where my focus and my behavior will lead. If my goal is to build authority, then my behavior will be different, and my focus will be on authority. In both cases though, I end up with a link. But even if I didn’t, I’d take those authority-building steps.
- Regardless of whether you follow the blogging or YouTube track, I’d recommend that you have at least 10 hours available each week to go through the training and implement what you learn. There is a big emphasis in Project 24 on creating a lot of content, so make sure you have time for that.
Is Project 24 worth it?
I consider Project 24 to be a solid course for productive, family-oriented people who enjoy Income School’s free content on YouTube.
If you’re brand new to content creation and have plenty of time to go through the course and take consistent action, it will likely serve you well.
On the Project 24 sales page you’ll see noted that the course is for:
- True Beginners
- Those Who Have Tried and Failed
- Advanced Internet Marketers
Indeed, there is something in there for everyone, but if you’re in the last group you might find the material a bit lacking.
Income School Project 24 Alternatives
Here are the top affiliate marketing programs we’ve reviewed…
🏆 Best Affiliate Marketing Courses 🏆
And here are our top YouTube courses…
🏆 Best YouTube Courses 🏆
Your Thoughts on Project 24
- Have you taken this course yourself?
Add your rating so others can see if it’s worthwhile. - Do you have a question about this course?
Let us know below and we’ll try find the answer.
Woahhh. What a review. One month ago I was searching for a blogging course but I’ve no idea which one is best to purchase. One day I heard about Income School P24 on YouTube and start researching reviews on it. Some people made me Dissapointed coz they’re giving Negative reviews. Somehow I read this article with so much information, examples etc. I’m speechless, you’re content is amazing. I would love to purchase this course from your link. That’s huge information. I love it
I am doing due diligence on p24 before purchasing. I am looking forward to reading your updated review on p24.
I understand that they changed some of their approaches and recommendations in May 2021 due to their ongoing research and testing about what is working now. I believe that their search analyis process is better now and that they now recommend two types of posts now (it was three). How well do they cover that in the new training which was dropped in to the p24 members area recently? I not a p24 member yet so I don’t know.
Earlier today they released another youtube video which explained Jim is leaving Income School to persuade his new goal of getting one million page views per month on one of the sites they were working on. How will that affect the quality of p24 going forward. I understand that Income School continually keep their p24 training up to date as things evolve. With Jim out of the picture will Income School be able to continue to do this?
Hi There – I was interested in P24, but may be purchasing the TASS program due to your review. Before I take the plunge – what about P24 has improved, or changed, prompting you to review the site once again?
Thanks!
Hi Fosiya,
I believe P24 has updated a lot of their training, but I haven’t gone through it fully again so I can’t give you specifics just yet. I plan to update this review soon however.
Niall, excellent work on your review. I’m about to join through your link. One of the main reasons for me is the community, if that makes sense to say. I want to get out of isolation mode and connect. But also, the updated advice on what kinds of articles to write. Like, they’re changing their view on certain types of articles, advising shorter articles than before.. they’re upcoming update has me intrigued.
Best,
Steve
Hey Niall, good in-depth review as usual. Re the boys at PR24, i do like their style, they are knowledgeable and relatable and easy to listen too. and i find Gael from TASS his accent a bit of a struggle to interpret a little.
one thing i dont understand for Project 24 is they offer lots of courses, but their main course is the 60 steps to building a website.(yes?) but one of their other courses is picking the right profitable niche. i would think that should be the first thing to do ? why build a website if its not going to be profitable/ wrong niche. do they suggest an order in which to do their courses. if 60 steps is first, seems picking a niche is pretty important. i do like the structured 60 point checklist they have that’s appealing. step by step and check off as you go, good to keep ppl on track.
re keywords and links, i see their points. but if i was to choose this course over TASS, i assume there is no reason i could not do my own keyword searching and link building anyway, yes ? just use the methods that others suggest for this ?
I am following Income School’s youtube videos and they are amazing. They share every information in detail.
+1 for Income School.
The two things you highlighted as link building are actually what Jim and Ricky simply consider to be marketing your brand. Also, I’m not sure how comparing keywords based upon search volume is any better than taking the search volume at face value from a keyword tool.
Hey David, thanks for the comment.
Not sure I follow. Jim and Ricky have explicitly said that people should stop building links, and implied that building links is an attempt to “trick Google.” Sounds though like you’re saying that Jim and Ricky do advocate link building but call it something different?
It’s relativity.
Knowing that “fishing pole” has an estimated 18k monthly search volume isn’t useful in isolation. But knowing that “fishing pole” has about 30% more monthly search volume than “fishing gear” is useful because now you know which term gets searched more. Even if the estimates are wrong across the board, they should all be wrong by roughly the same amount, so you can tell how keywords compare to each other and which you’d (most likely) be better off targeting.
The same can’t be said for Jim and Ricky’s alphabet soup method, whereby all keywords that show up in Google’s autosuggest are given the same weight, and there’s no way to determine which of them get searched more than others. In Jim’s words, you have to resort to “using your intuition a bit.”
Hey Niall, thanks for the reply! Just now seeing your comment, since I never got an email that you had replied (just happened to come back to your site a couple of weeks later).
I can see where you’re coming from, but the search volume statistics are incorrect in the sense that they aren’t even relative to each other. You could easily go after a keyword with say 15 search volume instead of a keyword with 1,000 search volume and get way more traffic. The search volume statistic is simply inaccurate both in quantity and relativity based upon my own experience.
For the link building, I personally feel that creating a YouTube audience and using H.A.R.O. will drive backlinks and build your brand more long-term. Jim and Ricky teach both of these as viable “link-building” methods along with other ways to build E.A.T. for a site.
Request for review of createandgo Course by Alex & Lauren
Have you taken that course yourself, Kim? If so, what are your impressions of it?
Rarely have I read such an intelligent well reasoned review-it was so helpful. Thank you.
Thanks, Simon!
Excellent review, Niall. Really well structured, formatted, and comprehensive. In itself, food for thought on how to write a winning blog. Just wanted to say, having looked recently around for advice on blogging, I have found income school to be the most convincing and authentic authority on the subject I’ve come across (though in a sea swimming with sharks, that may not mean as much as it should 🙂 ). One thing I totally agree with you as being a weak point in their system though is the unrealistic time commitment for writing blogs. I presume they don’t want to scare busy people off, so they figure massaging the figures is justifiable. But considering the emphasis they put on content, you’re going to need quality blogs to succeed. And that takes time and energy. As does making videos. A decent blog of one or two thousand words takes me a day or two (including research and a video version). And though my field (academic writing/editing) might be a bit more involved than some, I don’t think I’m untypical. Anyhow, apart from that and some sweeping statements you’ve also highlighted re tools and backlinks, they seem like decent dudes who know their stuff and share quite a lot gratis. Personally, I’m happy to harvest the free resources for now for my existing site. But I can see the potential value in their course for complete newbies. Anyway, thanks again for this very solid review. I’ll be reading more of your stuff for sure.
Thanks for the comment, Paul.
Yeah, about the same for me. If a niche isn’t competitive at all I think you can get away with cranking out an acceptable piece of content in a couple of hours, but those days are long gone for most niches.
Hey Niall,
I am a member of Authority Hacker and I signed up frm your review. It is great but their lessons on content creation is average at best. Do you think Project 24 is a good complement to AH in terms of content creation. By marrying them tgt will we potentially get better results?
Hi Albert,
Thanks for the comment.
I’m surprised to hear you thought the content creation training in TASS wasn’t great. That was my favorite part of the training. I attribute a lot of my own content creation process to what I learned from TASS. There’s nothing sexy about it, but it works. Was there something in particular that you expected to be different there?
I personally think TASS is much better in this regard. If you can’t get good results creating content the way TASS show you, another affiliate marketing course isn’t going to help.
One reason other training sites don’t like Income School is they openly rule out spending money on things the other guys make a big chunk of profit off of, keyword tools. Another is they advocate no link building which is heresy to most SEO guys.
Hi Bill,
Thanks for the comment.
Yes, I addressed Income School’s stance on keyword tools and link building in the review. Did you miss that part? I explained why their reasoning on those topics doesn’t make much sense to me.
Some of them surely do make good money as affiliates for keyword tools. But I know that Ahrefs doesn’t have an open affiliate program, so most people recommending that tool aren’t doing so due to a financial incentive.
And I’d bet most SEOs would advocate using a free keyword tool like Ubersuggest – even though its data wouldn’t be as good as a premium tool like Ahrefs – rather than relying on “guesswork” and “intuition” like Jim and Ricky recommend.
I’m new to affiliate marketing and looking to purchase Project 24 to get off on the right foot. I’ve looked at a lot of the keyword research tools, and maybe it’s because I’m not yet in the thick of it, but I don’t understand their value. I come from running people’s Google Ads and they have a free keyword tool that gives some good ideas on search volume and competition if you’re interested and you don’t need to buy ads to use it, so you can get it for free. Otherwise, even with Ahrefs, you need to go to Google to check out the content to see if it’s something you can answer better. Again, maybe I’m missing something, but I just don’t understand being limited on searches (like with Ubersuggest) or paying $99/mo (like with Ahrefs) for info that I’m not sure brings in value. It might also just be that I am not trying to build the $10,000/mo site and so metrics are less important to me than long-term authority building so that I can pull in an income providing value to neglected segments. I would love to better understand that part of it, as I haven’t really heard the reason why it is the de facto standard to use these tools.
BTW, I am loving the content on your site so far. I can tell you put in the work. I hope you are an affiliate of Project 24, as when I buy, I’m buying through your link. Your review was the only one that felt like there was actual work put in (also it was refreshing to see your WA review was one star, as I could tell that 90% of the low-quality reviews I saw were written using their program).
Hey Trevis,
Thanks for the comment, and the kind words about the site.
I don’t know what I can tell you about keyword tools beyond what I wrote in the review above. Maybe read through that part of the review again?
Keyword tools aren’t essential to success though. Income School have proven that. I simply believe that a tool like Ahrefs can help you make more informed decisions about what keywords to focus on, so you can make the best use of your resources.
Ahrefs also gives you lots of insights into other sites in your niche. You can get a good feel for their top keywords and pages.
I’d encourage you to do the $7 for 7 days trial of Ahrefs. Find some tutorials on YouTube about how to use it effectively, play around with it for a few days, and if you don’t see any value in it after that you can forget about keyword tools and build your site without them.
what you do is amazing!! REALLY thank you for all your content, I am learning a lot through your course, I am in a situation where I cannot afford to pay anything yet. Therefore, your blog has helped me to learn where to put all my effort.
Again thank you!
Greetings from Colombia,
Hope to have you here again,
if not, hope to meet you somewhere in the world.
Thanks, Santiago 🙂
Loving your approach with these reviews Niall.
On the lack of link-building strategy within the course, the Income School guys are clearly very smart. I’m pretty sure it’s because they don’t want their members and followers going out in droves adding to the vast quantity of link outreach emails (spam?!) sent out every day 🙂 Or doing it the wrong way (even with expert guidance), and risking the ire of Google.
Neither do they want them all using the same outreach templates, similar to what happens with the Authority Hacker programme I believe.
But good luck trying to rank for the more competitive niches without links!
No such risks with an approach that just suggests writing great content, doing some YouTube videos and a bit of Pinterest marketing.
My guess on the lack of monetisation focus upfront is because they don’t want people to get stuck on niche selection, which is VERY common. They want those who are eager to get started to just get started, and I think this is a good approach in some ways. If you’re motivated and get the traffic, you will find a way to monetise.
You could argue that products that have lower commissions are purchased frequently, while those with higher ones are less frequently purchased – so maybe it all evens out in the end!
I really like these guys I have to say – the community and the free content they put out there is probably worth the price of the course alone.
Hey Anton,
Yeah, they do a great job with their YouTube and all that free content. Jim and Ricky seem like genuine guys who are in this for the right reasons. Refreshing for me to see after reviewing the likes of Tai Lopez and Wealthy Affiliate!
You might be right about Income School not wanting their students to get caught up in link building initially. I barely do any link building myself because it takes me away from creating content, and creating content has to be #1. But at some point I’d like to hire some more help here at eBiz Facts and increase our link building efforts. Because, like you say, it’s tough to rank for more competitive niches without links.
You can monetize pretty much anything, but some niches are easier to monetize than others. Which is why I think it’s smart to put some good thought into monetization up front. Too many people spend months/years building sites that they hope will earn them good money, when in reality the best case scenario for them is probably a few hundred dollars a month.
Many times they could have known that in advance, but didn’t take the time to look into it.
There is value in just getting started, sure. But it really bugs me to put tons of time and effort into a business that stands little chance of earning me a living.
“There is value in just getting started, sure. But it really bugs me to put tons of time and effort into a business that stands little chance of earning me a living”.
Yeah for sure, I hear ya! There’s always an element of rolling the dice though, it seems with all the data that we have that we should be able to identify a niche that will fly, but there are just so many variables at play, that some sites just don’t do as well as we’d think or hope.
I will say though, nothing replaces hard work, consistency and just sheer investment in something you CAN see is working.
Great review — I have to say though, while I don’t fully agree with their ‘no link building’ stance, they aren’t wrong. Google has effectively said any active attempt to get links to your site is a way to try to game the algorithm and game PageRank — so from a pure “this is what the rules say” perspective they are correct:
Link schemes
**Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines** This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site.
The following are examples of link schemes which can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results:
*Buying or selling links that pass PageRank.
*Excessive link exchanges (“Link to me and I’ll link to you”) or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking
*Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/66356?hl=en
————
That said, I believe it’s very difficult to gain traction without some form of link building, but they seem to be making it work (if they’re honest about their no link building mantra).
Hey Brian, thanks for the comment.
It’s hard to know where Google draws the line with link building, but the 3 examples you quoted above are all grey or black hat, and not something I’d try or advise. Moz give a few examples of white hat link building here:
The last one there is what the Income School guys do to promote their YouTube channel. Here are exact words from Ricky in episode 40 of the P24 podcast (from the 2:30 mark, emphasis mine):
Take an audience of people that would be interested in your content and help make them aware that your content exists… that’s exactly how I’d describe white hat link building. And I’m really confused as to why Income School think it’s perfectly fine to do that for YouTube, but not for blogging.
Regardless, as you say, Income School seem to be doing just fine blogging without link building. I just find their view a bit too extreme, and their reasoning flawed. Part of me wonders if they took an extreme stance on link building more for the controversy/publicity than anything else.
Just read through this. I still don’t fully understand what’s their method haha.
If you don’t do keyword research, how do you know what keywords to rank for and essentially get traffic organically? If you don’t build backlinks, how do you drive traffic to your website?
From what I see, it looks like they don’t just ask you to make content for your website, but you should also produce content on YouTube, Pinterest etc to drive traffic to your website? I mean, there should be some kind of “traffic approaches” to replace backlinks other than just let time does it work right?
Their method is essentially this:
1. Do some basic keyword research with their “search analysis” technique.
2. Make an educated guess as to which keywords you’ve found get the most traffic.
3. Decide how much to write for your top keywords by looking at how tough the competition is.
4. Create and publish the content.
5. Wait for Google to figure out that your content is really good and start sending you traffic. (This might take a long time.)
They do recommend people create YouTube videos as well, but it’s still optional. Seems many people in P24 choose to focus on written content only. That works fine on its own.
I don’t think it’s that you’re not seeing their method, it’s really that they don’t have a specific strategy. Their approach is just post the 30 articles and hope for the best. If it works great, if not then it’s kind of a waste of 2 years.
They also recommend that you make a youtube channel and promote your content but honestly, if you’re doing all that, do you really need to pay $450 for someone to tell you that.
As a member, you’re really just setting yourself up to be another one of their customers to push affiliate products to because a lot of the products and services they recommend aren’t the best but usually pay the highest affiliate commissions.
On a final note, I notice a lot of comments saying that their theme isn’t really as fast as they claim. I have personally ran speed tests on their sites using their in house theme, some sites are fast while others are very slow. People should not be misled to think that their theme is some lightening fast product out of the box. All themes need to be optimized to perform better and theirs is no different.
All in all, I think their initial vision is tainted and they’re not as trustworthy as they try to present themselves to be.
Thanks for the comment, Todd.
Hmm, I didn’t get that impression at all, especially since they advise students NOT to buy keyword tools or link building tools and they give them a theme for free. Compared to other AM courses, I’d actually say P24 requires students to spend LESS money on products/services after joining.
Can you give some examples of products and services you’ve seen them recommending that you didn’t think were good?
Interesting approach these guys have! Guess just by scanning the autosuggestions for keywords fills their head with enough of them, so that their posts are organically full of good keywords. Plus they probably spend enough time writing and researching articles, so good keywords just happen.
But I’m with you on the fact that sites like Ahrefs can give you a boost by helping to choose the better converting keywords, or lower competition keywords for example.
What caught my attention is their Acabado theme – I checked some other websites that use it (not the ones they suggest) and it’s really fast on those too. Getting anywhere above 70 on Google Pagespeed Insights for mobile is really hard if you don’t want to have a stripped down site with only text and images or don’t want to dive into the code and turn of CSS and js libraries.
I don’t really like how it looks (the Acabado theme) – it’s basically mobile first (AMP like), but I like the stats they show – that very good Pagespeed rating can provide quite a boost. Inspired me to strip down my websites a bit, less bells and whistles on mobile 🙂
Plus they claim “Unique homepage customisation” options, yet every page I looked at looked exactly the same. Do they mean colours perhaps? 😀
Oh, and the theme isn’t such a star for GTmetrix (https://gtmetrix.com/reports/emborapets.com/GuFMx7UE) or Pingdom. And that’s including CDN they use.
Guess you get a win on mobile, but you will get a hit on PC with the Acabado theme.
Hey Lukas,
Thanks for that.
I found this video on YouTube which shows the Acabado customization options.
The options are fairly limited, but I believe that was intentional on Jim and Ricky’s part. They wanted to give P24 students a simple theme that they can’t modify too much, so they won’t get caught up in design and can instead focus on creating content.
I think that’s a good thing for someone just starting out. Messing around with something like Divi or Elementor could be a very deep rabbit hole.
Regarding speed, I also found this video where the guy tests the speed with one theme, then switches to Acabado and tests again.
Big improvement there.
Like you said though, speed tools like GTMetrix and Pingdom measure things differently, but I guess Google’s tool is the most important one, since the result from that probably factors into their search rankings.
Hey Niall,
just checked your top list of affiliate websites and thought – how do they perform on Google PagespeedInsights? Real world test to decide, whether you need to rank very high (60+) to achieve success.
Starting with Succulents And Sunshine, it only scores 1/100…
(using a high number of heavy plugins – Woocommerce, Thrive Leads, and I couldn’t see any optimisation plugins).
Ryrob.com – 49/100
(using Autooptimize plugin)
Only swimuniversity.com ranks 97/100
(They seem to have a very mobile-first custom theme, and no fancy landing page, just lazy load blog posts + WP Rocket plugin, so they obviously focus on speed optimisation).
My guess would be that Google Pagespeed doesn’t play SUCH a strong role as Acabado authors make it seem. But I wouldn’t recommend ignoring site speed completely – my assumption is that Succulents And Sunshine was content-focused and fast first, then it grew, acquired a good Google rank and only then added Woocommerce and other bells and whistles to monetize the traffic.
This also adds a big +1 to WP Rocket on my list of speed optimisation plugins 🙂
Lukas
Wow, that is fascinating!
Especially Succulents and Sunshine… crazy that they’re getting so much traffic with that low a score. But then when I go to the site myself it doesn’t seem to be THAT bad in terms of load speed. I would have guessed it was actually a bit better than average.
Ah Google… so mysterious!
Hi Niall,
I was doing some unrelated site optimisation, installed a different free theme, out of the box and got 97/100 on a blog. So I thought – “hey, this one is free and 97/100 is as good as 100/100. A good alternative to Acabado.”
I summed up my findings in a quick and dirty blog post that might help someone deciding whether or not to get Acabado and whether there’s a free alternative.
You can check it out here, I made sure I link back to this post too 🙂
Acabado theme quick review & free alternative
Awesome, man. Thanks for that!
“so they won’t get caught up in design” ….that is a big issue when you are starting new. I have one blog (which I started as an experiment) and got one of the best free themes available (OceanWP) which has a lot of configuration options. And guess what, I have spent (wasted !!) a lot of time just trying to make the look and feel exactly as I wanted, even resorting to JS and CSS modifications to get it right to the last millimeter !! Eventually, I lost interest and gave up. Looking back, I realize the time could have been invested in researching and writing more posts.
Once you have a blog that is earning a regular income, then maybe you can spare some time to ‘improve’ the design. But before that, spending too much time on the design is exactly what you said … “very deep rabbit hole” !!
There is so much available in the WordPress world in terms of page design that if you start looking at all the different options you have with the premium themes with their advanced page builders, then you can easily spend months just evaluating/learning them.