Why I Sold My Side Project AiPetAvatar.com

I launched my project AiPetAvatar.com on January 18th.
I wrote about it in the last DIYFounder post over 6 months ago.

Now I’m back writing this newsletter.
And I sold AiPetAvatar.com.

I’ll explain the reason why I sold it and how I would do it again if given the chance. But first, why I left DIYFounder and why I’m back.

Why I quit writing on DIYFounder

I’m terrible with continuing projects. I’m a dopamine slave. After spending +5 hours on every post, the subscriber count wasn’t growing that fast (obviously).

I got distracted and wanted to try new things. After a few weeks, I simply forgot about DIYFounder. Sorry guys.

But, I want to keep getting better at writing and therefore picking this back up. Also, a lot of interesting things have happened. Will write about that the coming weeks.

Now on to the good stuff.

Why I sold AiPetAvatar.com

I had AiPetAvatar.com for about 7 months, from launch ‘till sale.
During that time it did:

• $226 in sales

• It cost me $212 in running it (needed Make.com pro for $9 a month)

I also saw traffic and general interest in AI avatars slowing down. Combine this with some software renewals in January, and I thought it was the right time to sell.

The domain itself is where all the money is really.

During those 7 months, it got +5.5k organic clicks and +60k impressions on Google with just 1 indexed page.

The most clicks came from these searches:

• ai pet avatar

• pet avatar maker

• animal avatar maker

• pet ai avatar

• dog ai generator

• ai dog generator

• animal avatar maker free

• pet ai generator

• pet avatar

• ai pet generator

I set an asking price of $650 and ended up selling for $551 on Flippa.

Here’s a breakdown of the traffic and sales when I had it:

What I’d do differently

I would sell on Aquire.com instead of Flippa.

Flippa’s fees are really high ($49 just to list it + 10% of the sale price) which really cuts into the total selling amount.

After all the fees, I ended with $478 (- the $49 listing fee) makes $429.

Not close to the initial $551, but still 1.5x the current expected yearly sales.

Out of 6 interested people on Flippa, 2 started spamming my inbox and 1 tried to scam me by offering to buy my Stripe account.

Flippa's support was quick to ban him, so all credit to them, but still.

Who I sold it to

In the end, a couple from the Netherlands bought AiPetAvatar.com. Funnily enough, they live about 55km from the house I grew up in.

They bought it as their first project to try and work on as a couple. Special thanks to Jarno for the smooth transfer of the whole project.

They couldn’t have been nicer and I wish them all the best in running it.

Am I happy I sold it?

It’s a bit of a mixed feeling…

• I definitely could’ve done better in marketing/optimizing AiPetAvatar. If I’d spent just 2 hours a week on it it probably would’ve converted better.

• I maybe also could’ve sold it to a competitor for more if I’d done some manual outreach and they would’ve bid more.

• Could’ve made more SEO pages as it was clearly working already.

But all of these are '“maybe’s” and “perhaps’s”.

In the end, I was tired of it and wanted to experience what selling something online was like. So I won’t lose any sleep over it.