My abandoned side project still gets users. Why?
Last year I built an AI website that turns photos into anime portraits.
After launch I basically abandoned it.
- No Reddit posts
- No Twitter/X
- No TikTok
- No blog
- No SEO work
- No paid ads
- No new features
I still pay for hosting, but that's about it.
What surprises me is that people continue finding it, and every now and then someone actually pays.
I checked analytics and the traffic isn't huge, but it's consistent enough that I still see conversions months later.
I'm curious where this traffic is actually coming from. Is this just Google indexing? People sharing it privately? AI directories? Backlinks I forgot about?
Has anyone else experienced this with an "abandoned" side project?
Posted Jul 11, 2026, 2:36 PM UTC
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