I Shut Down My AnimeMyPic Project — Then Checked Analytics Months Later and Relaunched

Hey IH 👋

This is the story of a project I killed too early, why I brought it back, and what I'm building now.

The First Launch

A while back I launched AnimeMyPic — an AI tool that transforms your photos into anime-style art. Upload a photo, pick a style (Ghibli, Naruto, One Piece, Dragon Ball, and more), get a high-quality anime version of yourself.

The first version actually worked. Not perfectly, but it worked — and more importantly, people were paying for it. Not life-changing numbers, but real people, with real credit cards, buying credits to transform their photos. I had zero ads. Zero posts. No marketing whatsoever. Just organic traffic finding it somehow and converting.

That felt good.

Why I Stopped

Then the Supabase free tier hit its limit. I looked at the numbers, looked at the renewal cost, and made the classic indie hacker mistake: I decided it wasn't worth it. Shut it down. Moved on.

Months Later

A few months passed. I wasn't thinking about it. Then I opened Vercel analytics — just out of curiosity — and saw something that stopped me.

People were still coming.

Organic visitors. Not a flood, but a steady trickle. People who had found the site through search, clicked around, tried to sign up, hit the auth wall, checked the pricing page. They wanted to use it and couldn't because I'd pulled the plug.

That was enough for me to decide to relaunch — properly this time.

What's New in v2

Faster Transformations

Transformations now complete in 25–40 seconds. Images are compressed and resized client-side before being sent directly to the API. The result only gets saved after the transformation succeeds — nothing is stored unless it worked.

Trading Cards

New feature: turn your anime transformation into a collectible trading card styled to the universe you chose. One Piece gives you a wanted poster. Naruto gives you a ninja dossier scroll. Yu-Gi-Oh gives you a proper duel card layout. Rarity (Common / Rare / Epic / Legendary) is assigned deterministically per user.

Dashboard & Gallery

Full gallery of your transformations with sharing, download, 4K upscale, and card generation — all in one place.

Subscription Plans

Monthly credit packs via Stripe for people who transform regularly.

Better Auth

Proper forgot password flow, smoother onboarding.

Where It Stands

The organic traffic never really stopped even while the site was down. That tells me there's something here worth building on.

No ads. No paid posts. Just search traffic and word of mouth — same as before, except now the product is actually ready for them.

If you want to see yourself as a Ghibli character, a Naruto ninja, or a One Piece pirate — give it a try.

And if you've ever shut something down too early — maybe check your analytics first.

Would appreciate any feedback