War, Russian hackers, crash

After Russia attacked Ukraine annexed Crimea and started a conflict on the eastern border in 2014 there where a rise in propaganda. A lot of people tried to use the site as a political tool but we stood our ground and deleted everything from both sides. So we ended up hated by both sides. Ukrainians thought we support Russia and Russians thought we support the "USA that's organized our revolution" and that there are fascists in charge of Ukraine now.

At some point, people from Russia approached me and said that it's their security agency and that I need to stop deleting propaganda or else I will be hacked, my site would be banned in Russia and other scary stuff would happen to me.

I replied in the most not polite way I could have thought of.

So in fact hacking did start. That was a rough couple of months closing one hole for them to find another. But the damage was already done. They emailed all people from Russia, saying that site support fascism and in fact, most of the Russian artists left.

The problem with that was that they generated 80% of adds/premium and other revenue. And because of the war Ukrainian economy went to hell so 20% that's left also plomited.

Before this point, the site was making around 1500$/m 100% passive income. And I didn't work on it for quite some time already. I had other business and not much time to waste on it.

So I basically left it where it was, still working still a lot of people using it, but not profitable at all. Some people approached me to buy it, but they were offering so little that I didn't saw any sense in it. I was still thinking that one day I can restart it.