Selling my Dubai visa startup after 4 years: lessons from building it in Pakistan
Since 2022 I've run www.dubaivisa.pk, an online platform that helps Pakistanis apply for UAE visit visas. It has brought in roughly AED 640K in revenue (about AED 370K from visas and AED 270K from Dubai tours). Here's what four years taught me:
Your biggest risk can be a government decision. When the UAE paused visas for Pakistanis, our revenue crashed overnight. However the situation has returned to normal now for several months.
Selling extra services adds up. About 1 in 5 visa customers also booked tours. That second sale ended up worth almost as much as the visas themselves.
An exact-match domain is worth more than it looks. We barely spent on ads. For years, Google sent us people already searching for exactly what we sold.
Owning your platform matters. We moved from WordPress to our own portal, where customers apply, upload documents and download their visa. It made the business easier to run, and easier to sell.
I'm now selling dubaivisa.pk. I'm focusing on my education ventures, and with visas for Pakistanis reopening, this is the right time to hand it over. The sale includes the domain, the portal and the social pages. It's best suited to a travel agency or a founder in the travel space.
If you're interested, or know someone who might be, DM me and I'll share the full numbers. Happy to answer questions about the business in the comments too.