Worked for a big company and managed up to 5 websites (one in 3 languages), I was also the editor/writer on one of those, traffic was pretty decent but we were a team with resources, people and other companies would grant us access to places and events. This serves just for comparison purposes for what's below.
On the other hand I was a one man band managing my own websites, at one point I had 3-4 at the same time with decent traffic providing income, everything was original content, my own writing, my own pictures, all from my own resources. Those-days-were-intense, and I had at least one experimental project going on that most times would die to be replaced by another, my main websites gravitated around my passions. Honestly, today I look back and I'm not entirely sure how I handled this myself, considering I redesigned the websites from time to time, all from scratch, no WP, no Joomla, no Drupal, just my own CMS, pure CSS, etc. I'm that guy who wrote the thread about being a bit bored, tired, and not exactly wanting to continue... yet I preserve my main 3 websites.
Looking back I think I got fed up with the maintenance, as at some point larger sites demanded more work just around that: maintenance. Posting became more complex by just adding ONE website to the family, some websites demanded more articles depending certain events happening around the world, I also needed a bit of time for backups and bullet proof plans, managing email addresses accounts, passwords and replying to emails was extra work. Besides, the Internet became a FASTER place demanding more and constant updates from authors. Then I had a few ideas for new projects (also experimental aiming for income) but just thinking about the whole thing made me feel dizzy ha ha.
I sure enjoy creating websites, but maintenance is not so fun. It's no surprise I've been eaten alive by work behind closed doors, or just "posting and posting". Today I just had flashbacks around many comments posted here from people who happen to have multiple year websites, brick and mortar, and I wonder if these successful forum members ever stopped creating or if there are still new projects coming soon. For me, it's been a 22 years journey, and I sure feel the weight of posting PLUS updating some social network, some other place to send the signal that there is new content, I played with that but stopped feeding twitter, FB or the dead G+. This forum is not as active as in the past, so I wonder again: did we all got consumed by maintenance?
