For me, a few things have driven me to the project I'm working on now. It's been in the works a long time but it'll be worth it for me in the long run, even if only 3-5 other people join. I think that's the first reason for me. If I know I'll want to keep going with the site, even if only 1-5 others want to join, that means I'm already passionate enough. Especially since I'm usually fairly picky.

The TLDR:

1. I love the idea enough that I'm content to keep it going even if not a lot of people join.
2. I love the idea enough that I'm prepared to maturely handle any drama that arrises and ensure the environment remains safe and happy, even if I'm stressed AF and would rather hide.
3. The subject is something I know I will never get bored of regardless of whether it's a fad or a popular one or not.
4. I'm so sure of an idea that I couldn't stand the idea of it being done any other way, in which case, how better to go about it than doing it myself?

Honestly, I made my site in order to control my own destiny so to speak.

I've been subadmin or global mod level on a lot of sites big and small, but at the end of the day I could give either great or awful advice and it didn't matter because at the end of the day it wasn't my call. Even extremely obvious problems with extremely obvious solutions could be ignored, and sites die because of it all the time. Member bases fracture entirely, and longtime members leave in droves in a very predictable way to a decision that anyone could see would not be taken well.

I've gotten to the point to where in some sites I predicted exactly what fracture would happen months out and exactly how it would happen. It's a skill I picked up from seeing all sorts of different styles and having the benefit of having some fantastic teachers/other staffers to bounce ideas/best practices off of. I realized that at a certain point if I wanted the best chance to have a long runner I was going to have to make it myself and put my money where my mouth is. I always thought I could do a better job than a lot of the admins I worked under, either in hindsight or in the moment and getting permission from 10 people in large and unwieldy staff teams is like going to the DMV and kills any motivation to help. Having to get approval from people who don't even roleplay there sucks, and so does having to wait 3-5 business days for a response from that person.

I've stayed for long periods of time on a couple of sites, and every single one of the member fractures/deaths were extremely avoidable. It usually just came down to the head admin deciding to stop giving a damn and letting everything fall to pieces rather than letting someone else take the reins, and that's not going to be me. If I ever leave RPland and my site is still alive, the reins are getting passed to someone I think can keep it going. Every situation where a similar reins passing was refused had multiple competent people willing to step up, but ego stopped it from happening every time. A lot of times in the early days sites with tens of thousands of posts would either be deleted or in perma-maintenance mode with all staff being demoted as a final sort of middle finger, too, because it was a fad back then to worry about 'copyright' and people 'stealing writing' and junk. Nobody cares about your half-angel half-demon half-baboon OC dude, we just want our stuff at a minimum.

So I made my site essentially as a last hurrah, knowing that my likely career path after college would make solo staffing impossible once I graduated (disaster relief hours get wild sometimes). So I basically get to see if I can actually do this thing. I gave myself about a year and a half to find enough people to make it self-sustaining enough to survive without me being there all the time -- and if it dies before then or I fail to create that environment then I fail. If I succeed, though, it means that I've actually learned a lot of things and best practices and I will be thrilled to finally be 'proven right' in my mindset/way of doing things.

Everyone has those people who made fun of your ideas or shot them down saying that they weren't worth anyone else's time and energy, and I basically balled all my rejected ideas from various sites together and made my own site with almost all of them. A lot of them never saw the light of day before, or were implemented suboptimally (usually by me, to be honest) in the past, but the theory is that I have learned from those mistakes and made something workable.

Time will tell if that's true or not, but yeah. After a certain point I was just like 'well, I could sit there and whine about what could have been -- or I could take a big risk and give it an honest to god attempt again.'

It will die at some point, every site does. If I only got one more run in me, though, I'm going to do everything in my power to make one heck of a high score for myself along the way though.