You've stayed up late nights slaving over your baby, doing everything you can to make it look it's best. You gathered the information that you want you spread the word you site is up and now your getting results. Traffic has increased exponentially and people love your site. You struggle to keep up and it seems like you just working harder and harder to satisfy people you don't even know.
Nothing say's it has to be that way, consider all other forms of media.
Most use advertising of some type. Many magazines or news letters started out like you though, just work for the passion but just like you it got to be too much. So what you need to do is advertise. It doesn't have to be the gaudy animated gifs of before. Plenty of sites now only allow small unanimated banners.