I work for a small company that develops websites for other companies, most of them local, some with a more regional or semi-national presence.
I cannot tell you how many websites I've worked on where some guy has an idea and just barely enough cash to pay someone to develop a website to implement it. And out of all of those "fresh idea" websites, not one of them has remained afloat. Most never even generate the first dollar of revenue.
Another situation that is common is there is this one client I'm always working on that is an established presence in an industry, so at least their entire business does not ride on their website. But their website is fairly robust and they keep adding and enhancing the functionality. The problem is that nobody is using the functionality they're enhancing! I mean, sure, there's the whole idea that if you improve it, more people will use it, but at some point it's like "quit throwing good money after bad," you know?
It boils down to the fact that I rarely, extremely rarely, get to work on anything I know will be useful to anyone. The only recent project I can look back upon with any small sense of satisfaction is one I'm actually not quite finished with, but it is presently on the sidelines as others QA the site and I work on something for the people in the prior paragraph. But this project? It's for a non-profit. I already know they're not trying to make money! Which is convenient, because if I'm working on it, it didn't have a good chance of doing that anyway...