Listen, I’m not a Penny Arcade fan. I don’t read it, I don’t understand it, and I really don’t care.
But, they’re pretty successful thus far, and this article has an interesting look at their inner business workings.
A short excerpt:
We’ve evolved into a media company–Gabe and Tycho create content that people in the gaming industry rely on to make informed decisions (much like our filthy competitor GameSpot!). So to an extent we follow the same revenue models other media outlets do. But I didn’t say we’re not a comic strip all together–we also have the ability to study the businesses of Garfield and Peanuts and the way they’ve leveraged those brands. We have merchandise; we syndicate the strip out and we’ve even just signed on with Dark Horse Comics to publish our books (the first one releases in December). We also just signed on with Sabertooth Games to create our first collectible card game battle box in their Universal Fighting System.