Is the future of independent films a mere Hobby?

I have been reading about the future of the film industry (and medias in general) for a while now. I have seen a lot of creative ideas (Kickstarter, crowdfunding, Artemis project, CwF+RtB, etc.).


I am a filmmaker and I used to earn a decent living selling my films worldwide. In the last few years, the bottom fell out and the prices are dropping so low that making the films become unsustainable. Everybody is scrambling for the exit and looking for a new business model or looking for ways to go back to the status quo. While I agree that it is impossible to stop piracy and pointless to sue for that, I however wonder about the viability of a CwF+RtB model and other propositions, like crowd funding (which is a legal grey area and I believe it is only a matter of time before that plug is filled).


So as far as I can tell, the reasoning goes a little like this: spend years building an audience for your film, in order to convince them to finance you and your film, keep them posted on the progress, shoot the film, give it for free along with some reasonably priced swag they can't download, and keep promoting the shit out of it until you eventually (or more realistically hopefully) break even then start again... Fun perhaps, but at this point, it's not a business it is a hobby! You cannot sustain an industry like this! 


If you factor in all the time and effort to make the film, plus all the time you spend "connecting with fans" and providing them with (free) added value, you end up making less than a quarter of a penny an hour for your time! I love my job but I also need to pay my bills! Under the CwF+RtB model, not only do I need to raise the money to make the film, a difficult proposition even under the "old" model, now I also need to find cash to finance the schwag ( and the warehouse to store it - you can always go "print on demand" style, but the costs are higher, diminishing your chances of selling it unless you want to make pennies of profit - and let's face it, only the hard core fans will buy the swag!) and spend even more time connecting with the audience than ever before, plus add all the support time of maintaining what is now also becoming a retail business!!! I fail to see how it is sustainable for indie filmmakers with limited resources to begin with. It does not appear to make economical sense to me. Maybe I am not understanding it right but feel free to enlighten me. I'd like to understand what I am missing.