Forbes's David Ewalt has a really good profile on Felicia Day's innovative work in producing uncompromisingly niche-focused, medium-cost Web video that is both more artistically satisfying for her than TV was, and more lucrative.

But when Day showed the script around, it fell flat. Studio execs "didn't even understand the concept of gaming," she says. "It was like a foreign country to them." Agents advised her to drop it and write a script for an established program. But Day wanted to tell her story. So she produced the first few shows herself, borrowing equipment, recruiting actor friends, and shooting in her living room. It was, she says, the scariest thing she'd ever done—but it worked.

"The minute we uploaded a video and started getting feedback and interacting with our audience, it was so much more fulfilling than anything I'd done before," she says. "There was no point for me to go and try to sell it as a TV show, especially when we put in a PayPal button and people started donating."

Committed fans were key to the success of The Guild, and Day cultivated them carefully, using Twitter and Facebook to build two-way relationships. "We shoot a season once a year, but maintain our social network all year, because we're committed to our audience," she says. "They support us, we support them."

Her devoted core audience, young and Internet-savvy, quickly attracted attention. Sprint subsidized production of The Guild in return for a short "sponsored by" message at the beginning of each episode. Microsoft paid to debut each season exclusively on Xbox Live, the Zune Video Marketplace and MSN Video. Episodes go to the Web four weeks after they complete that exclusive run.