Bands make a lot of their money off merchandise too. T-shirt and random stuff like that. CD sales aren't what they used to be so you have to find any income stream you can like you mentioned. Gigs, CD's, merchandise......and that's all that comes to mind as an artist. Until you build your reputation and can start branching off into different business areas, but that usually isn't in the beginning. Not a ton you can do when starting up though, which is why people usually have other jobs when they are starting out, to pay for their music "career".

My drummer has the same ideas about luck that you do and I argue with him about it all the time haha. He doesn't believe in luck and thinks that it is all about being prepared, or something like that. Then again he is the person that has everything good happen to him, so it's a lot easier for him to sit back and say he didn't get it all because of luck, he worked for it. Reality is that he (and a lot of other people) get to where they are because of the familiar phrase: "It's not what you know, it's who you know".