I make a Mac app targeted at developers and sell around 150k euro worth of licenses a year. It's been my only income for the last ten years or so.

In my case a web app just wouldn't work very well (it's hard to connect a web app to things behind a firewall)

I'm also a firm believer in pay-once software, you still get recurring revenue unless you saturate the market, which a small company won't do anyway.