Here's a few discussions that I've bookmarked and go back to, time-to-time for inspiration:

Small Product, Single Founder Success Stories https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3029771

How much recurring income do you generate, and from what? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2567487

Anyone making a living from just 1 app? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1772199

Inspirational money making web apps made by hackers https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1764682

You don't have to be a single developer to build an app that does this. You can be a sales guy, marketing guy, etc. The power is in knowing how and when to delegate. In the soloprenuer world this is done through outsourcing. Many folks have businesses that they pay for through a suite of products. None of which generate enough revenue to pay for their salary, but the sum of all do and more. One major advantage of this is a risk diversification. IF market X falls out, then only one small income stream falls through and doesnt bring the business owner with it. Multiple income streams via a portfolio of apps is what a lot of folks do. However, there are many folks who have one app and they do great.

Listen to Startups For The Rest of Us, Bootstrapped with Kids, Lifestyle Business Podcast, Product People, etc etc. Go to conferences like Microconf, Baconbiz, etc. There's tons of us out there.

ONe additional thing to note is, alot of us that fit this category (I heard a number on Bootstrapped with Kids where its almost 60%) are people with a family to support (kids, wife, etc). A lot of us cannot get up and move to SOMA and work at Startup Company X while stuffing our family into a shoebox sized apartment in the Tenderloin district. Sure there are options, but sometimes you CANT move. Medical conditions, ailing family, a support system that you cannot leave, etc.

When its time like these, people start to bootstrap and build portfolio of products to get back the most important resource they have: time. Your kids are only young, ONCE. Spending that time working 80 hour weeks at a startup that is not yours where you get .000125 of a percent of a company IIF they go big (acquired, IPO, etc) usually isn't worth the trade off considering that the vast majority of startups fail.

I run the following, not to 5 figures but income is relatively passive.

https://www.strongcoin.com/

https://www.bitcoinary.com/

http://status2k.com/

http://servermonitoringhq.com/

For example status2K is in the low 100's per month, but I haven't spent anytime on it for about a year.

Selling courses about how to make passive income apps?

Selling SEO Guidebooks to make a passive income website?

I don't know if this technically counts but I'm a freelancer and I proposed and made an iPhone app for a company Social Print Studio where we do revenue share and they handle all fulfillment, customer service, and marketing. It's well on its way to a Bay Area salary for me and it's only been out for a few months. The app is called Print Studio.

Basically I saw an opportunity for a company I liked (I knew them as friends not as a customer) to make even more money with very little risk to them (they didn't pay me a salary, only the revenue share) and as such I was offered a very good deal with no variable costs to me except for development maintenance time and any new features I want to add.

Just leaving food for thought for you all, there are plenty of ways to generate passive income. You don't have to go it alone, collaboration is one of the best tools we have as humans! So get creative. :)

I manage to build + support Planscope (https://planscope.io), sell my two books (very little support necessary, outside of the occasional download links ending up in spam), and run a monthly workshop single handedly in ~20-30 hours a week. And, cumulatively, they're generating a fairly nice income.

I built and run http://theclunkerjunker.com. It started as an affiliate site I started on a whim one night (Or a few hours, more accurately). Within a year it was pulling in $30k/month with almost no expenses. Eventually the affiliate program fell apart and I completely re-wrote it and turned it into a legit service. I don't quite make $30k a month anymore, and it's noticeably more work now, but it's still profitable and I can work at my own pace.

I'm a single founder with no employees, and I run http://WeddingLovely.com as well as nine different online wedding vendor directories. It's a bit tough to juggle since my marketing needs are a bit more intense (I also run a weddings blog at http://WeddingLovely.com/blog) but I'm working on automating it now.

The author of the post runs Followgen by himself

There is a good blog devoted to passive income: http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/

They also have a podcast, which I have listened to. It's not bad at all.

I'd say the most famous is Plenty of Fish (POF). Single founder, run part time by him and his girlfriend, makes millions per year. (My info is a little dated, but I haven't heard of a major change.)

Would love to see this.