I haven't read the book that some others have been recommending, but it looks good (I respect a lot of the people who gave it favorable reviews on its website). Aside from that, I'd say you should do some research on others who've successfully followed this path. They exist -- they're just less likely to show up in tech news, which is heavily influenced by investors (who only care about big wins) and bloggers (who only care about big news).

Take a look at the early blog posts from Balsamiq's Peldi, anything by Patrick Mackenzie, the Wufoo guys, Gary Vaynerchuck, or anything from the 37Signals guys. This talk by DHH never fails to motivate me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY