I would quite like five figures a month working from starbucks, so if I am missing a trick let me know
We have a number of them here on Hacker News who are very much not selling ebooks on vegetarian canaries. The most prominent one I can remember is jasonkester, who runs a cloud service analytics company that evidently requires very little upkeep. If you're interested in the topic, try doing an HNSearch on him for relevant terms — he's been very enthusiastic about it over the years.
Like any kind of entrepreneurial venture there's no shortcuts, it's all hard work, learning, failing and repeating. Like you mention, then there's the Timothy Ferriss hucksters of course, but that's a whole different ball game.
It is simply making products to sell instead of working for a salary. The less upkeep that they require the better. Many mobile apps fall in this category as well as lots of SaaS businesses. See also patio11 and bingocardcreator