There are no really successful programmers. In a general sense: There are no really successful wage-earners. The only really successful people are business-people. That applies to just about every industry. No one is going to give you a billion dollars (or even a million) to sit at home or in an office and write code. No matter how beautiful and optimised and whatever other qualities you think code should have.
Unless you want to define "really successful" as really good (which is subjective) or popular and then the answer is obviously to be really good and make something popular. Oh and try to make sure to get the timing right. ;)
Unless you want to define "really successful" as really good (which is subjective) or popular and then the answer is obviously to be really good and make something popular. Oh and try to make sure to get the timing right. ;)