That's exactly what he has done. The thing is that he was a team leader in a large tech company, and could earn something like 6x in compared to the money he earned in security, if he got a full time job. But he told me that with a full time job he can't possibly develop anything for himself.
But that's not always an easy thing to do when you are 35 as he was.
Sometime if you're not a hacker or you're one but want to focus on your startup, then taking a less "serious" job can do the trick also.
I've met we've guys that even worked night shifts in security and coded all day long. Others did even customer support from home. Got the bills paid while they build their project.
Getting a $4K a month client is something that's can take considerable amount of time to achieve.
The one thing I've learned from top entrepreneur is that there is no blueprint for success. What worked for Ryan in one company between 2003-2008 doesn't have to work in different time place.
The only thing is to run it and improve it all along.
Why programming isn't a commodity skill? Or will become such commodity soon?
Programming is like a house builder. Yes there are better and more experienced builders, but most of them can build a house top to bottom with no problem.
If nothing helps another option is to register the domain in somewhere like GoDaddy, not because of their "great" service but just because they offer a service to grab the domain as soon as it expires.
Then you can wait for it to expire. After the domain will be at GoDaddy you can easily transfer it to another registrar. Risky but might be the only choice.