These folks typically don't command astronomical salaries (though they do get paid much, much more handsomely than you'd imagine). Rather, some of them publish bestsellers (and demand the university's help in getting access to leading magazines, publishers, press, etc.). Some of them start their own labs, companies, or institutions that are funded by the schools. Some of them clean up on the lecture circuit. Some researchers -- especially in biomedical fields -- make fortunes (for both their universities and themselves) by selling or licensing patents to private enterprise.

For instance, I'm a writer by hobby. As such, I tend to hang around a lot of other writers (note: I don't recommend this). A common complaint among writers is that writing doesn't pay well. And, on average, that's true. But the world of writing isn't a neat, Gaussian distribution of income. It's a power-law distribution. Most writers are lucky to clear $50k a year in academia, or working for a large and respectable publication. But Malcolm Gladwell earns well north of $10 million a year. Michael Lewis probably makes even more. And don't even get me started on fiction. The woman who wrote "50 Shades of Grey" makes, on average, $3 million a week. J.K. Rowling is a billionaire. Stephen King is probably a near-billionaire. That guy who crapped out "The Da Vinci Code" could just about afford to purchase the Mona Lisa from the Louvre, were he so inclined.

Writing, like academia, is an all-or-nothing sport. There tends to be a very small slice of outsized winners, and a very large slice of abject losers. I don't mean "winners" and "losers" in a pejorative sense. I mean it in the sense that the pie is divided very, very, very unevenly. The average is very low, but the high end is quite high.

This is in stark contrast to, say, i-banking -- wherein a small proportion make an outlandish amount of money, but everyone else still makes a really large chunk of money.

- Professorship in many disciplines (i.e. liberal arts) is a glamour job, that is one with an effectively bottomless supply of qualified aspirants that do not have easy access to higher-paying alternative jobs.

- "Rainmaker" grant writers pretty much can write their own ticket within academia, but they won't necessarily be able to capture a lot of the grant money as salary. They should still be able to set their own hours while running projects with top-shelf employees and equipment. There's no guarantee that the most interesting, respectable research will be appealing to the types of people who fund research though. (n.b.: I am only guessing on this last point.)