[jqm]

Ya, but you could do that little bit of stuff in less time then it took to write up the spec, put up the work, sift through potential contractors and ensure what you got met your needs (going back to step 2 when it didn't). Plus you would know how it fit together since you wrote it so it would be somewhat easy to alter/reuse.

As far as side projects, 40 hours a week to work isn't that much. I usually work 50+ and have most of my work life. Lots of people work even more. If you did this you would have at least ten hours a week to work on a side project. Incidentally, I still have spare time. To do things like post this comment. What are you doing with your spare time? Video games? Movies? Facebook? Might be worth looking at. Life is short and you don't get time back.

Start small. Do a little project. Something that takes 8 or 10 hours. Then, with that under your belt tackle something bigger.

[ysriram]

Coding the idea is probably the easiest part. Getting people to use your product and iterating over user feedback is time consuming. Also, "build it and they will come" doesnt work (more so in the AppStore)

[jqm]

Agreed. But the topic was building a side project not getting users... which is certainly the more difficult part.