[TheRealWatson]

This is just my experience and of some I observe around me. I see a lot of very talented and passionate developers wanting to come up with personal projects that can make them money but, because they're so deeply interested in software engineering, the only ideas they have are related to (surprise!) software engineering problems.

Yes, you can make money selling products or services for software development but to really come up with something that reaches more people or businesses you need to invest in other interests, you need to be around more non-techies, you need to try more concrete world things.

Use your acute problem analysis and solving skills to identify and model problems in the world "out there." Model and remodel the problem to exhaustion, fall in love with it; think, design, experiment solutions and a why people would pay for it.

It's possible there's a lot of stuff to learn in this whole process. And you can do this over and over, with different problem spaces, if you become good at it.