[jacquesm]

Cut your costs to begin with to increase your chances of success, save what you can and start with a concrete goal in mind, say $50 per month increase for the next 6 months, then when you've achieved that goal (hopefully in 6 months!) think about what you've found and if there are ways to scale it.

Projects 'on the side' is renting yourself out hour by hour, it does not scale very well but if a side project is sold as licensed software (niche software more or less by definition) you could make out very well and if someone wants to license your source code instead of the final product you could make a big chunk in one go.

It's quite difficult to say what you can achieve without having a good grip on your situation and your skills but if I had to start over again from a day job I would do something like that.

[navdeep]

My Goal has always been to provide software as a service. I started working on one such product named it care to share. The product always you to share your purchases on facebook and make affiliate earnings from any purchases made by your friends. Project didn't sit well with big companies as they were not willing to change their marketing campaigns, although it was obvious that their sales would go up. As I didn't get sign ups from any big businesses I had to leave the working prototype in sandbox and start on my new app. This time I partnered up with PayPal to allow users to create wishes and share with their Social circle. Contributions can be made through PayPal. Very interactive and useful app. Tried to get PayPal to market the app to its users as users were hesitating creating a new PayPal account. PayPal ignored my 3 of my email requests. So I guess this project will go down as a failure as well.

[apowell]

Perhaps those are good ideas, but they don't sound right for you right now. Building a network-effect business that requires buy-in from Paypal and/or national brands? I can't think of much that's tougher or more speculative.

You should consider creating something that individuals or small businesses will pay for because it scratches an itch. I pay for several services like that each month -- Blinksale, Springloops, AuthorityLabs, Chargify, WebsitePulse, Postmark, and Basecamp. (But don't limit yourself to tools for developers -- there are many industries with un-scratched itches.)

[navdeep]

Thanks for the advice. So target the niches rather than fortune 100. That sounds like a more promising way to get your foot in the door. You are right it is really tough getting noticed by the bigger players I guess my approach should be to squeeze in with the smaller ones first.

[jacquesm]

Getting paypal to be behind marketing your app to their users is a non-starter, they would never ever do that unless you were a very big name already.

[navdeep]

That is a deadlock isn't it. To get Big you need to start off Big or lucky enough to know someone Big.