[karterk]

Depending on the terms of your employment, this might not even be possible, but you should try augmenting your primary source of income with some part-time consulting. While the lure of the profitable side project is hard to resist, it's much easier to become financially independent by doing consulting than through a side project. Bootstrapped SaaS projects grow very very slowly in terms of monthly recurring revenue (also known as the Long, Slow, SaaS Ramp of Death [1]).

[1]: http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman-constant-...

[quaffapint]

Any suggestions on how to find part time consulting gigs? I know I can't compete with the odesk rates, not sure of non-spammy places to find em. I'll have to check on terms, as well.

[karterk]

Have you tried applying to work posted in the HN freelance hiring threads? There are many such niche software dev contracting listings. Here's another one: http://www.authenticjobs.com/

I suggest you build a few "apps" which are highly focussed in what they do but are more-or-less feature complete and publish it on GitHub. This works better in some areas of software dev than others, but it will basically demonstrate that you can ship a product in an area that you have expertise in. As a contractor, your ability to ship code is the most important point of evaluation for people trying to hire you. With the source code available, people can also validate that you can write decent code. Having such a showcasable portfolio of work will definitely put you in the top of the pecking order.