So a moonlight software business has a few dynamics to consider:
- As the producer of custom software (databases, web pages, etc), you have limited time because you have a day job.
- You may have some limitations legally on what you can and can not build for someone. (I haven't really looked into this for my own situation).
- You need to find a client who has an established business and can pay you. Most big companies would not take you because they need 8 hour a day resources. The clients I'd think to go after would be small businesses. A small business that wants a unique website or want to leverage their customer information or improve their operational performance through skunkworks projects done offsite.
I will write a business plan for such a business. How would you charge? Well, you need to have well defined deliverables and theirs a large up front cost in your time to build something custom (less as you use more and more reusable components and recycle your work). Maybe a good business model would be to split the cost of your time between some standard service fees (maybe rate projects in 10 hour increments) It may take you a lot longer than 10 hours to build something, document it, and hand it off so you may needs another pricing construct. Maybe theres a $20/month support subscription for 4 calls to explain how to use the deliverable. It can be paid until the customer is happy with working with the deliverables on their own. Maybe a revenue sharing model could be proposed for more elaborate requirements. More later.
