INTRODUCTION
When I was making about $20K less with my day job, the idea of making an
extra $10K per year sounded great. My two very young kids were young enough
at the time that they didn't need a lot of attention. Knowing this, one day
I discovered something I could do on NT with Visual Basic to bring in
another $10K per year. In fact, competitors to my product mostly did it in a
less convenient manner for customers, and cost double what I charged. I
thought it was an original idea, so I decided to build a moonlight company.

For the moonlight company, I fired up a website, hooked up with a credit
card processing service, incorporated into a legal corporation, purchased a
voicemail system, and posted a few key newsgroup posts (in the proper
newsgroups so as to follow good Internet ettiquette, of course).

I waited, and eventually things started picking up where I had 1 phonecall a
week from a curious person. Most were U.S. Military people. Others were
people from extremely large U.S. corporations like a phone company I cannot
name here. In fact, the phone company decided to bring me in for a demo.
After the demo, they told me I was "in the lead" against the competition on
technical factors, but that I had a very low score for customer support. You
see, as a single person with a day job, I cannot devote full time to
customer support. I also have no connections to hook up customer support.
So, the deal with the phone company fell through.

I should tell you what my website is. It's http://www.*-*-*.com/ . The
product I'm talking about here is DAS. DAS is an Active Directory kind of
application for Windows NT User/Group Administration, like adding thousands
of accounts in bulk, and doing it entirely over the web. The key edge that
my product has is that an NT Domain Admin can set other people up (even
ordinary Domain User accounts) with the ability to do delegated
administration chores without getting "free roam" rights in domains.

The key problems with my product are essentially:
    * I cannot provide anything but email customer support. No onsite
customer support is possible. I can't even make an onsite sales
presentation.
    * I am not on General Services Administration schedule, so therefore the
U.S. Military cannot purchase from me.
    * Other people complained about wanting a free demo. (I'm not very good
at building timelimited software demos and they are a hassle to keep
updating as you improve your product.)

_I have not yet sold a single DAS product and have been in business 2 years
(but only 5 months as a corporation)._

Then, all of a sudden, my day job jumped $20K higher in salary when I
changed companies. Then, as one can expect, my kids got more and more
demanding and needing my attention. I was feeling guilty as a father not
spending enough time with the kids. Therefore, the idea of a second
moonlight company got real annoying.

As my advertising ended, people stopped going to my website.

QUESTIONS
* I have an outstanding product. Anyone want to buy the rights off of me?
It's written entirely in VB and ASP pages. The ASP pages merely provide the
front end--the VB5 DLL does all the work. I would have my lawyer draw up the
paperwork for the sale. As part of the sale, I believe I would provide 2
year documentation and email support as necessary on how it works and how to
resolve problems with it that may arise. (What I'm saying here is still
pending what my lawyer advises me.)

* I once heard that if you get other people to resell your product, you
don't have to provide tech support and onsite visits for sales or technical
issues--they do. Instead, you just provide email support to those reseller
helpdesks so that they can help the customers. Anyone know any resellers out
there?

* Would I do better to sell the core VB5 DLL to programmers (it encapsulates
Active Directory to an almost first grade level of use!)?
--
Mike McKee

You know what to do to reply.

Since you have *already* identified competitors in this market, perhaps they
would be interested in buying the technology from you. Otherwise, find a
business whose existing customer base would benefit from another product in
this area.  These would be the two fastest routes to selling your technology
for a reasonable price.

I have been told that a resonable percentage you should expect from ongoing
sales is around 10% - 20%.  Usually 20% is reserved for persons with a proven
track record with a company. Expect between 10% and 15%. (Note: These numbers
are for consumer apps and developers tools. It may be different for high end
corporate software. Like anything else, you get what you can negotiate<g>).

It may be difficult to sell this as a "packaged" technology for developers,
since each person you sell to would probably end up developing the same
product.  Generic reusable components do much better in the programmers
utility market.

If you decide to sell the technology to a company that can better market it,
you will end up with a higher % of sales revenue if you are willing to provide
support. They can answer the phone, but you have to fix the bugs!

Hope this helps...

-Fred

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--
Mike McKee

You know what to do to reply.