To make a million, figure out how to do what you do for more people for less money.

For you, one obvious option is to teach – via webinars.

For example, you could teach OOD using CRC [or responsive design, or whatever!] for an hour via webinar and conference call. Using google docs for slides and freeconferencecall.com, you could reach 100 students for free. If each one paid $10 for the webinar, that’s $1000/hour. Every participant receives a Certificate of Completion if they pass a test at the end and fill out a satisfaction survey. Advanced training = smaller webinars with bigger price tags. One of these a day = a very nice living

Just an example. What do you love to teach, and how can you teach more people cost-effectively?

Good luck!

Ideas for Startups: http://paulgraham.com/ideas.html
Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas: http://paulgraham.com/bronze.html

Regarding more technical products, he claims:

From How to Start a Startup (http://paulgraham.com/start.html):
“No matter what kind of startup you start, it will probably be a stretch for you, the founders, to understand what users want. The only kind of software you can build without studying users is the sort for which you are the typical user. But this is just the kind that tends to be open source.”

From Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas (http://paulgraham.com/bronze.html)
“Work people like doesn’t pay well, for reasons of supply and demand. The most extreme case is developing programming languages, which doesn’t pay at all, because people like it so much they do it for free.”

I have no kids and no mortgage, just some student loans. I just can’t figure out what to jump on. If you have ideas, get in touch. Perhaps, with a bit of encouragement and guidance, I can jump in front of the bus and ramp up a product until it could support a team full time.

I know you don’t know me from a hole in the ground, but what does a conversation cost?

gaustin@gmail.com

After reading the fourth paragraph in your post… the first thought I had was responsive design. There are several talks on the net that I’ve tracked down of you speaking to this subject, and they are gems to me and things that I watch over and over. I send them to my colleagues, I tweet them out when I find them. Kevin makes an excellent point in my opinion… “Your niche is that you are Kent Beck. ” You bring a unique quality both in your communication style, how you present things, and how you think about and tackle problems that differentiates you from many others.

I personally have been in search of mentors in my profession to grow my craft. I’ve looked both within companies that I have worked for as well as within the overall software development community. Finding mentors that care within companies that I have worked has proven difficult unfortunately. However, your continued public involvement in the software development community is truly a blessing in my humble opinion. It’s like Kevin said, it had never occurred to him that a question he would pose would ever elicit a response from Kent Beck. I understand completely what he means when he says that.

The opportunity to work in a team setting whether it be banging out a product or just simply hacking away at things would be an invaluable benefit for any software development team I think. However, I do see that this type of arrangement could prove difficult to “change the engine while driving on the freeway”. Not enough hours in the day.

Your mentor-ship to the software development community is one that I personally find invaluable and something I would be willing to subscribe to (if reasonably priced). That’s coming from someone that continually hunts for good software development mentors to glom on to.