If you haven't already check out the podcast startupsfortherestofus.com Rob has lots of great advice on stair stepping. Also check out tinySeed for when you get traction.
I'm doing the same thing, building a SaaS that clients are using that I will market to a wider audience in the future. I'm using my 20% time and have built out just enough that I can charge clients for the service my SaaS provides. I invoice them manually currently.
I wouldn't mention about it being a SaaS or them funding the development, and definitely not anything about a discounted rate. If they are asking for a feature/service build it and charge them an onboarding or initial fee + monthly fee to cover some of your costs. Deliver it as a service they sign up for you can invoice them manually initially or integrate stripe in to it or do that in the future.
You'll have some signups and can catch bugs, improve the service, take feature requests, get signups. Using the revenue to cover some of your costs.
If a client asks for a new feature you can introduce an add-on to his subscription and/or an additional one time fee.
Note in your contract this is offered as a service, you retain all rights to use/resue/resell the code and offer subscriptions to the service. The client has the right to subscribe or unsubscribe from the service. You have the right to wind down the service after XX months. Prices and features may change in the future.
If the service provides value don't sell yourself short, SaaS is an amazing business model. Granted it's a slow ramp, but amazing the revenue even a small team can generate.
I'm doing the same thing, building a SaaS that clients are using that I will market to a wider audience in the future. I'm using my 20% time and have built out just enough that I can charge clients for the service my SaaS provides. I invoice them manually currently.
I wouldn't mention about it being a SaaS or them funding the development, and definitely not anything about a discounted rate. If they are asking for a feature/service build it and charge them an onboarding or initial fee + monthly fee to cover some of your costs. Deliver it as a service they sign up for you can invoice them manually initially or integrate stripe in to it or do that in the future.
You'll have some signups and can catch bugs, improve the service, take feature requests, get signups. Using the revenue to cover some of your costs.
If a client asks for a new feature you can introduce an add-on to his subscription and/or an additional one time fee.
Note in your contract this is offered as a service, you retain all rights to use/resue/resell the code and offer subscriptions to the service. The client has the right to subscribe or unsubscribe from the service. You have the right to wind down the service after XX months. Prices and features may change in the future.
If the service provides value don't sell yourself short, SaaS is an amazing business model. Granted it's a slow ramp, but amazing the revenue even a small team can generate.
The Build Your SaaS podcast is good too.