SAAS? PAAS? I think it's fairly well known that Patrick consults to help fund his other projects, with the ultimate goal of becoming independent of consulting in favor of passive income. (Apologies if I'm mischaracterizing Patio's intent -- that's at least how it always seemed to me.)
Alternately, you could raise your rates a bunch, save the difference and try to retire early.
Patrick's other projects are the self-education, credibility-development, and marketing for his consulting business. He is not going to retire a millionaire on bingo cards and appointment reminders.
Have you looked at the appointment reminder pricing? A single mid-tier customer brings in $1000 to $2400 per year. Scale that to a few hundred accounts, and you won't have to wait for retirement age to be a millionaire.
Many businesses doing annual volumes of sales in the millions don't understand what a RESTful API is. For example, me. I have a small manufacturing business and I enjoy reading hacker news but I could not program anything with and API today because I can't code.
So do I concentrate on new product development (welded steel items that we sell) or customer development (some of our customers spend in the hundred of thousands per year on our product) or do I hire someone who can program so that I don't have to learn it? Time I spend learning a RESTful API is time I don't spend making the new widget that will buy my wife a new vehicle. Time I spend learning to code is time I can't spend converting our customer who spends a million a year with my competition and only a 100K with us.
Patio11 email is really about time. How to use your skills to help out companies that have a shortage of time. If we had all the time in the world we could all learn programming. But I don't have any where near enough time to do the things I want to do. I have four kids and all the time sucks that go along with that (school, soccer, art class, etc) and a couple of businesses and a dozen employees. I have to travel for work 8 weeks a year, plus manage a dozen employees and two dozen machines, an outside salesforce and over a 1000 resellers. I have hired computer consultants with underwhelming results several times in the past. I have spent thousands and thousands of dollars on crappy results.
What Patio11 is selling is his competency. He has proof from previously satisfied customers. He clearly can provide leadership on a project and deliver results. He doesn't sell what he can't do, and has said multiple times that he doesn't take on projects that he can't deliver on (thus protecting his reputation). Leadership is way undervalued on projects. It is the result that matters not the price.
Generally speaking, there's always a market for expertise. If that's your area of expertise and are markedly better at it than the next guy, there's a market for it. The key is in figuring out the niche
"I can train your people to build better APIs than you have now, and hence enable much better engagement from the customers of your API" -- that's a value proposition, and people are willing to pay for it.
"I can build your company's RESTful APIs to better engage your developer community" -- that's a totally different one in both feel and purpose, but one that you'd likely find customers for.
The only thing you need to do is be able to back up those claims, be personable, and ideally, be able to demonstrate how much value you can add to your customers, in dollar terms, how they would benefit from your services.
If you don't believe there to be value, then you just need to think about what your company is paying you for now (assuming employment), and how they're able to justify said employment and still make a profit.
Alternately, you could raise your rates a bunch, save the difference and try to retire early.