We have the same problem you're facing. We've been in the market for 12 years. We do not sell a utility, but we sell a software component for developers. It would of course be great if someone came out and purchased your company and/or your product. What we have done recently is offer the component for free, and that has doubled the installs of our product this month (we have a way of measuring this). The component is going for free but we are still charging for the source code. We haven't had any luck with sales, but we still think it's too early to tell. Another thing that has worked for us is to create articles on our website to attract potential customers, as we cater to developers, we provide articles on programming. We haven't done many but the 6 we have published bring on an average 3 or 4 visitors per day and they have been doing so for several years (so they've brought a lot). And yes we have also thought that paying for advertising is way too expensive and might not bring any results. I think that trying to sell out to a competitor could be a double edge sword, they will get the impression that you are struggling and use it against you. It would be great if we could keep in touch and share experiences.