There was a time when opening his monthly American Express card bill used to be a double dose of misery for Inderpal Guglani.

On top of the requisite monthly charges, the Emoonlighter chief executive officer would pull out a flier for his job-seeker's online marketplace's closest rival, Guru.com, reaffirming the reach of the then San-Francisco-based firm's pervasive marketing brawn. "My insides would burn when I saw that flier," recalled Guglani, 39.

That was over two years ago.

Today, Guglani is just a month away from officially becoming CEO of Guru.com and its extensive database of employers in the market for outsource talent. In June, Emoonlighter -- which specializes in connecting businesses with information technology, business consulting, creative design and office administration freelancers -- bought Guru.com, the well-known online resource for Silicon Valley talent, for an undisclosed amount. In February, Emoonlighter will change its name to the better known Guru.com.

In short, at a time when many dot-coms were spiraling into dot-bombs, Guglani managed not only to keep his Oakland-based outfit afloat with a mere $400,000 in venture investment compared with Guru.com's reported $63 million in venture capital, he also managed to buy out his chief competitor.

How Guglani, who claims he is not a risk-taker, accomplished this feat can be likened to a great casserole turned out in an old-fashioned crock pot -- the secret is in the simmer.

Guglani says his conservative, no-nonsense approach -- tight purse strings, testing each new marketing strategy and an almost religious reliance on customer feedback -- guided Emoonlighter through the past three years' shaky terrain. "I typically don't take great leaps," said the New Delhi-bred accountant and graduate of Carnegie Mellon University's Graduate School of Industrial Administration.

At a chance social event in the 1990s, Guglani reconnected with his former professor, Kannan Srinivasan, who was musing launching an online marketplace for moonlighters to satisfy his need to find relatively cheap labor to set up his computer system. "I was the bullish one on Internet businesses, said Srinivasan, a CMU professor and Web enterprise enthusiast in the dot-com era's golden days. "I didn't think he was that impressed with the idea."

Several days later, Guglani easily sold Srinivasan on turning his problem into an enterprise. With $60,000 between them, A2Zmoonlighter was born in 1998 to a less-than-stellar response.

Competitors such as Bullhorn.com, Elancer.com, the now-defunct ants.com and Guru.com were reaping venture capital, and A2Zmoonlighter's customers were trickling in rather than rushing to sign up.

"You begin to wonder, 'Am I in the right space? Am I doing the right thing?' " said Guglani.

Shaken, but determined, Guglani and his team of two stationed in their start-up headquarters -- the basement of his Wexford home -- forged ahead.

Initially A2Zmoonlighterv homed in on linking businesses with working professionals looking to work on the side, all the while focusing on capturing the businesses, not the talent.

Attempts to secure local venture capital were met with blank stares. Still, A2Zmoonlighter managed to stretch its initial angel investor Fairview Capital's funds over three years.

The fledgling company did so largely by creating a steady revenue stream through a subscriber fee for its service; the subscription fee had the added benefit of weeding out freelancers who weren't all that serious about the venture.

Emoonlighter -- it changed its name from A2Zmoonlighter in January -- also retains a 10 percent fee from nonmembers who use the service to get a freelance job (that is, it keeps 10 percent of the freelancer's payment) and charges a 5 percent fee to subscribers who land jobs. Nonsubscribers can still sign up for the service, but Emoonlighter promotes its subscribers more heavily.

"I make sure that my subscribers know that they are not my customer -- the employer is," Guglani said. Indeed, Srinivasan added, Emoonligher is religious about monitoring customer feedback.

"Inder would run these experiments and quickly find out what worked and what didn't.''

Guglani's passion for keeping costs down was another crucial factor in the firm's survival.

He ran the operation on a $40-a-month digital subscriber line and kept staff at the bare minimum, going so far as to handle customer service himself.

When the tech bubble burst and the market flipped, the business took off as laid-off freelancers and moonlighters sought and competed for work.

What was a misfortune for many was a boon for the firm, which was able to present companies with the best talent possible -- unlike the dot-com glory days, when just finding available talent was a victory. For Emoonlighter, catering to the employers and not the job seekers proved to be lucrative.

It helped that Emoonlighter stuck with a cost-efficient online marketing strategy that required the firm to pay for online services only when people clicked on its Web site, as opposed to a more popular and costly form of Internet marketing at the time -- the big banner ads that many used.

Srinivasan and Guglani say this cheap marketing scheme was critical to Emoonlighter's survival.

By May 2003, a sputtering Guru.com began considering ways to get out of the business. After a few days ruminating, Guglani made an offer that he felt would not would not undermine his firm nor require any personal funds.

With the Guru.com acquisition, Emoonlighter added a wealth of companies that relied on Guru.com for freelancers.

"We were held back by [our] 'moonlighting' image of the past" that reflects its initial thrust of finding part-time moonlighers rather than full-time freelancers, said marketing and communications manager Heidi Freund Stanczak

"The moonlighter image has held us back more than helped us."

Following the official switch to Guru.com, Guglani's team of seven will add a local employee and two in New Delhi to accommodate the growing demand for outsourcing services that originate in India.

That market is exploding, Guglani said, noting that part of its business has grown from virtually nil in June to 7 percent now. He expects it will represent 15 percent to 20 percent of its business the next two years.