Now then, as far as monetizing such a client, I don't see it as possible to regain the $850 from casual GPU miners and experimenters only. ASIC support will have to be included in the software, and if it is truly a step above everything else that is available for free, it should be cake to monetize at that point. What ASIC miner WOULDN'T pay, say, $10 to gain an extra 2% efficiency? At least initially, when difficulty is still relatively low?
The miner program doesn't contribute that much of a difference. With GPU mining it is important to make a distinction between the mining client (minimal impact on performance) and the OpenCL kernel. The days of 2% gains in the OpenCL kernel are long gone. The code has been highly optimized and IIRC the most recent major change was something on the order of 0.1% performance increase. The client itself has never been the performance bottleneck.
With ASICs (and FPGA) the OpenCL kernel is replaced by the chip itself. The client is just about management and reporting. Further I would point out the OP isn't claiming any type of performance increase.