The mistake made by a lot of software developers who decide to go into business is placing too much emphasis on the technical side of software development. This mistake stems from software development's culture as a whole, which generally tends to advocate sharing of code, information, and ideas, as demonstrated by the open source movement. Although this ideology can prove effective for learning and building a reputation in software development, it shouldn't be confused as being a business model—one of many reasons why software developers find themselves underpaid or failing to make their business a commercial success.

Your business model should look at the method you intend to use for developing and distributing your software in order to define how a business can be built on your skills in software development. Some models make use of software development as the primary business, whereas other models use of software development as a component supporting...