[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Small dev agency. How to grow our business?
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       Ask HN: Small dev agency. How to grow our business?
        
       A friend and I started taking up mobile and web development
       projects on Upwork last year. For the first few months, we took up
       a few small projects ~$500-1k to build up our reputation. We
       managed to build a decent profile with favorable reviews on the
       site. Now, we get 20-30 invites per week from clients looking to
       hire freelancers/agencies on the platform, and on average, we make
       around 5-6k per month. I want to get some practical tips and
       strategies on how to grow our business  1. Right now, almost all
       the clients that we acquire are through Upwork. We are a bit
       nervous about the risk of getting kicked from the platform in the
       future for any reason. Not that we are doing anything that violates
       their terms, but just in case. We don't want to be over-reliant on
       one channel. What are our alternatives? I know few other sites like
       Fiverr, Freelancer, etc., but supposedly they are not that great in
       comparison.  2. We are most certainly leaving money on the table
       because we cannot handle all the job requests we get. We want to
       grow our team, but hiring developers in the U.S is not an option,
       given the high wage demands. What country is most suitable for
       hiring some good developers at reasonable rates/wages and being
       compliant with U.S labor and tax laws at the same time?  3. What
       are some of the hot areas that we should build our expertise in
       besides mobile and web app development to expand our business?  4.
       How do we actively look for bigger companies that may be interested
       in offloading some of their work to a small team like ours? What
       are some efficient cold emailing strategies? Should we hire
       salespeople for that?  5. Is there a particular type of team
       structure or hierarchy that works well for services as opposed to
       in a product company? What roles should we prioritize in hiring?
       6. Finally, Any tips on how to build web presence?  Thanks in
       advance for your inputs. HN community is incredible!
        
       Author : noobrunner
       Score  : 7 points
       Date   : 2021-04-22 22:49 UTC (12 minutes ago)
        
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       (page generated 2021-04-22 23:01 UTC)