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!

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