Ask HN: How did you take your freelance web development biz to the next level?

I would avoid off shore developers at all costs. It'll be more costly for your business if you didn't pick the right ones, or not managing them correctly.

Even if you did pick the right developers, you will have to spend time to teach them about design. Design is completely off when it's done offsite.

I'm afraid I don't have much input on your questions since I'm not there yet.

Since it appears you've had quite some success getting leads I'd like to ask you a few questions regarding your last HN post:

1) Did ariba work out for you ? If not how did you get the opportunity to bid on large company RFP's ?

2) What did you have to do to demonstrate that you were a credible supplier for these clients ? You mentioned having done work as a subcontractor. How were you able to valorize that work as representative of your own capabilities ? Were these publicly visible projects, even if your name wasn't on them ?

3) Did you have to jump through a lot of administrative hoops to be considered - ie. DUNS, business insurance requirements, etc. ?

Is scaling up or accepting a cap on your revenue your only options? How are you currently billing? Hourly/weekly? Have these rates really been maxed out?

I've been a part of and seen multiple consultancies that have crapped out because they tried to convert between a single consultant to a devshop too soon. A big reason is the thought that you can somehow avoid issues with a good run rate or savings (which is sometimes conservatively advised to have at least 30K in the bank per new hire). Don't get me wrong, cash will still come in but you will suddenly find yourself managing the quality/work, expectations, and livelihood of another person. A good first step is to hire a on shore consultant (to mitigate the possible communication gap) and see how that affects your bottom line and overall quality of life.

I too do freelance software development. I'm at a pretty small scale right now, but shoot me an email if you'd like to talk about doing some work together in the future. Whether its just passing excess projects off to each other or it turns into something bigger, I am open to discussion. I am booked until end of June right now. My email should be in my profile.

The easiest thing we did when we needed to scale was to work with a number of other web dev shops. Some were 1 man operations and others slightly larger. Not only did this help us grow, but we also made additional revenue when they passed us work they couldn't handle due to time/experience.