A writing portfolio allows you to establish credibility and begin to build your personal brand as a writer.
By presenting your best work in a professional manner, you are showing potential clients that you take your work seriously.
A writing portfolio is a powerful tool that helps freelance writers to secure more writing projects and ultimately build a successful writing career.
Once you create your writing portfolio, it can serve you for many years to come. Follow these five steps to building a winning freelance writing portfolio.
3. Decide How to Organize Your Work
Your freelance writing portfolio should be easy to navigate.
Potential clients should be able to quickly go in and find pieces that are relevant to what they need.
If you’re hosting your own WordPress site, you’ll be able to add tags to each piece that you publish.
Other freelance writing platforms may allow you to add tags as well. If they do, take advantage of it.
Another way to organize your work is to make categories. You can categorize it into content types, like white papers, press releases, etc.
Or you could categorize according to the subject matter, such as law topics, HVAC topics, etc.
Finally, you need to decide if you’re going to publish the entire piece on your site, or if you’re going to just link to the site where your byline appears.
If you choose the latter, you could publish just a few lines, and then have a link to your online bylined piece where it was originally published.
That way, potential clients can review the site where you were published.
There’s something practical about showing not only what you’ve written, but where that writing has lived out in the wild. Having your name on a reputable site gives your work an extra layer of validation you just can’t fake. When a potential client clicks through and sees your byline next to a recognizable publication, it’s almost like an instant handshake—or maybe a little nod, acknowledging you’re not a total impostor. Sure, a self-published piece can still show off your chops, but third-party validation carries its own quiet weight.
Plus, seeing work in context can highlight your versatility; maybe you’ve written everything from finance guides on a stuffy B2B site to playful lifestyle posts buried in the depths of a trendy blog. That’s the sort of thing folks notice, even if they don’t say it out loud. Trust me, the way you group and present these samples does subtle work in shaping your own “story” as a writer.
4. Write an Awesome Bio and Resume
Before a client decides whether to hire you, they’ll almost certainly like to know a little bit about you.
They’ll very likely look for a bio page and a resume.
This is where you have a nice opportunity to shine. Write yourself a strong bio and resume.
Your bio and resume should highlight your experience, education, and skills as a writer.
Include information on your education, relevant work experience, writing awards, and any secondary relevant skills such as SEO or social media management.
However, only add those extra skills if you’re willing to do that kind of work for new clients. Otherwise, leave them out.
For instance, if you have a lot of experience with press releases, but you want to do more web page writing instead, don’t highlight your excellent press release skills.
You could list the press release experience for experience’s sake, but put more emphasis on your web page writing experience.
5. Get Feedback
As a professional writer, you’ve no doubt made a few friends or acquaintances with other writers.
Ask one or more of them to spend a few minutes critiquing your new freelance writing portfolio.
As fellow writers, they’ll know exactly what to look for and they won’t be shy about pointing out both the good and the bad. Be sure to take criticisms objectively, not personally.
Make any recommended changes that you think are good ideas, and then thank your friends for their feedback.
This is a good time to offer to take a look at their writing portfolios, too.
A winning freelance writing portfolio can serve you for a great many years. But you can’t just walk away from it.
Like anything else, it needs to be maintained and updated.
When you create new content, add it to your portfolio if it makes sense to do so.
And as time goes on and design trends change, consider redesigning your portfolio site so it always looks fresh and new.
