Imagine getting new clients all the time using old work you’ve done in the past. How easy would that be? Wouldn’t it be nice?
You can do just that – by having a great portfolio.
Do You Really Need to Show Off?
Yes, you do. When you operate an online business, you need to provide potential clients with a portfolio of your past work to show your abilities and skills.
A portfolio is the equivalent of a resume or CV. Your resume reflects your experience and work. Often, it represents a lifetime of your achievements.
A portfolio is no different. This is your life’s work now. Your portfolio shows off the best of your best, and it’s a representation of your personality and style.
Without one, you’re all talk. You could promise the client the moon and regale them with the marvelous projects you’ve done, but it’s only bragging if you can’t back it up.
Where Should You Start?
If you’ve been working for a while, you already have the start of a portfolio right under your nose. In fact, you probably have the start of several portfolios.
Yes, several. You could lump all your past projects into one portfolio, but that makes for a sloppy, confusing presentation. Clients don’t know what to look at, and they may choose to view something they don’t need – then they’ll leave.
Think of organizing your portfolio as you’d organize outfits for different occasions. Here are the suits, here are the evening gowns, here are the casual sporty clothes, here are the shoes.
Here are a few types of portfolio sections or pages you may want to consider:
• Web design
• Copywriting
• Print graphics
• Logos
• Sales Letters
• Audio
• Blog posts
• Ebooks
• Animation
I could go on forever, breaking each section down further into specific types of work. Once you start to organize your portfolio, you’ll see just how easy it is – and your clients will see how easy it is to find what they’re looking for, too.
Do You Have Diversity?
Your portfolio is all about you. Within the space of a few minutes, or even seconds, your portfolio says more about you than you could possibly imagine.
No one wants to see the same thing over and over. Take a look at the work you want to put in your portfolio. Will it make you look like you have a diverse set of skills? Does it show off everything you can do?
If you’re a graphic designer, examine the overall impact of the images as a single group. Do the images all look the same? Or, do they represent a wide range of variety? If you’re a writer, is each document the same style? What diversity can you display? Can you add other pieces that show you have multiple skills?
Keep It Sweet and Simple
We all want to show off our flash and bang, but in some cases, it’s just overkill. It distracts from the purpose of showing a client you’re qualified and know what you’re doing.
Most likely, your client is busy. You’re probably not the only freelancer he or she is considering for the job. That person wants a fast look that makes him or her think, “Yes! This is exactly what I need!” Keep your portfolio simple, get to the point, and don’t waste time.
It may be best to have one primary portfolio page with a few of your best projects displayed front and center. Add headlines to tell clients what they’re looking at. If you have a large portfolio, offer a link to another page where visitors can view the whole selection, if they have the time or inclination.
Back it Up with Information
You do good work, great. So what? People examining your portfolio don’t want to know how fantastic you are. They want to know whether you’ll achieve the goal they seek, and they want backup that you’ve already done it for other people.
Show them the results. What did your work accomplish for your past clients? What problem did clients have, and how did you resolve it? If they wanted more sales, how many did your work help achieve? If they wanted more exposure, how did your skills help them attain that?
Remember that people don’t buy great writing or flashy graphics. They buy the future, the results that the writing or images are going to bring. And they want to know how you changed the lives of others before they trust you to change theirs.
Change Is A Good Thing
Your portfolio isn’t a static object that never changes. As you get better, work more and gain experience, your portfolio evolves right along with you.
If you’re brand new at freelancing, create portfolio pieces for yourself and your business. Your business is your client, after all, and the work you do for it is experience. When you’ve built up a client base, start switching out your pieces for client work.
Even after you’ve been working in your field for a while, you still need to keep your portfolio fresh and updated. Go back and weed out the old work. You update your résumé, don’t you? You update your portfolio the same way.
3, 2, 1…Contact!
Whether you present your portfolio in person, mail a disc, send links in an email or show it on the web, make sure your potential client can see your contact information. Nothing loses a sale faster than a client seeing something he or she wants – and having no way to tell you it’s a go.
Can you think of any other tips for a great portfolio? What would you want to see, if you were a potential client looking for the right person for the job?
Personally, I look for a unique style in a portfolio. I don’t want a designer who just gives the same old corporate blandness. There are some designers who produce clean work, but who I would never buy from, since I’d be paying money to just get lost in the sea of samey sites out there. That’s not the result I’m looking for.
.-= Patrick Vuleta´s last blog ..Using the law to protect your own land =-.
Nice article – I like the way of sorting works.. I have a question: What happens when a client shuts down the website or it expires and there’s nothing to show – How do you deal with that.
Personally I try to create a 1-3 website preserving the look of the homepage and 1 or 2 inside pages. Also i save screenshoots of website just to cover my a$$.
Is there a better way?
Keeping my portfolio current is a priority. Deciding what stays and what goes to the archive page is always a puzzler, but I try to add one/move one. As most of my work comes via my website, directly or indirectly, keeping it organized and current is crucial. I opted for an extended portfolio of 3 pages, all categorized. Seems to work. Fun to track (I like crazyegg.com for data visualization) traffic and attention to each piece.
The one thing I would look for is the ability to listen, decipher, (learn if needed) and deliver. Your interaction with a buyer can also swing the vote in your favour.
As for me, I’d want to see a portfolio that tells me they try new things, can go out of the box and if needed will also do old school stuff.
Contact information is important to include in every correspondence. I tend to skip on that after the first email. But you’re right. Let’s not make the buyer work to contact us. Our email/phone/IM should be on their tips.
.-= Samar´s last blog ..How to be interesting: Your opinion wanted =-.
I really like vlogs and this is the reason: I don’t read fast and it breaks up all the reading I need to be doing. I do enjoy it when a video is included with text as well.
I have wanted to start vlogging but I don’t have the equipment to do it! Even though I haven’t started myself I do like a good mixture of blogging and vlogging!
.-= Danielle´s last blog ..CBC with Melitsa: How does Mom Giveaways Work =-.
Thank you for this post. I had been wanting to start a writing portfolio but did not know where to begin, what to include, etc. Is there a company out there that does this for you?
@Patrick: Diversity is definitely a key factor, not only within the portfolio itself, but in comparison to what else is out on the market.
@Samar: You’d be surprised how much people miss. In this case, repetition is a good thing. Much better to include that contact info each and every time than have the client scratching his head wondering where he saw it last.
@Danielle: Oops! I think you commented in the wrong topic
@Ana: I’m not sure if there are or not. I would think that a career counselor might be able to help you refine the portfolio, or if you’re still in school (and even if you’re not) seeking out a teacher, or another professional who’s been there and knows what to look for could help too. Friends and family really aren’t all that reliable, unless you know you can get an unbiased, no punches pulled, critique.
for designers, a portfolio is a must-must but what about copy writing when you have been doing stuff (academic papers, plans, proposals, and all of the stuff that you can’t flaunt on your own site)… How would you handle this? since i have been pondering over it …
.-= write a writing´s last blog ..BUSINESS WRITING =-.
@Gjergji: one way to avoid losing your portfolio is to have a copy of it made specifically for disc. It’s always good to have a physical backup of your work regardless of what that work is – whether it’s your portfolio or day to day projects.
With today’s technology you can recreate a website on a disc, usually a DVD, using Flash for interactivity.
@Rock: The best way to do it is to remove the earliest pieces and replace them with the most recent. So, if you want to add A, you go to the end of the list and remove Z. Just like with a resume where you use only the most recent jobs at the top and start subtracting the oldest jobs from the bottom.
If you have older pieces that you’re particularly proud of, start a new portfolio with a “best of” or like we did, with a “More” section.
Since I do both copywriting and journalistic writing, I maintain separate online portfolios for both of those areas (and both of those are broken out further into narrower categories). Though clients can easily find the other portfolio, I send them directly to the URL that is most relevant to their project.
One of the hurdles I’ve run into is that as a freelancer, I’m not usually privvy to stats like page views or sales figures. In fact, this is going to sound silly, but I’m convinced some of my clients don’t even know themselves! So it’s hard to quantify what impact my email campaign or web page had on their business. (I know, it’s easy to quantify an email campaign but many clients simply don’t take the time.) Some of them might be reluctant to share this information with a freelancer, since I’m basically an outsider to them and could be writing for the competition now or in the future. Any ideas?
PS Not sure when you added Twitter IDs to the comments section (or if I’ve missed it all along), but I’m digging that addition!
.-= Susan Johnston´s last blog ..Guest Post: 5 Ways That Your Day Job Can Help Your Writing =-.
Great way to make a portfolio!!
Thanks for sharing.
Nice post!
Although I must say this is pretty much basic stuff in creating a portfolio. Why would anyone not want to include there best works in their portfolio? Updating it regularly is also a must as the trends change on a regular basis. But you must also keep those old designs just in case you find a prospect that wants a “classic” look.
Change is good, or at least that is what they pound into our heads at work more often than not!
Regards,
Lauren
.-= Lauren Reagan´s last blog ..Another King Has Fallen =-.