HOW TO BUILD AN ONLINE PORTFOLIO TO LAND MORE CLIENTS
(For Freelancers, Creatives, Job Seekers, Remote Workers, etc.)
Hi there. How have you been? It’s been a minute.
I trust you have been making good progress on your freelancing journey. I’m here again to share with you insights on freelancing and remote work.
Whether you are a freelancer or looking to get hired by a company, an online portfolio is an effective way to showcase your best work and highlight your personality.
There are dozens of online portfolio platforms/builders to choose from. In this blog, I’ll tell you what you need to know about building your portfolio.
I’ll also outline some of the best practices to help your portfolio stand out, including promoting your work through social media and SEO so you can grow your traffic and get found in Google searches.
Let us dive in.
What’s a Portfolio?
Good question. Many of you are already familiar with the term ‘portfolio’ but for the sake of those who are new, I will explain.
Your online portfolio is simply your proof of work. It’s where people can track your progress over the years. It’s a projection that shows both your previous and present projects. You can also call it samples, previous works, and so on. All are the same.
Here’s a tweet I made some months ago that captures how you can easily build an online portfolio.
I will discuss more on this as we move on.
Now, what’s the best way to build a portfolio?
This is a question I get asked every time. And my answer remains the same.
The best way to build a portfolio is to be your own first client. Work on what I call, ‘self-initiated’ projects.
The best way to build a portfolio is to be your own first client. Work on self initiated projects.
If you’re someone with no portfolio or reputation, doing your first project or two for free can certainly set you up for long-term success. It can help build a portfolio, land your first few testimonials, and give you experience working with others.
When you think to yourself, “I can’t build a portfolio until I get my first client”, that’s only your brain tricking you to procrastinate. Don’t do that. Instead, show what you can do via self-initiated projects to instill confidence in your ability.
Why is a portfolio that important? Here’s why:
◉ It’s professional.
◉ It projects authority.
◉ It establishes credibility.
And, most importantly, you control every aspect of what prospective clients will see and experience as they navigate your portfolio. Cool, right?
Here’s one of my favorite tweets on this subject:
There’s no rule that says your portfolio can only contain examples of completed projects. An author can write a single chapter of a manuscript and use it to get an entire book deal! You can do the same with your portfolio.
The Best Website Builders
Now that we’ve looked at the best way to build your portfolio, let’s look at website builders. Website builders help you create your portfolio website fast and easily. Here is a list of portfolio builders you can start with:
🔹Squarespace
🔸Weebly
🔹Wix
🔸Duda
🔹GoDaddy
🔸Strikingly
🔸Jimdo
🔹SITE123
🔸SiteBuilder
🔹Zyro
7 Steps to Build an Online Portfolio as a Freelancer
Here’s an Overview of How You Can Build an Online Portfolio in 7 Steps:
🔹Step 1: Choose the Right Website Platform
🔸Step 2: Include Crisp Descriptions
🔹Step 3: Showcase your personality.
🔸Step 4: Slideshows and Other Formats
🔹Step 5: Provide Testimonials and Reviews
🔸Step 6: Get Found
🔹Step 7: Use Good SEO
Let’s take each step one at a time.
1. Choose the Right Website Platform
How do you create an impressive online portfolio? If you’re not a programmer, you’ll want to start with a site builder.
For example, site builders come with professionally designed layouts and functionality built in. They make it easy to set up and launch a website and you have a large number of designs to choose from.
Also, as of last year (2021), more than 455 million sites use WordPress, so it’s a great place to start. Note: Wordpress.com is not the same as Wordpress.org. Wordpress.org is the organization that develops WordPress software.
WordPress.com is their commercial service that provides hosting, website assistance, and everything you need to launch a website. With WordPress.com, you can choose from dozens of themes, edit, upload or embed media files, and so much more.
Squarespace is similar to WordPress, in that it is a template-based site builder. You start with your choice of template and then use the intuitive editor to customize it.
They even have multiple templates for portfolios, but since Squarespace is so oriented to sophisticated design and visual display, many of their other templates can easily be re-purposed to serve as a portfolio.
Why is a portfolio that important? It’s professional, it projects authority and it establishes credibility.
Wix is the most straightforward tool on this list. If you are overwhelmed by the tech side of things, Wix is likely your best shot. They offer a wide range of professionally designed templates, including more than 20 specifically built for portfolios.
Here are free online portfolio websites to create online portfolios:
🔹Behance (https://behance.net)
🔸Dribbble (https://dribbble.com)
🔹Pixpa (https://www.pixpa.com/?refcode=mockplus )
🔸Coroflot (https://www.coroflot.com/discover)
🔹Adobe Portfolio (https://portfolio.adobe.com/)
🔸Carbonmade (https://carbonmade.com/)
🔹Cargo Collective (http://cargocollective.com)
🔸Crevado (https://crevado.com/)
🔹Portfoliobox (https://www.portfoliobox.net/)
🔸Portfoliopen (http://www.portfoliopen.com/)
🔹Techtinium (https://techtinium.com/)
🔸Flicker (https://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/flicker/)
🔹Wix (https://www.wix.com/)
🔸Weebly (https://www.weebly.com/?lang=en)
🔹Journoportfolio (https://www.journoportfolio.com/)
🔸Format (https://www.format.com)
🔹Folio HD (https://foliohd.com/)
🔸Jimdo (https://www.jimdo.com/)
🔹YouPic (https://youpic.com/)
🔸Canva Portfolio Maker (https://www.canva.com/create/portfolios/)
🔹Medium (https://medium.com)
🔸Notion (https://www.notion.so)
Once you’ve chosen your platform, now it is time to build your site and show off your best work. The first step is to objectively evaluate your work and choose the pieces you want to include.
Aim to highlight the range of your skills, don’t only include one specific method or style of work. If necessary, create categories or pages for different types of work.
2. Include Crisp Descriptions
Once you have decided which pieces to include, it is time to write a description of each piece. Take the time to think about what you want a client or prospective employer to know about each item.
The length of your description is going to vary based on the template you use in your industry, but aim to keep it under 50 words. Use an app like Hemmingway or Grammarly to make sure you aren’t overly wordy.
3. Showcase your personality.
Remember, they aren’t just hiring a robot to complete a task, they are hiring a real person; so let them get to know you. One way to do that is by adding some images of you at work in your environment.
Another way you can let your personality shine through your portfolio is by storytelling. Tell a good story about your services; where you are, where you’ve been, and some of your defining moments in your journey.
Take your time to explain the process you went through to execute some specific projects. Share the difficulties you encountered in the process and the solutions you provided to handle them.
Potential clients will trust freelancers who don’t just talk about what they can do but explain what they have done and the results they achieved.
4. Slideshows and Other Formats
Consider using a variety of visual formats such as:
🔹Slideshows
🔸Videos
🔹Timelapse
🔸GIFs
🔹Stop animation
Apps for producing a variety of visual displays include:
🔸RenderForest for videos (https://www.renderforest.com/)
🔹Layout from Instagram (https://about.instagram.com/)
🔸PicMonkey for photo collages (https://www.picmonkey.com/)
5. Provide Testimonials and Reviews
Social proof is the idea that people are more likely to buy or do something if others have expressed satisfaction.
For example, when you shop on Amazon, you will likely look to the reviews before making a purchase, right?
The same strategy can work on your portfolio site. Testimonials and reviews provide social proof. They show potential clients that other people trust and love your work.
Don’t have any reviews? Email past clients and ask for a few words about what they liked about your work. And, implement a process to ask every client for a review after you finish a project.
6. Get Found (on Social Media)
You’ve built your site, you’ve uploaded examples of your fantastic work, now what? Well, now you need to make sure people actually find your new portfolio site. It might be easier than you think.
One way to do that is to share your work on social media. I know this might make some of you uncomfortable but social media is your friend when it comes to people finding your portfolio.
If we want to make it easy for clients to find us, then learn to share your portfolio on your social media pages. You may want to pick 1 or 2 platforms as your professional social media handles, that’s fine. As long as it’s a platform you are active on, where people can easily find you when they search and where your clients are.
Whether it’s LinkedIn, or Twitter on any other platform, sharing your work projects you as an authority and connects you to your fellow freelancers to learn from and clients to provide your services to.
Make it easy for people to discover you by sharing your works on your social media platforms.
There’s also another way to get found which would be my final point.
7. Use Good SEO
SEO (search engine optimization) is, as you may know, a strategy designed to help sites perform well in search engines and show up when users search for related key terms.
Google uses more than 200 factors to determine which sites make it to the top, but the top three are content, metadata, and site performance (how fast your site loads, among other things.)
No matter what platform you use, make sure to make the most out of their SEO features. For example, be sure to fill out your title tag and meta description. These are the headline and descriptions that show up in search results, so use that space to draw people in.
Here are helpful SEO guides for some platforms I discovered:
Your SEO Checklist by SquareSpace:
https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002090267-SEO-checklist
Search Engines and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) by WordPress:
https://wordpress.com/support/seo/
Finally?
Keep updating your portfolio.
As you search for more opportunities in your freelancing career, chances are you will have gained experience with several projects which would have given you some confidence in your capacity.
Keep updating your portfolio so you don’t short-change yourself as you make progress.
After reading this blog, you might decide whether or not your portfolio needs a revamp. If it does, go attend to it right away.
If you are confused about which portfolio builder to use, feel free to ask your freelancer friends who offer similar services as you.
Remember, it’s not about how many portfolios you use, it’s about using the right one that suits your needs and showcases your projects in a unique way.
Apply all you learned in today’s blog.
See you next time.
In our next blog, I’ll be sharing more helpful tips on freelancing, digital skills, and remote work.
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Do you have any questions about freelancing? Send that in the comments too.
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