2 Steps to Build a Writing Portfolio With No Experience

You want to get hired as a writer? You need a portfolio. And therein lies the problem for many new or advancing writers…

If you want to break into a career — or even a side hustle — in writing, you’re going to need a portfolio.

Whether you’re looking for work as a freelancer or full-time writer, you need samples to show that you can, well, write.

Writing as a profession is somewhat unique in that it’s one of the few jobs that you have to repeatedly prove you can do what you say you can each time you apply for a new role.

You can never just say, “I have X years of experience as a writer.”

You need samples to back it up.

But, for those making a career change, or writers freshly out of college, making a writing portfolio is tricky.

In many cases, you might not have any writing samples to use in a portfolio.

In worse cases, you might only have bad samples.

Notice I said that was worse. Do not include bad samples (i.e. examples of your writing with typos, grammatical mistakes, etc.) in your writing portfolio.