A beginner’s guide to building a freelance portfolio

Your freelance portfolio is the most crucial marketing tool you have as a freelancer.

But if you’re a beginner freelancer, you can run into the dreaded Job Seeker’s Paradox: You need experience to get experience.

Luckily, you can get around that — and I’m going to show you how.

• How to make a freelance portfolio clients love
  • Step 1: Create a website
  • Step 2: Give us your niche
  • Step 3: Show your work
  • Step 4: Call to action
  • Step 5: Include testimonials
• 6 freelance portfolio examples that get clients
  • The B2B tech writer
  • The quirky graphic designer
  • The versatile videographer
  • The front-end developer
  • The expert tap dancer
  • The band leader
• Earn more money with your hustle

How to make a freelance portfolio clients love

With just a few hours of work, you’re going to have a freelance portfolio like the ones that earn some of our readers thousands of dollars each month.

But freelance portfolios are like snowflakes: No two are alike. A copywriter’s portfolio won’t look like a graphic designer’s (and vice versa).

BUT there are underlying systems and principles that go into making a good portfolio for any industry. After all, you’re building your portfolio to cater to a specific audience of potential clients. That applies to any field.

Follow these basic principles and you’ll have a freelance portfolio that’ll bag you clients.

Step 1: Create a website

To create one, you just need two things: A domain name and a website builder.

Domain name

There are many sites out there where you can purchase a domain name. My suggestion: Hover. It has an easy to use interface and provides many affordable domain names.

A perfect domain for handsome content marketers.

Just use your regular name for your domain. Later as you get more clients and worry more about your brand, you can revisit your domain name. But for now, your regular name will do.

Here are a few other great options for domain registrars:

• Google Domains. No-nonsense, easy to use domain registrar. Prices starting at $12 / year for a .com.
• Namecheap. Domains as cheap as their domain suggests — with some as low as $0.88/year. A .com will run you about $12 / year.
• GoDaddy. A tried-and-true domain registrar. A typical .com there runs for around $12 / year.

Website builder

Thanks to website builders, you don’t need to know a bunch of coding knowledge to create your portfolio.

Though the builder you go with might depend on your goals, I suggest WordPress. It’s an incredibly powerful website platform that allows for a lot of customization.

A few other great website builders:

• Wix. Easy to use with a lot of customizable features for your website.
• Squarespace. Good for showcasing images and graphics. Highly customizable.
• Weebly. A ton of great site designs to showcase your portfolio.

For more on creating a website, be sure to check out this article on the topic from our sister site GrowthLab. Once you’re done creating it, it’s time to move on to the next step.

Step 2: Give us your niche

Your portfolio is your opportunity to showcase to the world the type of freelancer you want to be even if you don’t necessarily have experience.

Let’s say you work a regular 9-to-5 job but dream of becoming a freelance writer one day. Your freelance portfolio website should be dedicated to all the work you do as a writer.

Great start. But then you need to niche down your market.

If you want to be a writer, ask yourself: How do I want to position myself as a writer? Copywriter? Content marketer? Blogger? And who are you writing for?

Niche down your specialty and include it on your website. Think about who exactly will be using your services:

• How old are they?
• Where do they live?
• What are their interests?
• How much do they make?
• What books do they read?

Here are a few examples:

• The web designer for pediatric dentists
• The videographer for weddings
• The caricature artist for business conventions
• The content writer for personal finance and development authors

(Hmm that last one seems familiar…)

And don’t worry. If you try something out and don’t find it’s a good fit for you (or your wallet), you can always change your roles. That’s the beauty of freelancing.

Case study: How Brian turned his video hobby into a business 

Brian loved to make films — so much so that he enrolled in film school. But halfway through he realized he didn’t have a clue on how to turn his passion into a profitable business.

He understood the technical and artistic side of filmmaking, but he didn’t know how to sell his skills.

So he decided to invest in himself by joining Earn1K, our course on freelancing and earning money on the side.

Within three weeks, Brian knew how to turn his hobby into a marketable business: Producing high-end wedding videos. Armed with this knowledge, he set two goals for himself:

1. Book three weddings and have one of them be from a couple he didn’t know.
2. Earn enough to pay for a new camera (about $1,200).

“At the beginning, I was pretty much giving the videos away,” he recalls. “One was free. A couple were $450. By the end of the first season, clients were paying $1,000 for each video. I saw that I was giving people valuable material. They weren’t paying just to help me out. That meant a lot. They really wanted what I was offering.”

He was able to book six clients within a few months. Three of them were people he didn’t know!

With each wedding he filmed, he gained a better sense of how many weddings he needed to book in order to turn a profit and how he could better market his hustle.

“Nobody else is a full-time wedding videographer in my area,” he says. “There’s some people doing commercial and real estate video. But for now I’m sticking with weddings and doing it better than anyone else. My clients appreciate that, and it makes it simpler for me.”

Lesson learned:

Brian niched down his passion of filmmaking into a marketable product of filming high-end wedding videos. By doing so, he turned his hobby into a side hustle earning him thousands of dollars each month.

Once you do the same with your hustle and freelance portfolio, it’s time to actually put samples of your work online for prospective clients to see.

Step 3: Show your work (even if you don’t have any)

This is the core of your portfolio. It’s your opportunity to show potential clients why you’re the right freelancer to hire through work you’ve already done.

Here’s where a beginner freelancer will run into the Job Seeker’s Paradox. Where are you going to find examples of your work to get clients if you’ve never had any work?

Here are two areas I suggest going to in order to find samples for your portfolio:

Create new work for yourself.

Maybe you’re transitioning to a new line of work. Maybe you’re just starting your freelance career from scratch. There’s no reason you can’t create new or mock clips to showcase your skills.

That’s exactly what one of our students, Heidi, did when she crafted a fashion design portfolio that helped her break into the industry.

“I got my start in the industry because I had Adobe Illustrator on my resume along with the portfolio I created,” she says. “I finally felt like my dreams had come true. I could say the words I’ve wanted to say since I was a little girl, ‘I’m a fashion designer.’”

You can do the same for your industry. For example, if you’re a copywriter looking to land nonprofit clients, you might create a 700-word donation email to show your skills.

Really gunning to write for finance blogs? Write a few blog posts based on financial news.

Or maybe you’re a graphic designer looking for big name commercial clients. You might create a flashy ad for Coca-Cola or Nike. In fact, there’s a whole community of people who create unsolicited redesigns for just this purpose.

Having work to show at all is much more important than whether or not they come from a job with an actual client.

Do free client work. 

Now it’s an oft-touted rule that if you’re good at something, you never do it for free. I’m here to say forget that rule. 

Instead, reframe: It’s totally fine to work for free if you’re working for the right people.

The most important thing for you at the beginning stages of your freelance career is for you to build relationships with clients who can open the door to more opportunities. That means you can work for free with people who are trusted and highly networked in exchange for glowing testimonials or referrals to new clients.

For more on this, check out our article on the topic.

The work you show is the work you will get. If you want to do email marketing, showcase stellar emails you’ve written. If you want to develop apps, link to the apps and software you’ve created.

Now it’s time to let people know how to find you.

Step 4: Craft a call to action

Your portfolio should always include a place for potential clients to contact you via a call to action. This can be on a separate contact page or something as simple as including your name and email address at the top of the portfolio.

Don’t overthink this. Here’s a simple template you can use:

If you like what you see here, I’d love to work with you. Reach out to me at tony@tonysfreelancingbiz.fake with your inquiry and I’ll get back to you soon.

Other things you can include in your contact CTA:

• Name
• Location
• Social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, FB, etc.)
• Phone number
• Address

A good example of this below:

Source: Rick McClelland

Many website builders such as WordPress and Squarespace include extensions that allow you to create your own contact page that’ll redirect to your email.

The most important thing is to include your CTA somewhere the client can easily find it. Don’t bury it amongst your clips and sample. Just put it at the top of the page or sidebar and you’re golden.

Step 5: Include testimonials

This is a completely optional step as your work can speak for itself — however, having a positive testimonial on your portfolio can give you the social proof you need to get new clients.

A testimonial is a review from previous clients and people you’ve worked with endorsing your work. Think of them like the praise you see from other authors on a book cover. And just like your work samples, feature testimonials from the kinds of clients you want again in the future.

If you don’t have any testimonials yet, that’s okay! Here’s an actual email we used at IWT to get a testimonial:

Subj: Can I quote you for my site?

Hey dude,

Thrilled to hear you’re doing so well with the company and the new direction.

I was wondering if you could give me a quote that I can use on my website – something like:

“Ramit completely changed the direction of our business. He re-focused our attention on our users, helped us figure out several lucrative marketing channels, and ripped apart an idea that would have wasted 6 months of our time. His advice will be worth well over $100,000 — and that was just over one dinner.”

-Mike Jones, Acme Corp

Is that cool?

Thanks,

-Ramit

A few things to note:

• Direct. This email is simple and gets to the point. Don’t bog busy people down with things that don’t matter. Keep focused on what you’re asking them for (note the subject line).
• Friendly. While the message is focused, it’s friendly. Remember, you’re talking to another person here. That’s why Ramit opened with “Hey dude.” Should you use the same wording? Hell no. But you should keep it casual.
• Easy. Ramit made this easy for the person to say yes by including a pre-written testimonial in the email. All they have to do is give the thumbs up. This improves the chances of them responding positively.

While not 100% necessary, a good testimonial can be a very powerful game changer for getting clients.

For more information on getting testimonials, check out GrowthLab’s video on the topic below.

6 fantastic freelance portfolio examples

Now that you know how to make a great freelance portfolio, it’s time to take a look at some GREAT ones.

Below are six examples of freelance portfolios from IWT readers. Notice that a few of them bend and break the steps we outlined — which is okay! Not all of the elements we talked about above are going to apply to everyone.

The B2B tech writer

WHO: Nick Darlington

WHAT: Copywriter

WHERE: http://www.nickdarlington.com/portfolio/

This is a great example of a portfolio that clearly showcases a niche. Nick is a writer for B2B publications and that’s shown through his clips and “About” page. It can be tough for writers to provide visuals for their portfolio — but Nick is able to get around that by showcasing the magazine covers that have featured him.

The quirky graphic designer

WHO: Greg Wilson

WHAT: Commercial graphic designer

WHERE: http://greggregwilson.com/

This graphic design portfolio works exceptionally well by leaning heavily on the visuals that reflect Greg’s quirky, off-beat style. Within just a few seconds of scrolling, you know exactly the kind of work and style he produces — which is a great thing for prospective clients.

The versatile videographer

WHO: Rick McClelland

WHAT: News and wedding videographer

WHERE: http://www.rickmcclelland.com/

Rick does something wonderful in his portfolio: He leads with the goods. The first thing you see when you hop into his portfolio is a demo reel of different video shoots he’s done. That’s exactly what you want when you’re a potential client looking for a good videographer. He also ends the page with a great call-to-action for people to contact him.

The front-end developer

WHO: Adam Rasheed

WHAT: Front-end development

WHERE: https://adamrasheed.com/

Great portfolio that tells you exactly what the freelancer does up top: Adam is a front-end developer based in San Diego. And it goes on to provide case studies of different projects he’s worked on and ends strong with a call-to-action with different ways you can contact him.

The expert tap dancer

WHO: Andrew Nemr

WHAT: Tap dancer

WHERE: http://andrewnemr.com/artist/portfolio/

Who says only writers, designers, and developers can be freelancers? Here’s a great example of how the principles for a good portfolio can apply to tap dancing. Andrew showcases his skills by providing links to different videos and performances he’s done. Also, his website is very simple and straightforward.

The marching band leader

WHO: Greg Dalton

WHAT: Marching band drill designer

WHERE: http://www.gregdaltondesign.com/

Much like our tap dancer, Greg takes the principles for creating a great portfolio and uses them for his off-beat hustle — designing drills for marching bands. By providing YouTube videos to his drills on one page, prospective clients can easily get a sense of the work he produces. Simple, straightforward, and effective.

Earn more money with your hustle

A good portfolio is an essential tool for any freelancer … but it doesn’t stop there. You still need to find clients and work.

After all, without work, your online freelance portfolio is just a glorified business card. So to help you find your first clients, we have a gift for you: The Ultimate Guide to Making Money.

In it, we’ve also included our best strategies to:

• Create multiple income streams so you always have a consistent source of revenue
• Start your own business and escape the 9-to-5 for good
• Increase your income by thousands of dollars a year through side hustles like freelancing

Download a FREE copy of the Ultimate Guide today by entering your name and email below — and jumpstart your hustle today.

A beginner’s guide to building a freelance portfolio is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

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