Author: Christopher Jan Benitez

Freelance writing portfolios can be incredibly instrumental in developing your freelance career and landing more clients. Besides being fascinatingly simple to setup in just a few steps, portfolio websites are the ideal platform for you to showcase your skills with an added bout of personality and flare.

If you haven’t already taken action to start your portfolio website, definitely explore the option. Not only do portfolio websites position you as a well-rounded freelancer who takes work seriously, but they also help step up your freelance marketing game. Also, once you get your website going, it just might land you some new gigs, and some steady income. Plus (best part), any revenue you generate from your website is all yours… no need to share any fees with a freelance job site. Awesome, right?

So, let’s quit the banter and dive right into the juicy stuff. You have your website platform (hosting, domain name, Content Management System, and the like). Besides the obvious sample work for your portfolio…

1. Testimonials

Testimonials are a no-brainer absolute “must have” for your portfolio site. Scatter a few across your site, sure, but don’t forget to create a page dedicated purely to testimonials!

Displaying testimonials is a non-salesy, completely classy way to eliminate potential skepticism your prospective clients may have, and they could plant the seeds for a trusting working relationship.

Testimonials help to paint a positive picture of who you are and the service you provide. The better testimonials, the greater the chance you’ll land some new clients. If you don’t have testimonials yet, make an effort to start gathering some. Asking for testimonials should be a component of your freelance workflow.

What to include in your testimonials?

Ideally, your testimonials will include the following:

1. A picture of the person who wrote the review. Photos bring your testimonials to life. When there’s a face behind the words, your testimonial will carry more weight and your potential client will likely resonate with you more.
2. A link to the client website or a method to reach out to the person who wrote the review. Think back to high school or college when you had to provide letters of recommendation. Those recommendations never came without a phone number or an email address to reach out to the recommender. Without a method of contact, how will anyone trust your testimonials are legitimate? The client website or email will suffice and add a layer of legitimacy to your testimonials.
3. Two to three sentences of positive words regarding your success. This is a bit of a no-brainer, but I’ll emphasize here that there’s no need for your testimonials to be so long. A few sentences raving about you and your services will be more than enough. Plus, people skim rather than read. Skimming a few sentences is much easier than skimming an essay. Sometimes less is more.

Here is an excellent example of the ideal testimonial page from Innovative Ink, the freelance website for Elna Cain. See how she includes a picture, a link, and very brief testimonials? She’s covered all her bases.

How to display your testimonials

There are simple ways to show your testimonials.

1. For example, you could take pictures of LinkedIn testimonials

This is a legitimate way to display testimonials. In fact, it’s surprisingly more widespread than you’d think.

2. You could also use the functionality built into your WordPress theme. Some themes have testimonials modules available. Divi theme is a great example. If your theme doesn’t have testimonial feature available, you can combine text modules and image modules to create your vision.

3. Not all WordPress themes have built-in testimonial feature, however. So, if you’re looking for something a bit more “snazzy” and natively built for testimonials, take a look at some plugins.

Here are just a few options for you:

Easy Testimonials (FREE):

This plugin allows you to publish testimonials on a page or a sidebar using shortcodes. It’s incredibly intuitive to use, and you’ll even enjoy some customization capabilities.

Testimonial (FREE)

You’ll be able to enjoy drag and drop testimonial building with this plugin, in addition to a decent amount of design customizations. This plugin offers a fully responsive way to manage and display your client reviews.

Testimonials WordPress Plugin – $18 (NOT FREE)

This plugin lets you display testimonials with star ratings. There’s even a slideshow feature available, along with the option to choose between a list or grid layout.

2. Client Showcase (if possible)

Displaying your clients on your site further helps to solidify the idea of you as a legitimate freelancer with experience in your niche, whatever that might be. Extra brownie points if you showcase well-known clients on your site, too!

Though, let me be clear, you should never showcase your clients without explicit permission to use their name and/or their logo. To cover all your bases, it’s recommended that you have written consent from your clients indicating their permission. Sometimes freelancers include this consent as a clause within their contracts. Others simply have copies of email exchanges that indicate a client’s written consent. Whichever way you do it, just make sure you’re covered and have the permission to be showcasing your client to your website traffic. Oh, and by the way, always, always, always consult with your lawyer!

Once you’ve secured the necessary permission from your clients, you’ll want to decide how best to display your client base on your website. Since website visitors notoriously skim through web pages rather than reading them, it’s often best to show your clients through logos on your site.

Logos can be featured on your site using whatever functionality is already provided within your theme framework. As always, though, plugins expand the capabilities of your site and allow you to do some cool things. I’m a fan of these logo WordPress plugins that will allow you to showcase your clients in a clean and super professional manner.

Here is a great example:

Plugin Name: Logo Slider

This plugin will work across all devices, and it’s fully responsive. You’ll be able to display this slider using a simple shortcode anywhere on your site.

Here are some examples of what the free version of this plugin looks like.

How to get around showcasing your clients when you don’t have permission

Just because you don’t have an established clientele or authorization to showcase your clientele doesn’t mean you can’t creatively boost your reputation to your website readership. It just means it’s time to get creative!

Whatever your freelance niche may be, try and figure out a way to “woo” the people that land on your site. Think about things that might impress them. If you’re a freelance blogger, perhaps try and get published on some major “name brand” blogging websites. Then, display the logo for those blogs on your portfolio website. If your prospective clients are checking out their site to see if you’d be a good fit for their team, chances are they’ll be impressed that you’re a “published” blogger on some reputable platforms.

Check out some great examples of awesome bloggers who’ve featured their work:

Emily from My Adaptable Career:

Jorden Roper from cutthroatcopy.com

If you’re interested in taking this approach, you can still use a logo slider plugin! Two birds with one stone.

3. An Active Blog

You’d be doing yourself a disservice if you didn’t actively blog on your freelance niche within your site.

Why? Let’s start with these reasons…

1. Blogging about your niche shows that you’re actively engaged with your freelance niche.
2. Blogging on topics related to your freelance niche suggests that you have knowledge and authority to speak on those topics
3. Blogging shows that you have a vested interest in your work. You care about it enough to blog about it on your own time.
4. Producing blog content on topics related to your niche will help increase your rankings on Google. Thus the more you blog, the greater the likelihood that your potential clients will find you when searching on the search engines.
5. Blogging is an excellent social media marketing strategy that could help grow your following and increase your market share.

If you’re aiming to target a specific niche audience, try to write blogs that you believe your potential clients will want to read and will resonate with.

Yes, blogging takes times and energy, but the rewards are limitless.

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4. An About Page with True Personality

Your about page shouldn’t just be your average run of the mill page that describes your credentials. Your prospective clients visit your about page because they want to get a sense for who you are as a person, not just the bullets on your resume. Don’t make standard about page mistakes and forget to use your voice and share a bit of who you are.

Try to remember that about pages don’t need to be stiff. Include a picture of yourself if you’re not feeling too camera shy, and don’t be afraid to talk about who you are when you’re not at work. Amber Weinberg, a freelancer web developer, has a very simple about page where she includes information about her professional life, a picture of herself, and some information on who she is when the computer is closed, and she’s not hard at work.

5. Calls To Action

Last, but certainly not least, you’ll need some clear calls to action (CTAs) on your site. Your goal for your website is to get your prospective clients to perform the “action” you’re “calling” on them to perform. For example, your CTA might be a simple contact form on your contact page, or perhaps a subscription to your newsletter. Whatever your CTA is, be sure it’s clear, loud, easy to use, but not too “spammy.”

The Contact Page – A “Must Have” CTA on every site

You should aim to have your contact information visible on every page on your site, if possible. At the very least, ensure that your contact page is a top-level menu item so that no one needs to go hunting for a way to reach you.

Your contact page should include multiple means of reaching you.

Include the following:

• Contact form (Contact Form 7 is a great plugin for WordPress websites)
• Social network follow buttons
• Phone number (optional)
• Address (optional)
• Email address (Some people hate contact forms and much prefer to see an email address where they can send you a message directly)

If you’re not interested in sharing your email address as is (ex: you@yourdomain.com) because you don’t want to be spammed by robots, spell out your email address (ex: my email is: you [at] yourdomain [dot] com.

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Concluding Thoughts

The success of your freelance portfolio website will mainly be attributed to the amount of energy and effort you put into it. What you give is what you get, as they say.

Though, wherever you are in your freelance career, make sure you’ve at least dotted your I’s and crossed your t’s. Creating a freelance portfolio website and including these 5 “must have” elements will get you headed in the right direction. From there, who knows where you’ll go? Your portfolio website could very well be the start of something entirely new! And… most important word of advice… don’t forget to have a little bit of fun with it, too.

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About the Author

Eden Fried is a freelance web designer and blogger. When she’s not at work developing her website or helping other people launch theirs, you can find her at the gym tossing around some weights or snuggled up with a good book. Follow Eden on Twitter, connect on LinkedIn, or reach Eden directly on EdenFried.com, where she blogs about life,

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It is hard to make a living as a freelance writer.

To make good money as a hired gun, I believe to achieve the following:

• build a reputation as an excellent writer
• find ways to be found by your potential clients
• turning clients into returning ones

Just by missing any of the points above, you will find it much, much difficult to maintain a career as a freelance writer.

Luckily for me, with hard work, perseverance, and lots of luck, I was able to teach myself how I became a freelance writer.

In my case, I started earning $1000/month in December 2014.

I started taking freelance writing seriously in July 2014. From that 5-month period, I was able to set up the three pillars of what I feel successful freelance writing is built on.

But before I dwell on the success, I would like to share why I became a freelance writer.

The Journey from Failure

Before starting a freelance writing career, I worked as a virtual assistant for a Canadian client made up of two people. We began a professional relationship in 2012 when I used to work for them part-time to supplement my full-time earnings.

It only took a year later for me to decide that I should work for them at home full-time since the pay was good and the tasks were up my alley. I managed the entire digital marketing campaign of the client, from developing and executing a content strategy to running lead generation campaign to hike up her sales.

One of the pitfalls of freelancing is how you will manage when the client is unable to supply you the salary you are used to getting. Unless you have built up your funds for the rainy day, you will find yourself scrambling for sources of income to keep up with your lifestyle and expenses.

My rainy day came around June of 2014 when my client was no longer able to pay me the amount we discussed before hiring me. It was a straight punch to the gut as I was banking on my work for them to sustain my finances for the family.

While I did not hold any grudge against them, I was left disillusioned by the incident. They were my only client, and I did not have anything going for me outside the work they give me.

So I decided to start back to square one.

Instead of expecting the same fixed amount every month, I had to make do with $5 payouts from then-oDesk and Fiverr writing articles.

During this period, I had to work twice as hard and long to receive around half of what I was used to getting. I was also working alone and did not have colleagues whom I can share my experiences.

I also considered working again in an office full-time out of necessity. However, I was not able to get accepted for the positions I wanted, and other opportunities were hours away from where I lived.

It was a necessary obstacle that I had to go overcome professionally.What made it worse was that my wife and I were expecting our first child in September that year. Without having saved enough money, I had to get help from my parents, which is something I have been trying to avoid.I want to do it on my own

What made it worse was that my wife and I were expecting our first child in September that year. Without having saved enough money, I had to get help from my parents, which is something I have been trying to avoid.I want to do it on my own

While I have been fortunately enough to have a great support system, I think everybody would agree that they want to take matters into their hands. I want to become independent of my parents and start living a life that I could call mine.

Unfortunately, I was not able to do that at that time.

So I decided to ramp up my efforts on getting more clients by pulling every trick out of my bag. I built better landing pages on my site, wrote content with the purpose of attracting customers, and applied to job posting sites, to name a few.

Doing all these came at the expense of getting the usual $5 writing gigs, so it was a calculated risk on my part. If my strategy of getting clients does not pan out, I will not be earning as much as I wanted that month and all my efforts are in vain.

With sheer luck, I finally got a better paying writing gig from the ProBlogger Jobs board and an email from my contact page.

And for some strange reason, it snowballed to more opportunities for different clients.

As the year came to a close, I was pretty sure that working as a freelance writer is what I was meant to do.

And it showed in 2015.

And things are looking up even better this year.

I do not wish to gloat my earnings. But if you think freelance writing — or freelancing in general — does not work, this is proof that it does!

Okay, so how did I do it?

As mentioned, there are three factors that I believe lay the foundation to a fruitful and sustainable freelance writing career:

1. Guest posting

This tactic is the best and fastest way to build your reputation as a good writer.

By writing for different online publications, you can showcase your writing to a different audience than where you usually write.

If they like your writing, they will go to your site and read more. If they are potential clients, they will contact you for a job opportunity.

The important thing to remember here is always to find sites where you can write for to grow your audience and attract leads that you can turn into clients later.

I have covered guest blogging brief in this post to give you an idea on how you can proceed with your guest blogging strategy.

Granted, writing for different sites may not get you paid. Think of this strategy as an investment to help you attract more clients to your writing services.

2. Inbound marketing

You need to stick your neck out to be found by your audience. Your products and services won’t sell themselves — you need to make an effort to be seen by people to make a sale.

Old school marketing encourages you to go out there, talk to people, and pitch to them about your services.

While that is a tactic that works for some, that was not my approach when promoting my freelance writing services.

I always believe that, if people wanted to know more about you, they would find a way to make that happen.

This is the principle behind inbound marketing, the philosophy behind HubSpot’s methodology.

Instead of you going out of your way telling people why they should buy from you, you want them to go to you.

This is part of what guest blogging does for me. They see my name on the sites I write for, and I get to nest in their heads like a debt that they cannot pay.

To douse their curiosity, I built a site with all the information about my services so people will be compelled to reach out. I created different landing pages for each of my services to ensure that visitors will find the details they need to know about me. I am also currently following a content strategy of writing decent content on my blog to keep my site relevant on search results.

This is the reason why I invested time in building a good-looking site and blog that you are reading now.

And if you are indeed still reading this post, then it only goes to show how important inbound marketing is.

Build relationships

My rule here is simple: do not treat your clients as a dollar sign.

My clients are just like me, people who want what’s best for themselves. They just happened to be people whose needs I can answer.

I provide solutions for my clients, and my goal is to deliver the work that I promised.

More importantly, treating people more than a job is crucial in getting them to order from them to order again.

Going back to my previous Canadian clients, I still keep in contact with them. I have always made it clear that the lines of working again soon are always open. If they have questions on what they should do regarding particular tasks that I once covered for them, then I unhesitatingly give my advice.

Same thing goes for my current clients. I strive to provide them with a more personal experience when ordering content from me. I do my best to answer every email and find a solution to every problem they encounter.

At the same time, I become even well connected to the industry I am working in. As a writer whose feet are dug deep in digital marketing, I have come to know clients from different agencies, as well as influential bloggers from across the globe. Some of them were referred to me by my old customers, so building bridges with clients go a long way!

Wrapping it up

Freelance writing is a struggle, but you need to play your cards right to succeed. In this post, I have revealed my cards in my attempt to help you find your path to success. You can copy my process and build on it to achieve even greater success!

I may not have fully revealed the entire process of how I build an excellent freelance writing career for myself. In the future, I promise to update you with comprehensive tips on how to do guest blogging, inbound marketing, and relationship building.

Until then, I would like to hear from you by answering a couple of these questions:

1. How is your freelance writing experience thus far? How can I help you?
2. What are the obstacles that are preventing you from succeeding as a freelance writer?
3. Are there strategies and techniques you used not mentioned above that made you a freelance writing success?

Seriously, I would love to hear your thoughts about the questions above.