Top 3 Professional Portfolio Websites for Freelance Writers

A freelance writer typing | Image: entrepreneur.com

Starting as a new freelance writer, one of the most common questions you'll receive for every proposal you'll write will most likely be, "Do you have a portfolio with previous samples relevant to this project?". This leads to the question, why are clients so interested in the availability of your portfolio?

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What is a portfolio?

A portfolio is an up-to-date collocation of some/all your best previous works, collected to show your expertise and experience to potential clients. Every client wants to know if you can help him get that organic traffic, make that landing page convert leads, or turn his website's homepage into a goldmine; and the best way you can tell them your capabilities is with a portfolio.

In the gig economy, everyone, especially you, wants to be the first freelancer to pitch for that job. When this happens and the common portfolio question comes up in the interview, your portfolio's availability and ability are what ensure that you remain in the first pitch position in the mind of the client.

Newbie freelance writers usually make Google Drive folders containing documents of their articles. This is understandable, but freelancers have realized that clients don't enjoy looking at documents. They want to see blog posts, web copies, and landing pages written by you making waves on the internet. And that is where Plan Online Portfolio comes in.

Example of an online portfolio | Image: uplabs.com

Online portfolios are those sleek, lovely, and professional CV-like websites professional freelancers showcase to clients, which show most or all of their best work—just like what you see in the image above.

With the evolution of the gig economy, freelancers now have a range of specialized websites and platforms whoich they can use to create an online portfolio. Here are 3 of the best you can choose from.

1. Clippings.me

This is a writer-based portfolio website platform created for freelance journalists in 2011. It is one of the easiest portfolio websites to set up, as you only need to fill out your keyword-conscious biography, some background imagery, and profile photo, and then you upload your clips (articles). It supports articles already published on the internet, PDF uploads from your device, and multimedia (audio & video) as well. 

Clippings.me offers a free plan which limits users to 10 clips on a portfolio and a clippings.me/yourname domain, which is fine for beginner freelancers. But you can upgrade to a paid plan of either $5.99/month (Premium) or $11.99/monthly (Unbranded) which allows unlimited clips, a custom domain, contact form and Google Analytics tracking integration, as well as the removal of the Clippings.me branding for the Unbranded plan.

Clippings.me portfolio example| Image: clippings.me

2. Contently

Contently was founded in 2010 as a content writing job board while providing one-page portfolio hosting services. Its main aim was to match actively job-seeking freelance writers with clients, and what better way to achieve this than to allow portfolio creation on the platform, so that clients on and off the platform can see the expertise of the freelancers that interest them. 

Its portfolio feature is completely free with a yourname.contently.com domain, and it is as easy to set up as Clippings.me, if not easier.

However, Contently charges a 15% agent fee (the fee is taken from the earnings of the job), for any job gotten through the platform.

Contently portfolio example | Image: contently.net

3. Clearvoice

This platform is like Contently, but it is not particular to writers. Clearvoice seeks to provide job opportunities for anyone with a skill related to the content marketing industry with their Talent Network. This includes digital marketers, copywriters, social media managers, etc. 

Just like Contently, it also offers a free portfolio feature, or rather CV feature as they call it; which allows you to apply for the Talent Network. The setup process is similar to Clippings.me as well, with only a few more spaces to fill, e.g your preferred content roles, education, and so on, with a clearvoice.com/cv/yourname domain

Clearvoice portfolio example | Image: clearvoice.com

Every freelance writer who intends to make 6, 7, or 8 figures per year from freelancing, must understand the importance of a portfolio as social proof to clients. 

Which of the portfolio websites do you intend to or already use? Let's know in the comments.