A writer’s online portfolio should be a platform to showcase their best work and impress upon potential customers the quality and variety of the writer’s skills. For this reason it’s important that the work on it it’s not only flawless, but also varied enough to showcase the different styles and areas of expertise the writer excels at. It’s also a good idea to include downloadable samples of your material, copyrighted and in PDF format, and even scans of magazines and other print publications using your work.
You can create an online portfolio using any free blogging tool, such as WordPress.org or Blogger, but if your goal is writing for money professionally you should consider registering a domain name and hosting your portfolio yourself. This gives a much more professional impression, and offers you a greater degree of control over your content. If you are registered as freelancer writer, you can declare hosting and domain purchases on your small business expenses report at the end of the year.
Using a Content Management System or CMS is highly advisable as well, as it will allow you to edit your portfolio yourself without having to worry about HTML code or other technical aspects of maintaning a website. WordPress is a very popular CMS system that can be used to create both websites and blogs, due to its ease of use, variety of available plugins to extend its features and SEO friendly structure. You can customize how WordPress looks by using templates, free or commercial, without having to learn how to program HTML or CSS yourself.
Since your online writing portfolio is going to be composed mostly of text you should use a website theme that is easy to read and has a good typography. Forget about using excessive colours or hand written fonts except for titles, as they are often difficult to read and may distract people from the content of your articles. If your portfolio is excessively illustrated or cluttered it may give a bad impression or make it difficult for your potential customer to imagine your copy on their own site. Choose a good WordPress theme for your business website and you’ll be immediately taken more seriously, even if you are just starting your own online business.
Once you have decided how your content should look like in terms of your writer’s portfolio website design it’s time to organize the information on it. Besides displaying samples of your work, you should make sure there’s a page describing your experience and qualifications, and some way of contacting you through the website. Many freelance writers like grouping their content based on style, so you could have a section for SEO articles, another for technical writing, blog posts, etc Or you could choose to organize them by subject or chronologically. And make sure your website has a copyright notice and a detailed Terms of Use section that specifies the ownership of the content and the rights others may have to it.
If you want to be found via search engines such as Google you’ll need to at least work a bit on your on-site SEO. Luckily you are a writer, so you should have an easy time writing engaging content that includes the keywords you want to be found as. For example, it’s important to make sure to use descriptions on each category pages, so the Search Engines pick up those all important keywords such as ‘experienced technical writer’ or ‘SEO blogger’ that can bring you clients. Learning some onsite SEO trips may go a long
