How to Create a Writing Portfolio Before You Have Writing Clients

If you're thinking about becoming an online freelance writer, you might be concerned that you don't have a writing portfolio to use as samples of your work. Even if you've never had a writing client before, you can quickly and easily set up a nice portfolio to show off your writing ability with the following steps.

Things You'll Need:
- A computer with internet access
- Ideas of things to write about

Step 1: Set up a blog or website. This does not have to be anything fancy at this time, but you should have a blog or website that provides your contact information, a brief bio and your writing experience (or why you enjoy writing if you have no writing experience to speak of), and if you like – you can include prices or a form that allows people to request a quote for their writing needs.

Step 2: Write a variety of articles. Choose topics that interest you and write a few articles about them. You can write about anything you want! For this purpose, you can write articles that are around 500-800 words, give or take. Start with about 10-15 articles.

Step 3: Create a writer's bio. At the bottom of each of your articles, you can include a paragraph or a few sentences about you. Make sure to include your name (or the pen name you plan to use to promote yourself and your writing services), a link to the website or blog you set up in step 1 (use link text of a keyword that someone would type into a search engine to find a writer). An example of an author's byline or resource box would be:

Debbie Dragon is a freelance writer specialising in writing content and search engine optimised articles for the web.

When you set up your link to your blog or website, in this example, you would link the words “freelance writer” to your website.

Step 4: Publish your articles on your blog or website.

Step 5: Submit your articles to various article directories online. Each time you submit an article to a directory you want to include your author's byline with the link back to your blog or website. This not only enables people to click on the link and visit your website, but it also helps you optimise your website or blog for search engines.

Step 6: Start applying for work. Congratulations, you're a “published” author! When you start applying for writing jobs online, you can now link your potential clients to your blog/website, as well as the articles that are published through the article directories online to show a sample of your writing.

Tips:

Use a free blog or website and host to start out, you can upgrade later after you've made some money writing.
Try submitting your articles to www.ezinearticles.com, www.ehow.com, www.isnare.com and www.goarticles.com to get started as they have a lot of exposure

Article written by Janet Beckers


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