How to Make a Writer Portfolio that Rocks
Learn the basics of an awesome writer portfolio to impress your clients and land work!
When you’re ready to create a writer’s portfolio and put your business out into the world, it can be exciting and scary. By building a writer portfolio website, you’re creating your own corner of cyberspace.
From there, you can reel in potential clients (and hopefully) get them to contact you for work. In this post, we’ll go over the basics of a great writer portfolio as well as some savvy add-ons that can really help you stand out.
What Every Writer Needs on Their Portfolio Site
We’ll start with the basics – the essentials – that need to be included on your website. These components are not only helpful marketing tools, but they also are needed for a fully functional site.
Portfolio Essential #1 Homepage
Your homepage is often the first thing that a potential client will see. If you contacted them via cold pitching, or you did a networking event, the homepage makes a first impression that can make or break the opportunity.
Now, you might be wondering if your main homepage can include everything on your site. When you go to some sites, you might notice that the homepage is a long landing page with various sections. They don’t have separate pages to click into.
This could be an option for you, especially if your website host only allows you to have a limited number of pages. You may come across such restrictions if you use free website hosts or low-end subscriptions.
The best case for your writer portfolio site would be to find a host that allows you to have unlimited pages and various structures for your website. Why? This can improve the overall user experience (UX) of your site. It also gives you the opportunity to manipulate page URLs and fill them with keywords. Using appropriate keywords in your URLs can help improve the SEO of your website. (But that’s a whole different topic!)
Portfolio Essential #2 About Page
One of the perks of being a writer is that you really don’t have to show your face. You can work behind the scenes in the comfort of your home without ever having to see anyone in person. Hell yeah for the hermits out there!
However, before you land clients, potential clients will likely want to see a “face” to your brand. Even if you are a new writer, you are a brand! By including an about page in your writer portfolio website, you can start to build trust and rapport with prospects.
All you need is a nice photo and a blurb about yourself. Just make sure everything sounds authentic to you.
Portfolio Essential #3 Samples Page
Now, the whole point of your website is to show off your writer portfolio samples. Most prospects coming to your website will want to see examples of your work.
Your portfolio page can simply be a running landing page with your best work, or a catalog of pages that are organized by industry or type of project.
Even if you only have a few samples on your site, be sure to share them. After all, the goal of making a writer portfolio website is to get more work in the future!
Portfolio Essential #4 Contact Page
Do not forget to add a contact page! Or at the least, don’t forget to include your email somewhere prominent on your site.
Most website hosts will allow you to set up an easy, breezy contact form that connects to your email. In terms of UX, using the contact form right on your site is likely way easier than having them copy and paste your email address.
Another issue with publicly posting your email address on your writer portfolio website is that robots, scammers and randoms can see and swipe that information. You’ll get countless emails from people who have no business working with you.
How to Make Your Writer Portfolio Rock
Now, let's talk about how to make a writer portfolio that goes the extra mile. Aside from honing in on your unique branding, great portfolio samples and awesome copy, consider adding these items to your site as well. Luckily, they’re pretty easy to do!
Portfolio Extra #1 FAQ Page
Incorporating a FAQ page on your site serves a few different purposes. And it’s so easy to do that you should definitely consider it!
First and foremost a FAQ page is helpful to site visitors. They can review the content on that page and learn a ton of information that will help them move forward with you.
Another benefit of having a FAQ page on your writer portfolio site is that prospects can get answers to a lot of questions, even before they ever get on a discovery call with you. Not to mention, when you’re communicating back and forth with clients, you can easily share your FAQ link if they start asking common questions.
And last but not least, a huge benefit of having a FAQ page is to help improve the SEO of your site. By typing in real questions that your prospect may have, you’ll be including long-tail keywords on your site. Have you ever typed in a full question into the search bar?
If you cover the same questions that your prospects are searching, your site might start to rank really well!
Portfolio Extra #2 Blog
Now, a blog is a commitment. After all, nothing dates a blog more than if you see the site owner hasn’t posted anything in months or years. (However, this could be remedied by omitting the publication date.)
Just like with a FAQ page, there are several benefits for including a blog on your writer portfolio website.
We actually talk about monetizing your blog in our free video training, entitled: “How to Land Tons of Exciting, Stress-Free SEO Writing Work - without the Low Rates, High Competition and Burnout.” Even if you’re not sold on becoming an SEO writer, your own portfolio site can benefit from some SEO tactics we talk about in that training. So, check it out!
Crafting thoughtful and relevant blog content helps you look more professional. It also helps build your credibility as an expert of an industry. Not to mention, your blog is an opportunity for prospects to see you write, especially if your portfolio samples are lacking.
Aside from creating great content, you can easily share links to your blog in a cold pitch or ahead of a discovery call. It’s always a good idea to share some valuable and free information to a prospective client.
And, just like with a FAQ page, your blog can help you organically rank on the Internet so that more clients come across your page without you having to search them out.
Portfolio Extra #3 Niched Pages
Many writers go back and forth about niching. Not sure if you should establish a niche? Read this post.
If you’re completely set on niching, you could have your entire site cater to that particular niche. That means all your pages, keywords and URLs would incorporate that niche.
However, if you’re not totally set on a niche or have several niches where you’d want to work, I suggest creating individual niched webpages. Each of these pages could be visible in the top navigation bar, or they could be hidden. Regardless, these niched pages can help your site identify itself within a certain niche, especially for SEO purposes.
For example, if you want to write for finance and makeup, you could create one landing page that ranks for “finance writer” and another separate page for “makeup writer.”
Portfolio Extra #4 Testimonial Page
As soon as you get a great client testimonial, create a testimonial page on your writer portfolio website. If you’re wondering how to make a writer portfolio really stand out and compel prospects to work with you, nothing works better than some street cred.
If you don’t have any writing experience – let alone client testimonials – you could consider testimonials from past jobs. Even though testimonials that come from your writing projects are the best for your site, you could consider adding testimonials that touch on your character or professionalism overall.
