Photo by Alexander Stubbs

In the last article we showed you how you could find your first clients, price them, deal with the deadlines, and then get paid. You should now have some work under your belt and now its time to show it to new possible clients. To do this, you’re going to need to set up your professional portfolio. You’re most important asset is your portfolio. The majority of the work you’re going to get from now on is going to most likely come straight from your portfolio.

In this article we’re going to discuss the right way to set up your portfolio as well as your options as to how and where you want to display your work online.

Whats in a name?

If you are a solo freelancer my advice to you would not to come up with an alternate alias or company name to represent your freelance work. Use your own name! Leave the creative and profound company names to the design agencies. Those clients are paying for you and you only!

If you haven’t done it by now, register the domain name of your first and last name. If it isn’t available (sorry John Smith), then find a variation (First and Middle?). Using your own name for your freelance work as well as your domain name will help brand yourself as a freelancer, which sometimes can be hard to do!

Be Creative

The way you choose to display your work can sometimes be just as effective as the work you choose to display. Be creative! Put and much or even more effort into your own portfolio then you have done for your clients in the past. Let it speak to possible clients what you are all about and what you can do!

Don’t show it all!

Instead of showing all your work, pick only your best work. If you have very little to show, this may not be an option, but if you do have a good 10 or 20 pieces of work behind you choose only those that represent you best.

Limit Yourself

If you’re a web designer then stick to only or mostly your web design work to show. Don’t display the 2 logos you’ve done in the past, or the odd illustration you somehow got away with. Stick to your specialty and don’t try and be everything all at once!

Don’t forget the contact form!

Don’t just provide your e-mail address in your portfolio. Provide a simple contact form as well. It is much easier for your clients to use a contact form than a standard email link. You can also provide the type of content (deadline, urls, budget) in which you want your client to send along with the request.

Online Portfolio Options

While it’s best to have your portfolio hosted on your own domain, it is also important to have your portfolio in more places then one. Hosting your portfolio on other websites is a great chance for extra exposure. Do yourself a favor and mirror your portfolio on one or all of the following portfolio services:

Carbonmade

With Carbonmade, you can manage your online portfolio with a variety of tools that allow you to change how you display your work. The core idea behind the design of Carbonmade is to keep your images or video at the forefront.

Coroflot

Coroflot is a free service which allows you to easily upload and organize your work. You also have exposure to many agencies who use coroflot to scout possible employees or contractors.

Behance Creative Network

Behance is a vast creative and professional community with a serious philosophy: Great achievement demands more than a great idea. And a community driven to make this happen. A wonderful place to have your portfolio listed.

Flickr

Yes even setting up your work on Flickr can land you possible jobs. Hey, its happened to me! It may also help your work get returned higher in search engine results of your name as your new portfolio domain is still in the sandbox.

Conclusion

Now that you have built your own branded personal portfolio website, its time to get into marketing it. Look forward to the next article discussing your options as well as other ideas on how to get the word out!