Useful guide when creating your own Online Portfolio

On 19 May, 2011 By With 2 Comments

Every designer that wanted to gain income from freelancing should have an online portfolio. You’ve got one? Good. If not, this will be helpful to you if you’re planning to create one.

If you already have one, you can still check out this post to make sure you’re on the right track.

Building your portfolio should be easy, the hard part is making it good. Online portfolio is more than just showcase of your work. It should transform your visitors into clients. And it should work as automatic generator.

What kind of Portfolio

Online portfolios come in different shape and sizes, a blog, a website or a dedicated one (or just a portfolio, nothing more). Ask yourself, how does my site will do with potential clients?

This will vary depending on your goal, choosing a blog will demand more time writing articles. I suggest pick carefully.

Simplicity is the key

Bruce Lee   Simplicity is the.jpg.scaled1000 Useful guide when creating your own Online Portfolio

Online portfolio exists to impress and persuade potential clients. If you decide on blog or website, you might consider bringing some traffic from other sources. Maybe share your knowledge or give freebies.

Be careful though, you might give a different message and confuse your potential clients, this will hurt your business.

About page

who are you Useful guide when creating your own Online Portfolio

Common questions when creating your about page;

Who is this person?

What qualification and experience does he/she have?

Is he/she trustworthy and reliable?

Is he/she looking for work?

Samples of previous work?

Provide a contact form

formbuilder Useful guide when creating your own Online Portfolio

Let your potential clients know where to contact you, about page isn’t the only place where you can put your contact form.

According to Web Usability, contacting you should be one of the easiest things to do in your website. If a potential client is having a hard time finding it, eventually they will leave your website.

Sell your skill

show us your skills Useful guide when creating your own Online Portfolio

This is actually common sense; if you only want web design work provide a gallery that showcase your design skills. Do not show your photography, focus on web design skill and demonstrate a strong gallery in the area you’d like to be hired.

Build traffic

Try to source out potential clients by pointing them to your portfolio. Or apply to other job hiring sites like craiglist, job postings and twitter.

Another way to build traffic is to add value to you site:

Share your knowledge with other freelancers,

Mentor wannabe freelancers,

Showcase your own work,

Share personal stories,

Offer freebies,

This are just options for creating traffic to your site, generating inbound links and content will do well for you. I bet there are a hundred more ways to build traffic, i’m just suggesting though.

Add a little SEO

seoab Useful guide when creating your own Online Portfolio

Optimize your website for search engines; I’d suggest learning a little bit of SEO to help your portfolio in the search results. If you have no idea what I am talking about, I’ve written an article about SEO.

Other alternative for creating your online portfolio

KropCarbonmadeCoroflot

These are the alternative portfolio sites for you, here is the full list for creating a easy portfolio.

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