Zero to Hero: How to Build a Writing Portfolio That Will Dazzle Your Clients With No Experience

Everyone has to start somewhere, but starting out as a writer can be particularly intimidating. It’s an excruciating quandary I never expected to encounter.

When I started my writing career I was in a bind: to attract clients, I needed a portfolio of work, but to get work for my portfolio, I needed clients. It’s a typical what comes first question, the chicken or the egg.

The question that kept ringing in my mind was:

How can I build a writing portfolio when clients won’t hire me because I have no writing experience?

A strong portfolio is one of the core components to securing writing work, and yet you need writing work to build a portfolio. It’s a bit of a catch-22.

So how do you build a writing portfolio with no experience? With a bit of creativity and hustle, you can come up with a writing portfolio from scratch even if you have no experience. I will provide a thorough elucidation of the methodology in this article.

However, before anything else, what exactly is a portfolio of freelance writing and why is it necessary?

What is a Freelance Writing Portfolio?

A good freelance writing portfolio consists of the finest collection of your sample of work. It’s a marketing tool that can help you land freelance writing jobs, whether you’re a newbie or a veteran writer.

This is where you exhibit your top-performing articles that show off your expertise, from web copy to white papers to case studies. You can also incorporate a concise biography, contact details, pricing structure, testimonials, or excerpts from reference letters.

Why Do You Need a Freelance Writing Portfolio?

For you to stand out from the competition, a portfolio is essential. A lesson I’ve learned along the way is to make it easy for possible clients to find you and choose you without lowering your price.

When you’re pitching a project, send potential clients your portfolio to show them:

1. Your capabilities,
2. Why you’re a good fit for the project, and
3. Your pricing.

In other words, a well-crafted portfolio can help you close more deals and get paid what you’re worth. So, how do you start building a freelance writing portfolio without any experience? Here are seven ways:

7 Proven Ways to Create a Writing Portfolio Step-by-Step

1. Select an Easy-To-Use Website and Hosting Platform

You don’t need a fancy website or hosting solution to get started.

Siteground or Namecheap are good options for web hosting, as they’re both cheap and reliable. As for a website builder, go for platforms like Squarespace or Wix. These offer simple visual editors and pre-made website templates.

If you plan to grow your freelance writing business into an agency, WordPress is a great option that offers more scalability.

The key is to keep everything simple, Canva’s portfolio builder can alternatively give the simplest solution when building your website portfolio.

If you still feel overwhelmed at the thought of creating your portfolio, you can always hire someone on Upwork to create a professional writing portfolio website for you at a cost.

Don’t take too long to set up your portfolio. I recommend setting a deadline of three to four days to complete your portfolio website so that you start closing clients quickly.

2. Identify Your Target Audience and Niche

Unfortunately, hiring managers are looking for specialists so the worst mistake you can make is trying to target too many potential clients.

Instead, focus on a specific niche by clearly defining:

• Your writing specialization (blog writing, sales writing, social media writing, etc.)
• The industry you intend to serve (ecommerce, B2B, local businesses, bloggers, etc.)
• The company size you intend to serve (startups, enterprise corporations, etc.)

Once you’ve defined your ideal customer, do some research to understand their pain points and what they’re hoping to achieve by hiring a writer.

The most effective method for conducting customer research is to speak with your target audience and inquire about the qualities they seek in writers.

You can also ask in Slack groups and other private groups for feedback.

In the process, take note of:

• Your ideal customers’ pain points.
• The objectives they’re trying to achieve by hiring a freelance writer.
• What they look for when reviewing different freelance writers.
• Key elements that make freelance writing portfolios memorable.

3. Select Your Best Writing Samples 

A mistake that many freelance writers commit is publishing many writing samples from multiple industries.

There are a couple of reasons why posting a lot of sample writing pieces isn’t a great idea:

1. Potential clients won’t see your best samples: If there are more than twenty writing samples, clients probably won’t see your 3-4 best writing pieces.
2. Posting from multiple industries dilutes your expertise: Clients want to see you’re an expert in their field, so only include writing samples for your ideal customer’s industry/niche.
3. Too many pieces overwhelm potential clients: Your potential clients are in a rush to quickly find the best writer for the job, and offering too many sample pieces can overwhelm them.

When you post the writing sample, include any business results it helped accomplish.

For instance, if the goal is to increase traffic and conversions, include how your sample writing piece helped accomplish those goals in your previous posts.

And instead of just posting the link to the blog post, you can include screenshots, which is a great way to add proof.

4. Add Social Proof and Testimonials

Adding testimonials to your online writing portfolio is a great way to boost your credibility, but not all testimonials are equally persuasive.

Focus on getting testimonials from reputable brands/people your ideal clients probably already know and respect. If you don’t have any influential clients in mind, approach a well-established industry influencer or brand and offer a free sample piece in exchange for a testimonial.

When you ask for the testimonial, ask them to highlight how you eliminate key pain points that your ideal clients typically experience with freelance writers. For example, common hitches with freelance writers include missing deadlines and delivering shallow, inadequately researched articles. So you can ask them to mention how you always meet deadlines and thoroughly research your work.

5. Structuring Your Homepage

Once you’ve gathered your writing samples and testimonials, you have most of the materials for your portfolio page. Now, you need to organize your homepage and the messaging to communicate that you’re the ideal person to help the prospect achieve their goals.

First, create an engaging headline that clearly states the value you provide and how you accomplish it.

You can use this framework:

“(your writing niche) for (your ideal customer) that need (pain point you’re solving.)”

For example, it could be “Freelance content writer for B2B SaaS companies that need more organic leads.”

I would also strongly suggest incorporating a process section that provides a comprehensive account of your client interactions. The majority of prospective clients will take you more seriously if you can demonstrate that you have a proven, repeatable procedure.

For example, if you do customer research, outlines, or anything else, create a 3-5 step process and include that on your homepage. You can always customize your services to your clients’ needs, but having a process will make you stand out from other freelance writers as it shows that you’re experienced and have a method to consistently produce the same quality results.

You can also include a FAQ segment with information on your rates, the deliverables, turnaround times, who your ideal customer is, and other questions prospects commonly ask.

6. Create Your About Page

Discussing your pet or places you’ve traveled to in your author bios is not a good idea. The reality is that clients don’t care about this information.

On the contrary, a more captivating author bio explaining the pain points you struggled with that led you to become a freelance copywriter and how it has molded your philosophy as a writer can help you win clients.

The father of branding David Ogilvy once stated, “The most powerful words in the world are not ‘I love you’ but ‘Tell me a story.'”

People connect with stories. They strike a chord with them. And they remember them.

That’s why you should focus on storytelling in your portfolio. Create a story for every project you worked on, for every client you’ve served, and for every piece of content you’ve created. This will give your readers more reason to view your website portfolio than just to look at your work.

Your story doesn’t have to be long or detailed, but it should give adequate information for the reader to understand what you did, how you did it, and what you learned.

Giving an interesting story will show your ideal prospects you understand the pain points they’re trying to solve. They also get a better insight into how you approach writing and get to know a little bit about the personal side of you.

As a result, you’ll build more trust with potential clients and stand out as a company.

Additionally, it’s worthwhile to include a picture of yourself. Clients want to know who they’re dealing with, and adding a face to the words will help build trust.

7. Create Your Contact Page

Finally, add a contact page to your portfolio that includes your email address and links to your Twitter and LinkedIn profile (if you use them).

Keep your contact page as simple as possible and if you decide to offer a form fill, be sure that the form fill works and reliably sends emails to your inbox, as many contact forms send messages directly to your spam mail.

Final Remarks: How to Create a Writing Portfolio That Will Wow Your Clients With No Experience

Hiring managers are strapped for time and want to hire a writer quickly. As someone who has been in this industry, I can tell you that hiring managers quickly weed out those who don’t provide a simple method to quickly assess their writing abilities.

You don’t have to have a fancy website, but you should make it easy for clients to quickly view your writing samples and understand the value they offer.

So instead of stressing about details like design colors, optimize your writing portfolio to ensure it’s easy for potential clients to navigate the portfolio site and quickly find answers to these questions:

• Does this person offer the services I’m looking for?
• Does this person have the writing skills I’m looking for?
• Has this person done similar jobs in the past in similar industries/niches?
• Is this person reliable (e.g., adheres to deadlines, consistently delivers results, etc.)
• Bonus: Does this person understand the larger business goal we’re trying to accomplish?

I believe there’s no excuse for not having a freelance writing portfolio. Even if you don’t have any experience, there are plenty of ways to get started. You can be your first client, tell stories, focus on your skills, and be creative.