Building a Freelance Portfolio

Building a portfolio is a slow and agonizing process.  There are rarely any shortcuts and you'll be competing with tens of thousands of other people.  Half of those likely suck.  One-quarter are okay but they will never make a huge splash.  It is that last quarter - people with skills and creativity equal and/or greater than yours - that you need to worry about.  

I've been doing content work for years but do not own the rights to the work I've done.  Redacting what you can to at least show the style/flow of your work is one possibility; you have to tread very carefully here.

Your first freelance jobs should be in fields you feel comfortable in.  Do not randomly bid on any and all work.  Make sure you're going to be able to do the job well and meet the deadline.  Nothing will get you tossed over faster than taking too damn long to get a client their work.  

I worked in the education service industry for several years.  When I began my content business my first articles were for another education service company.  I worked on content I was familiar with and used the time to learn more about web marketing, SEO keywords, and limiting words for blogs.  I must have done 30-40 articles for that company and each one taught me something.  

My next freelance work was in motivational self-help.  As the go-to person for every person in a 100-mile radius (at least it feels that way some days), I used personal experience to come up with the content and professional experience to smooth it out.  It was well-received and I ended up doing many articles for the same site.

Then a chance came along for me to do an e-book about spicing up your relationship sexually.  As an erotica author and blogger, this was something I easily sank my teeth into.  Thrilling, fun, and it paid the bills.  Those jobs are the very best.

One of my last gigs was in the health field.  I had zero experience in health writing and soon found it was a much harder project than any other I'd done.  I floundered for several weeks (ready to kill someone) before I took a step back and said, "Okay, I'm out of my element but I can learn."  

That's exactly what I did.  Over the course of this e-book, I must have read over 1,000 articles.  Some of them bored me to tears but you know what?  If I were to take a college nutrition course right now...I know I could pass it.

The point is, if you want to be successful, you start inside your comfort zone and prepare yourself to step out of it.  Try your hand at assignments you would have never considered in order to grow.    I did it and you can to.  Don't give up.

One day, you'll be doing more than just covering your bills.