“Can you send over a few relevant writing samples?”
If you make your living as a writer, you’re likely all too familiar with this question. And it’s exactly what a prospective freelance client recently asked me to do when we chatted about working together.
Fortunately, I knew I had a perfect sample to send their way. It covered a related topic, was chock-full of deep research and statistics, and included insights from several industry experts. Put simply, it was one of those published pieces I was really proud of—and I was confident it would impress this potential client (and maybe even land me the project).
I found my way to the website where the piece was published and scrolled through the recent articles. I didn’t see my piece there, even though I had just found it a week or two before. So, I searched the site for my specific article title. Nothing. Strange. I tried another route and Googled my name and the article title. Still nothing.
In a last-ditch (and somewhat panicked) effort, I clicked the article link I shared on my social accounts a few weeks ago. I landed on a dread-inducing 404 page.
Huh? Where did it go? Why did they take it down? And, perhaps most importantly, can I get it back?
The worrisome work wipeout: Why do your published clips disappear?
Immediately, I emailed my client and asked why my recently published article seemed to pull a vanishing act, hoping it was nothing more than a simple misunderstanding or even a technical glitch.
But that wasn’t the answer I received. The outlet revised its content strategy and decided to pull down any content that wasn’t directly aligned with this new vision. That meant my article—the thoughtful, well-researched masterpiece I had sunk hours into—was collateral damage. Just like that, I lost a valuable link I could’ve easily shared in my portfolio or with prospective clients.
Listen, it’s a gut punch. But, unfortunately, it happens all the time. There are seemingly endless reasons why your most treasured work could instantly disappear without a trace.
Maybe, like in my case, the client or outlet shifted their priorities. Perhaps your piece was too outdated. Maybe leadership changed and wanted to do an overhaul. Perhaps the outlet went out of business. Maybe there was a merger and similar content was combined or removed. Perhaps the client revisited your article and “updated” it to the point you can’t even recognize it as your own anymore.
…the list goes on. And here’s the thing: While it’s disheartening, it’s also fair game.
If you’re paid to write for a client or outlet, most of the work you do is likely “work for hire” (unless your contract says otherwise). That means, once you submit and are paid for your piece, you give up ownership of that work. It belongs to the client and they can do what they want with it—including pulling the ol’ disappearing act.
When I posted about my experience on LinkedIn, dozens of freelancers sounded off in the comments, sharing similar horror stories of their work slipping away. So, if you’re dealing with a similar struggle, know this much: It’s unfortunate, but it’s not uncommon.
5 ways to create your own backups of published work
Ready to panic? Not so fast. You might not own the content, but that doesn’t mean you have zero control. You can protect your work and give yourself some peace of mind by backing up your writing samples.
Here are five different ways you can do this and ensure you have access to your work when you need it—regardless of what the client or outlet decides to do with it.
1. Authory
Backing up your work can sound time-intensive—like there’s bound to be a lot of searching, screenshotting, and saving involved. However, that doesn’t need to be the case.
Authory automatically aggregates all of your content (seriously, anything you’ve ever written or recorded) and showcases it in a beautiful, shareable portfolio. And the best part? With Authory’s Archive, you also get automated backups of all of your content. Yes, they happen without you.
When you sign up for Authory, you’ll input the URLs where your content is published. Authory will find all of your previous content and immediately compile a personal backup for you. Publish something new? Authory will automatically back up that piece too.
Your archive is easy to search and filter. Even if you have thousands of samples, you can quickly search and find the exact piece you need—without clicking through a tangled mess of files.
Unlike screenshots or documents, Authory’s backups aren’t jumbled messes. They include the original text and images. They also place the focus entirely on your content—which means your Authory backup might look even better than the original.
Plus, you can edit and customize the content. Need to remove an image or update a link? You can edit your backup directly in Authory and make sure your piece is exactly the way you want it.
Within your Authory portfolio, you can also decide if you want each content item to link to the original source or to your backup (which is perfect for those pieces that are pulled down from the original site, but you still want to showcase in your portfolio).
Here’s the best part: You don’t need to share clunky PDFs or screenshots. Within your backup, you can click a single button to create a share link. You’ll have a simple, clean URL to share when you need it—and it leads to a simple, clean backup of your content.
This is the route I took to share my perfect sample that had otherwise disappeared. I simply grabbed the share link and included it with the other writing samples I sent to that prospective client. Want to see how great the backup looks? Here it is.
2. Screenshots
Looking for a different option? When one of your articles is published, you can take a screenshot and save it in a folder of your published work. If it’s a longer article, tools like GoFullPage allow you to take a full page screenshot so you can get the entirety of your article in a single image.
Screen grabs are relatively straightforward, but there are several drawbacks to this method. For starters, it won’t happen automatically—you’ll need to remember to do it every time something new is published.
On top of that, screenshots (especially long, full page ones) can be tricky to share and read. You’ll need to attach the image or share a link to the folder where you’re storing the image. And, the recipient will probably need to do a lot of zooming and squinting to actually read your brilliant writing.
3. PDFs
Similar to a screenshot, you can also save any webpage as a PDF. Just right-click on the page, select “Print,” and then choose “Save as PDF” as your destination. This will save your published article as a PDF document to your computer, where you can have that copy for safekeeping.
However, printing a webpage can be messy and you’ll have no control over the appearance of the finished document—meaning you’ll likely have to deal with some random text and mixed-up formatting.
And, much like the screenshots, these PDF documents aren’t easy to share or showcase. You’ll need to send them as attachments or keep them in a designated folder you can link to. The reading experience is also lackluster for your recipient, especially if they open the documents on a mobile device.
Additionally, you have to remember to manually create these PDFs. If you forgot to do so and a content item was already taken down? Well, you’re out of luck.
4. Documents
Are you just concerned about making sure you have your words saved somewhere? You can highlight all of the text on the webpage, right click, select “Copy,” and then paste it into a document of your choosing—like a Google doc or Word doc.
It sounds easy enough. However, it’s up to you to remember to do this and highlighting all of that text (especially for longer content items) can be tedious and time-consuming.
And, once you get your content into a document, you’ll have a lot of clean-up work to do—fixing formatting, updating links, and deleting out unnecessary content (like ad copy or irrelevant CTAs) that were copied and pasted with your article.
While you’ll have the content itself, the document itself isn’t attractive or easily shareable. It’s not nearly as seamless or beautiful as a link to a polished, finished-looking piece.
5. Online archive tools
Are you panicking because you need a piece of content that’s already disappeared? You don’t need to breathe into a paper bag quite yet.
You can use the Internet Archive to view old versions of websites as they appeared at different points in time. This allows you to access content that has since been changed or removed.
Head to web.archive.org, paste the original article link into the search bar, and hit “Enter.” If the page was archived, you’ll see a calendar view with dates highlighted. You can click a highlighted date and a time snapshot to view the archived version as it appeared on that day. From there, you can screenshot or save a PDF of your article.
Keep in mind that it’s possible that your article wasn’t archived, which means you won’t find it. So, this isn’t a perfect system, but it’s still better than readily accepting that the content you worked so hard on is gone for good.
You wrote it—now make sure you can show it
You work hard on the content you publish, and it’s one of the most valuable assets you have to showcase your skills and experience as a writer.
So, your published clips are way too important to leave to chance or the whims of clients and publications. Backing up your work ensures that you can prevent the dreaded disappearing act and easily access your content when you need it—without all of the panic and problems.
Ready to automatically create beautiful and shareable backups of all of your content? Get started with Authory today.
