An online writing portfolio is more than a writing sample or two or five put together. I've been freelancing as a writer for close to a decade, and creating & updating a freelance writing portfolio involves more nuance than I expected (at least the first time).
Every time I sent my portfolio to a potential client, I was aware of the fact that it directly reflected on me as a content writer and freelance writer. Clients didn't just want to see my best writing; they wanted to see proof of consistent quality and updated publications and browse through a navigable, searchable portfolio site..
I lost quite a few opportunities because I didn't have a comprehensive and adequately professional writer portfolio. To ensure that you don't have to deal with the same ordeal, here is a 101-style guide to creating a professional writing portfolio (whether you are a freelancer or not).
I'll also list out the best writing portfolio examples you can use as benchmarks for creating your own writing portfolio site. Additionally, I'll introduce a tool that will build your portfolio for you — it will automatically find and identify all your bylined articles and pieces from any website you specify. More on that later.
• If you’re creating an online portfolio, you need all the help you can get. In a dog-eat-dog employment market, everything about your portfolio needs to stand out. Before you begin creating one, why not start with a look at portfolios that already stand out?
• Look through the seven portfolio website examples in this article. They belong to individuals from different industries, such as design, web development, tech writing, etc.
• If you like what you see, may I suggest a tool that will help you create such a portfolio for yourself? Enter Authory.
• The tool builds 90% of your portfolio for you, have a look at Authory. Check out the video on "How Authory works" — you enter the URL of the sites where your work is published, and Authory will import all your bylined work to its database. You can now look through all your pieces in a single location.
What is a writing portfolio?
A writing portfolio is a collection of work samples meant to convey the depth and range of your skills and experience. The writing portfolio website makes the case for its owner's employability. It should display every type of writing (and ideally, every published piece) you've ever composed.
Along with examples of great writing, your writer's portfolio should also include information about your academic background, achievements, interests, and contact information. While this sounds simple, it's not always easy to put together a portfolio that looks good, is easy to scroll through, and reliably exhibits your writing abilities.
Be it a creative writing portfolio or a regular online portfolio, it should make a point about the value of your writing skills. It’s also an absolute necessity in the modern job market. If you don't have a portfolio, start creating one now.
What do you want to include in your portfolio?
A succinct but comprehensive introduction
The best portfolio doesn't have to wax eloquent about your skills. Keep the introduction short unless you've won multiple awards or have a long list of very significant accolades. Briefly mention what you do, who you've worked with, and any outstanding achievements (awards, industry milestones, etc).
Use the introduction as a context-setter. It should naturally lead the reader to dive into the chosen samples for your portfolio.
Don't forget to add your contact information, such as email and social media accounts.
ALL your work in ALL formats (text, audio, video)
Whether you're creating a journalism portfolio or a writer website for more domain-based content — sales/marketing/tech, etc — you should consider including all the work you've ever done. This goes against classical wisdom around portfolios — only include work that reveals the best of your writing career — but modern employers want quality and quantity.
Potential clients want to see a website portfolio that communicates the fact that you will produce great content consistently. No one wants to hire a one-hit wonder. Your freelance portfolio should display this, and the best way to do so is to import ALL (or most) of your work in ALL formats — and display them accordingly on your portfolio.
Moreover, if you've produced content across different formats (text, audio, video), include all of it in your own portfolio.
It indicates that you're comfortable working with multiple content avenues and makes you an asset for companies looking to expand their presence on numerous social channels.
Real-world results
When you showcase your writing, don't forget to establish that your work is already valued. As far as possible, mention real-world results to build prospective clients' faith in your abilities.
Reach out to previous clients to get some hard numbers on the impact of your writing. Let's say you wrote 10 articles for a client, and their publication led to a 38% increase in web traffic over one quarter. This is the kind of fact that should be mentioned in your portfolio.
How to create a writing portfolio website in literal minutes
When I was creating my freelance writing portfolio, I used the free trials of quite a few tools — Squarespace, Linktree, Wix, and the like. But I decided to choose and stick with Authory, and the tutorial below will amply showcase why.
Authory is a dedicated portfolio builder that literally does over half the work: finding all bylined content you’ve ever published, importing it automatically, saving it permanently (again, automatically), and letting you organize your content items into different collections (like a folder that can be sent via a URL to other people).
Step 1: Sign up for Authory (for free)
- Create an account on Authory for free using this signup link.
Step 2: Import your bylined content
- Click on "Add Collection" on your dashboard. Then click "Create New."
- Name your Collection. I'm calling it "Long Form Content." The Collection will be automatically added to your portfolio.
- Click "Add Content."
- Click "Import or upload new content."
Choose "Articles."
- Choose the relevant option. I'll go with the first one — importing all bylined articles from a specific website. (Note: this works for just one writing sample as well — so if you have just one article on the site, that’s fine.)
- Paste the URL of the website with your published pieces. I'm choosing the Authory blog. Click "Continue.”
In about 48 hours (usually less), all your content will automatically appear in the Collection you just created.
5 best writing portfolio examples
Jake Leonard
Jake Leonard is currently the editor-in-chief of Heartland Newsfeed. He is also a contributing writer to My Sports Vote, Ambush Sports, Midwest Sports Network, and Independent Political Report. He has been a former contributing writer for Overtime Heroics. He has also held several gigs in terrestrial radio and has been a syndication coordinator with a talk radio network for podcasts and internet radio.
Jake has been a freelance journalist since 2009, starting with Bleacher Report.
Lucy Shrimpton
The writings of Lucy Shrimpton appear frequently in The Independent, Waitrose Weekend, and France Magazine. She has also written for Times Travel, Coast Magazine, Maverick, Cornwall Life Magazine, LivingEtc, and more.
Some of her great writing also exists on Hauts-de-France Tourisme and Calvados Tourisme. She also sub-edits and proofreads Juno Magazine, exploring well-being, community, and parenting.
Lucy's interests and specializations include history, the arts, museums, charities, books, and human-centered storytelling
Mary Ann Gwinn
Mary Ann Gwinn is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and book reviewer for the Los Angeles Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Seattle Times, Kirkus Reviews, and other publications. She is also a Pulitzer jurist.
Muriel Vega
Muriel Vega writes about tech, art, travel, food & more, and her design reflects this diversity. The playful whimsy and capricious coloring over a white background makes you itch to click on the icons.
She has bylines at Delta Sky Magazine, DWELL, Apartment Therapy, Eater, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Washington Post, Atlanta Magazine, The Bitter Southerner, Outside Magazine, and others.
Scott Broker
Scott Broker is an LA-based writer. He is a Lambda Literary fellow and Tin House scholar and has been a finalist for the Iowa Review Prize in Fiction and the New England Review's Emerging Writer Award. He has also been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes.
His work has appeared in Ecotone, New England Review, Guernica, Fence, the Idaho Review, the Cincinnati Review, Catapult, Joyland, and the Adroit Journal.
Scott was also awarded the Helen Earnhart Harley Creative Writing Fellowship Award during his MFA at Ohio State University.
Try Authory to create your writer portfolio
When you sign up for an Authory account (for free), you get the following:
A self-updating portfolio (no need to keep adding new work manually)
Authory will AUTOMATICALLY import a copy of every bylined piece from every site into its own database. You don't have to track down links to your published work (especially older pieces). As long as you remember the URL of the site where your work exists, Authory will collate all your content for you in one dashboard.
Authory can import content from behind most soft paywalls (as long as it is a bylined piece) and some hard paywalls. However, it cannot be used to import copies of articles, podcasts, and videos you haven’t created or featured in.
Automated backups (never lose your content, ever)
All the content that Authory imports from different sources is saved permanently. Even if the original website where it's published goes defunct for any reason, you'll always have a copy safely stored on Authory's server. All backups are in the original format — text and/or media. No screenshots.
Continued importing of past and future content (less effort for a 100% updated portfolio)
Once you enter a source, Authory won't just import your existing publications. Anything you publish on the same site (after you've fed its URL into Authory) in the future will also be imported automatically. In other words, Authory will import your past and future content.
Authory also sends email notifications for every new piece it imports, so you'll always know if something you submitted has been published.
Apart from these, you also get a slew of miscellaneous but necessary features:
- Ability to search through both your portfolio and your content database to find articles/audio/videos based on keywords. Prospective employers and hiring managers can use this to look for topics on your portfolio, and you can use it to find specific pieces within your Authory content bank.
- Ability to create a custom domain with a click.
- Get a custom domain and personalize your online writing portfolio even further.
- Multiple, low-effort options for customization to make your portfolio visually appealing and easy to navigate.
- In-built analytics that provide real numbers on content performance (engagement, readership) across the web and popular social media sites every 30 days.
Authory has been chosen by quite a few well-known names in my domain, people who could have picked any tool in the world. There's 6-time Emmy award winner David Pogue, Steven Levy, Editor at Large, WIRED, and Brian Fung, a Technology Reporter at CNN, to name a very few.
Get started with Authory for free and see for yourself what works for you!
