Why Do You Need a Portfolio?

Do you need a portfolio? The answer is yes. But we know you’ve probably already heard that before! Why do you need a portfolio for your freelance career?

Basically, your portfolio is designed to show, rather than tell, other people about your accomplishments and experience in your field.

This article focuses on the various reasons you must have a portfolio as a creative freelancer working in today’s competitive landscape. Regardless of the medium you use to get your clients, putting a portfolio in front of their eyes will dramatically improve your chances of getting hits and, fortune willing, land those coveted client conversions.

Reasons to Have a Portfolio

1.Proof of Work

Consider your profile from the perspective of your client. They are probably scrolling on any freelance service aggregator, like Fiverr, and considering various individuals offering services within their required field, with a different price range. There needs to be something in place in your prompt that can catch their eye, make them linger, and ultimately decide to hand their requirements to you. Two key benefits having a portfolio attached to the prompt can provide you with over here: first, it will provide your clients with proof of work, which will enable them to gauge the efficacy of the kind of work you’re capable of, and second, it will provide your listing with a sense of legitimacy, which will immediately make it more valuable than the scores of other listings without anything that the client can use to gauge the concerned freelancers’ skill sets and decide whether their services are worth the money.

2. Negotiations

A career portfolio is immensely significant for negotiating higher prices. If you have a portfolio on your listing, it is one of the best ways to distinguish your service from all other individuals in your service’s category. When a client reaches out to you and tries to negotiate your prices, you can highlight why you charge a premium for the services over your competitors. It will invariably come from some aspect of your work. Therefore, having your work on your listings and a profile is an absolute must during negotiations, as it will add a lot of value to every single proposition you make, especially when you’re negotiating hard. 

3. Professionalism

Possibly the most substantial importance of a portfolio is that it indicates professionalism. Think about all the professional portfolios you have come across in your life. The reason why, say, the menu at McDonald’s sticks in your mind so well, when many local burger places don’t, is the extent to which they focus on appropriately marketing their portfolio. There is a sense of professionalism when you look at their offers. It creates a sense of trust in you. 

That is the reason having a portfolio for freelancers is so crucial. It is not just a marketing tool–think about what the portfolio reveals about you. You are selling yourself, and the portfolio is your way to ensure that your skills stick in your client’s mind.

4. Freelance Portfolio Websites

Some of the best freelance portfolio websites are Behance and WordPress (where you can have your website dedicated to this). You can also add images or videos from your portfolio to gig listings on various aggregators like Fiverr and Upwork. These are all effective ways of ensuring that your client has grounds (and nudges) to make a favorable decision about your offerings.

5. Moulding your portfolio to your role

Note that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to curating your portfolio. Freelance developer portfolio websites would cover pages like GitHub, while designers would opt for Behance. We could even host portfolios of freelance writers on fan fiction websites, while those of financial advisors would have to be on more regulated channels. 

Research into the media that freelancers in your profession use and strategize accordingly. Ensure that you must create a portfolio that can stand out among the crowd of posts that might be available on the page that you have picked. Always make sure that the images or videos look legitimate and attractive. 

Get this right, and client acquisition will be a piece of cake!

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