A freelancers choice of weapon - The Portfolio

I mentioned earlier that when you're just getting started as a freelancer, it's of the outmost importance to provide a better service and service offer than your competition. But with this in mind, how do you show your future clients your amazing skills when you have had zero customers? The Portfolio. Let's talk about that for today.

Having a portfolio showcasing your work is one of the most important tools you have. With your portfolio future customers can see whatever you're the right freelancer for them in a matter of minutes.

So what does a freelancers portfolio look like? It's quite simple actually, most platforms like Fiverr, Odesk, Freelancer and such even provide a simple feature to help you on your way. Usually it's a simple upload feature for pictures, files and videos.

Now you all [should] understand what one is to find in a portfolio. It's past work or examples of your work, that shows an interested buyer exactly what you provide and the quality of it. If you're a graphic designer, wrap up some good designs! For example, if you want to work with logo and ad design, make some example ads and logos just to show your customers how broad your skillset is. If you're a writer, upload a picture or text showcasing the level of translation you can do.

A portfolio takes just a few minutes to prepare, maybe a few hours if you have to prepare work for it but is worth it since any serious client will be looking at it. It goes without saying that the paying clients that have the real money are all of the serious type that will want to hire the best freelancer for their work. So spending a few minutes or maybe an hour to make a simple portfolio of your work will bring you tons of more work, especially more wellpaid work which is what you're after.

Once you have had a few clients, ask them for testimonials. Trust me, it might sound scary but anyone who hires a freelancer understand that testimonials are important so if they're happy with your work they will gladly leave one. Some sites that allow freelancers to post their offers, like Fiverr, will have a testimonial/review feature that will encourage buyers to review the freelancers they hire.

What you can then do is to take a screenshot of these testimonials and use them in your portfolio. Because not only work is supposed to go there, after you start getting customers you should also leave the past clients opinions there so that interested buyers can see that you're not just all talk.