How to Build a Portfolio When You’re Just Starting Out as a Writer: Practical Tips for Creating a Standout Portfolio Without Previous Experience

Freelance writing is one of the most dependable ways to make money from home. The amount of money you make as a freelance writer depends on many factors — the most important being your willingness to hustle — but ZipRecruiter puts the average hourly rate at $23. Some make more, and some make less. However, your earning potential begins first and foremost with your ability to land clients. And for that, wordsmithing novices must first solve the riddle of how to build a writing portfolio without experience. In this article, we help you wiggle out of this age-old catch-22 by showing you how to build a portfolio when you’re just starting out as a writer.

What Your Writing Portfolio Is — and Isn’t 

Before you learn how to build a writing portfolio without experience, you must first know what your portfolio is — and isn’t.

Your writing portfolio is an official collection of your best writing. Potential paying clients want to know you can deliver the goods, and your writing portfolio is where they’ll turn to see what you’re capable of. You want your portfolio to reflect the type of professional writing you’ll do for your clients. So, that means there are some types of writing that you don’t want to showcase in your portfolio.

Many newbies on the hunt for beginner freelance writing jobs make the mistake of including nonprofessional writing in their portfolios. This type of writing doesn’t reflect the type of results clients are looking for, and it screams amateur. You don’t want to post a link to your college thesis or upload a short story you’re working on.

Instead, you want clips that display the kind of professional writing you see online since that’s where most companies and outlets focus their publishing efforts. Don’t panic if you don’t have any “professional” writing on the internet. In the next section, we show you easy ways to rake in writing clips that will wow potential clients.

Start With Three Clips With Your Byline

You only need a few clips with your byline to get started as a freelance writer, and there are plenty of places where you can publish your work fairly easily.

Self-Published Articles

The most straightforward route to building a writing portfolio without experience is to post articles on websites that offer a low barrier to publishing. These websites and platforms allow you to create an account and publish articles on just about any topic. Most of these sites don’t pay a lick, but you don’t have to jump through approvals to publish your work. So, they serve as a good place to park articles you’ll include in your writing portfolio.

Medium is a publishing platform that houses articles on a variety of relevant topics. Anyone can publish on Medium because it doesn’t have a vetting process per se, which makes Medium a great platform for building a writing portfolio without experience. However, thanks to reader engagement tools and in-house curators that reward quality writing, Medium enjoys a solid reputation and often, top results in search engines. Writers can choose to place their articles behind a paywall for an opportunity to earn income.

LinkedIn is the top networking platform for entrepreneurs, businesses, and professionals. And if you haven’t set up your freelance writer profile on LinkedIn, what in the bejeezus are you waiting for? Once you’ve created your all-important profile on LinkedIn, you can publish articles. LinkedIn articles don’t pay. But they are excellent vehicles for writers without experience to get their work in front of potential business clients.

HubPages is a content publishing platform similar to Medium. But while Medium is minimalistic in its aesthetic, HubPages has more formatting options for your articles. HubPages also gives writers an opportunity to earn income through ad revenue and affiliate links.

Your Own Blog

Many writers showcase their writing on their own blog. Starting a blog of your own is easy, and you can create a blog dedicated to any topic. Many writers will maintain blogs on the same website they use to advertise their writing services. Blogs are an effective way to demonstrate your writing ability, especially if you want to write blog content for your clients. However, keep in mind the following drawbacks to maintaining a blog as a way to build a writing portfolio.

• Blogs are time-consuming. Blogs require consistent posts, sourced images, and tech know-how. The time you spend maintaining your blog may be better spent marketing your writing services.

• Blogs are a long-term commitment. If you start a blog as a way to build a writing portfolio from scratch, understand you are making a long-term commitment. Potential clients will look at your blog as a reflection of your work ethic, and allowing your blog to peter out will reflect poorly on an essential skill clients look for: your ability to consistently churn out articles.

• Blogs have a narrow focus. To give out the professional vibes you’re going for, you have to focus your blog on a niche topic. That means writing about the same thing week in and week out for the rest of eternity. Maybe not that long. But consider whether you’ll become bored writing articles on the same topic.

• Your new blog won’t have SEO cred. As a new site, your blog will likely show up at the bottom of the search engine pile. Potential clients will be less likely to find your articles than if you, say, published them on established sites like Medium.  

Pitch Your Writing Services to Websites Open to New Freelancers

The examples above are great ways to build your writing portfolio from scratch, but they also aren’t Bona fide clients. Even new writers with no experience can amp up their wordsmithing creds by earning a clip from an honest-to-goodness client.

Submitting Articles “On-Spec”

Not all websites require new writers to have portfolios before publishing their work, and having one or two clips from these sites can help you land more work. Many of these websites accept articles “on spec.” Writing an article on spec means you send a finished article to the website in the hopes they’ll agree to publish your work. Other websites require a pitch, or a summary of what you want to write about, but don’t require links to your previous work.

Best of all, many of these websites pay writers for their work. There are hundreds of websites that are open to new writers. You can find them by searching for “websites that pay writers.”

Pitch Your Local Newspaper

Reap the benefits of published work that passed editorial muster when you write for your local newspaper. Local newspapers are essential resources that, sadly, are struggling to make ends meet. Build a writing portfolio from scratch and perform an important civic duty at the same time by writing local news articles.

Write for Nonprofits

Many nonprofits would love to have a writer help them with their content and other writing needs. You likely won’t get paid writing for a nonprofit. But they’re a great way to build a writing portfolio from scratch and demonstrate experience working with business-related clients.

Assemble Your Clips Into A Writing Portfolio

Once you have writing clips, you’re ready to assemble them into a writing portfolio. Your writing portfolio is simply a webpage with links to your writing work. Posting links to your writing clips on your LinkedIn profiles is our top recommendation to get your writing portfolio up quickly and launch your freelance writing business. You can also create a website easily to house your writing portfolio using Wix, WordPress, or any number of easy-to-use website builders. There are also a number of other ready-made websites you can use to assemble your writing portfolio, such as Clippings.me.

Make Real Money Freelance Writing

Freelance writing is a legit opportunity to become your own boss and make a decent living. Getting started as a freelance writer may seem intimidating. But it’s a heck of a lot easier than whittling away your social circle with MLM schemes. Once you figure out that first stumbling block of how to build a writing portfolio without experience, you only need some writing ability — and a whole lot of grit — to carve out a satisfying and successful freelance writing career.

Come back for more insights right here on The Pajama Writer Blog. And find all the tools you need to start earning as a freelance writer.