7 Best Portfolio Websites for Freelance Writers

If you are a freelance writer, especially a newbie, you need portfolio websites. Clients want to see samples of your work to give them a feel of your writing style and to help them assess if you’re the person for the job. And even if you are not a newbie, you can never outgrow this very familiar line, “Could you send me some of your previous work?”

In fact, a few minutes before writing this, I applied for a writing position online, and one of the things I was asked to do was to send a few samples of my previously published work.

Creating an online freelance writing portfolio helps your career in ways you can’t imagine. It’s a great place to keep all of your best work, plus have a nice bio about yourself.

It’s definitely a lot easier to send samples to your clients when needed if you have a few published on these portfolio websites. Online portfolios give you that professional touch. Some have attractive templates that are easy to customize too.

Not sure of the best places to build a freelance writing portfolio? Now, that’s where I come in. Here are seven websites that provide you with easy, reliable and versatile features to keep all your previous writing work.

1. WordPress

If you want to have more control over your portfolio design and features then WordPress is a good start. WordPress wasn’t particularly created for writers but its neat content management platform allows you to have a free hand to turn your page into whatever you want – including a portfolio for you best work.

WordPress has quite a number of themes to choose from. Sadly, not many of them are ideal to showcase your portfolio. However, you can get more themes from third-party websites. Some of such themes are free or paid and they’re accompanied by documentation and tutorials to help you through the customization. WordPress also has an engaged community to give you more support in the customization. 

Cool Features

• Free customizable themes
• Adaptable and responsive layout
• Supportive user community forums to walk you through the customization

Pricing

• Free – easy to setup and customize, free themes and a WordPress.com subdomain.
• $4 per month – custom domain name
• $8 per month – custom domain name, advance customization, ability to remove WordPress ads and monetize your website.
• $25 month – custom domain name, 200GB storage space, analytics, unlimited premium themes and plugins, ability to remove WordPress ads and monetize your website.

How to get to WordPress? Check out this link for the free version and this link for the paid version.

2. Squarespace

Just like WordPress, Squarespace wasn’t specifically tailored for writers. However, with Squarespace you can have an attractive, presentable, and functional portfolio and you don’t have to be a web design guru to get the work done. You’re in more control of how your portfolio turns out thanks to its drag-and-drop management and easy-to-customize portfolio templates.

And guess what? You get to have your own domain name.

Cool Features

• Responsive designs. Meaning, whether someone views your portfolio on Squarespace on the mobile phone, tablet or any other device, it still looks awesome.
• Customizable layouts (that will make you feel like a savvy web designer in the end)
• 24/7 client support to help you out when you get stuck.

Pricing

• $12 per month – free custom domain, SEO features and mobile optimization
• $18 – $40 per month – for business and commerce versions. You might not go for this one unless you’re interested in analytics, e-commerce and unlimited storage.

How to get to Squarespace? Check out this link: https://squarespace.com

Contently

How about an online portfolio that hooks you up with freelance writing jobs? Contently does just that! It was specifically created to serve freelance writers who are on the lookout for new gigs. That’s done on Contently.net. Sounds too good to be true, right? It probably is because Contently’s disclaimer that says that they can’t supply work to every Contently user.

But if you’re only interested in using it as a portfolio, then that’s fine too. Stick with Contently.com.

Cool Features

• Easy-to-customize single page portfolio interface
• Built-in themes
• Unlimited articles
• Allows you to document uploads and supports URL
• Supports multimedia
• Basic analytics that allow you to measure the number of shares and likes of your articles

Pricing

• Absolutely Free!
• 15% agent’s fee from the earnings you get from each job you get on Contently.net

Muck Rack

May seem quite similar to Contently in the area of creating a platform that’s connecting freelance writers and people who may need their service, but Muck Rack is more concerned with linking the writers to sources and public relations (PR).

This is one of the portfolio websites for freelance writers that provides you with a customizable but simple portfolio where you can add your bio and your articles.

Cool Features

• Easy customization
• Easy analytics for the articles you upload
• Allows you to upload PDFs and your articles
• Likely to get PR pitches

Pricing

• Free for journalists

Link to the site? Here it is: https://muckrack.com/journalists

Clippings.me

Clippings.me is dubbed the “the world’s largest journalism portfolio site”. Aside from being able to upload your work, you also have the opportunity to have a bio, include your social media links, categorize your articles and other writing projects you have and write a bio so that people will get to know who you are and not just your work. Plus, you get a subdomain.

Cool Features

• Supports video, PDFs and audio (so if you have a podcast or you were interviewed in one, you can put that up too)
• Mobile responsive
• Easy to customize templates
• Journalism directory that allows you to access a list of journalists you can reach out to, interview or collaborate with

Pricing

• Free – allows you to upload up to 10 articles
• $4.99 per month – provides you with an unlimited number of articles, domain name and a journalist directory
• $7.99 per month – analytics and it even gives you the opportunity to put a password on the portfolio.

Link to the site? Here is it: https://clippings.me

Journo Portfolio

Might not have a lot of themes like the others on this list, but it does the job as a functional online portfolio. Journo Portfolio is pretty straight with you. Upload your work no matter the format (PDFs, images and videos) or insert the link to your articles and it’s got you covered.

Cool Features

• Ability to get your own domain
• Analytics
• Supports PDF and image uploads
• Allows you to publish your personal blog posts on the platform

Pricing

• Free – custom subdomain and up to 10 articles
• $5-$10 per month – your own domain, article backup and unlimited pages

Link to Journo Portfolio? Here it is: https://journoportfolio.com

Pressfolios

Pressfolios was originally created as an online portfolio for freelance journalists. However, it doesn’t mean that freelance writers can’t enjoy the benefits of using this platform. When you create an account at Pressfolios, you’re given your own subdomain.

This platform offers article backup services so when you upload an article it immediately converts it into a PDF and uploads it to the cloud. It’s comforting to know that your work is safe and sound.

Cool Features

• User-friendly
• Backups and stores articles to the cloud
• Automatically converts articles to PDF

Pricing

• Two-week free trial period
• $9.99 per month (Lite plan) – 250 articles, backup to the cloud and PDF support subdomain
• $14.99 per month (Pro plan) – unlimited articles, expanded backup and custom domain

Want to get to Pressfolios? Check out this link:  https://pressfolios.com

There you have it!

Quite a list of portfolio websites for freelance writers, right? So, there’s no excuse not to have an online portfolio for your previous work. They’re not complex to use or customize and they get the job done for free or at an affordable rate.

What are you waiting for? Take your freelance writing game to the next level with a beautiful-looking portfolio you can refer your clients to.

Which portfolio site will you start building your portfolio on?