That’s a load of garbage.

If you’re really cut out to be a freelance Web writer (where portfolios come more into play than full-time employment), you’re going to spend time building credentials and properly targeting your market long before you actually start offering services. When you finally get to that point, there’s no good reason for you to not already have at least a handful of portfolio pieces showcasing your Web writing abilities within your niche or specialty form of writing.

Is Non-Paying Work Ever OK?

Am I saying you should never do non-paying work, when building your portfolio (or after)? No. What I am saying is that you should never take on a non-paying freelance Web writing gig solely for portfolio pieces. It should be paying you in other ways – and I mean more than saying “well this person might give me a referral.”

Why doesn’t it matter that the person receiving the free content might refer you to others? Because people do ask what their friends or colleagues paid, and if you’re going to charge $25 per article, but they know you did a piece for their friend for free, you’ve now set yourself up to be low-balled in your referral base – not smart.

When is a non-paying gig worthwhile? When you’re getting more out of it than you’re losing by not charging. That might be a marketing benefit, exposure, or some kind of contribution to your image. We’ll look more at that below with specific ways to build a writing portfolio with no paid experience under your belt.

Ways to Build Portfolio Pieces with No Experience

• Blogs and Content Sites – If your specialty is Web content writing in the personal finance niche, an excellent way to start building a portfolio is to launch your own blog on personal finance. This not only lets you showcase your best work (you can send a link to the blog or specific articles to prospective clients), but can also serve as an income stream through advertising (and I’ll tell you from experience that if you keep working at it, your blogs can earn you decent money).
• Article Marketing – This is one of those situations where it’s not a bad idea to write for free. The key is getting the most marketing value out of your articles written for this purpose. For example, many writers submit articles to large article directories. I’d suggest against it. They lend little credibility. Instead, send free articles to niche article sites or even to blogs in your specialty area that may accept them as a guest post. For example, if I want to get more exposure in a specific business niche, I may write a free article for Work.com because they carry more credibility with a built-in business audience than article directories do. Again, you can link prospective clients to these articles. Since most are non-exclusive though, if you do go with an article directory instead of targeted options, I would suggest forgetting the link, and instead publishing it directly to your own portfolio site.
• Write for Non-Profits – This is one other area where I’d say it’s OK to write for free (or simply at a discount) early on. What does this offer you that free articles for a profit-based client can’t? It’s an image-builder. Non-profit involvement is often a good PR move. And let’s face it – what looks better? A reference from a branch of a large and respectable non-profit agency, or a reference from a random webmaster no one has heard of, wanting free or $5.00 articles? Take a wild guess. If it doesn’t lend something to your credibility or image, don’t do it for free.
• Write Mock Pieces – This is my least favorite option for portfolio-building if you have no actual experience. To put it simply, you create a “fake” piece. This doesn’t really work for articles (there’s no such thing as a “fake” article really). It works well for marketing copy and similar things though. For example, if you plan to write business plans, you may want to write a fake one for a non-existent company similar to those in your target market. The benefit here is that you can later use them as a template to speed up the process on future projects, and you’ll have more creative freedom. In addition to using mock pieces when you’re new, they can work well if you can’t share full actual samples (again using the business plan as an example – clients won’t want you sharing their private business and financial data enclosed in them with other prospective clients).

Using the Sale to Build Your Portfolio

Here’s something else to consider – run a sale. This can work when you’re new, or more experienced. Let’s cover sales for the new, inexperienced writers here.

The key is this: Don’t go around saying something like, “since I’m new, I’m going to write articles for a while at $5.00 per article, and then raise my rates later.”

Instead, try something like this (again based on relatively low rates for easy example purposes): “My regular rate is $20.00 per 500-word article. I’m currently offering a 50% discount on first orders from new clients only.”

Why is the second route better, using the numbers in the examples?

1. You’re not emphasizing your “fault” (in this case that you’re new) – you’re going to let the quality or your credentials in the niche or specialty speak for themselves.
2. You’re putting a limit on the low rates up front (only first orders, and only for new clients).
3. People like discounts. Saving $10.00 on an article can be even more attractive than paying only $5.00 for one if you “sell it” well with your marketing copy in your sales announcement.
4. You’re not immediately starting off by trying to compete with lower-tier writers (once you start feeling like you have to compete with them, you may always view them as your competition – they’re not). What’s worse is that trying to compete with them, even temporarily, can permanently put you in the same league as those lower-quality writers in the eyes of your target clients. Once you create a certain image with buyers, it can be very difficult to break out of it.
5. You’re letting prospective clients know up front that you place a certain value on your work (your regular rates). This helps to ensure that you’ll attract clients willing to pay those rates if they continue with you past that first order.
6. If you’ve taken the time to properly set your writing rates to begin with (again to get those regular fees), you’ll know how many lower-rate clients you can afford to take on and still get by. Most Web writers who simply start off very low because they’re told they should don’t honestly know what they need to begin with – they’re trying to market solely on price rather than running a responsible business (and that’s what being a freelance Web writer essentially is).

Start Building Your Portfolio

Now that you have a few ideas to get you started on portfolio pieces, get to work on building a portfolio that will attract clients, increase your credibility, and demonstrate what you feel your writing is really worth.

I’d love to see how other writers are keeping their portfolios online (for those with public portfolios). If you would like to leave a link to yours, please feel free to do so in the comments. You can see an example of the simple portfolio format I use at ProBusinessWriter.com.

What is a USP?

Whether you call it a unique selling proposition, unique selling position, or something else, your USP is essentially the reason a client should not only hire you, but pay you what you think your services are worth.

Examples of USPs

Your USP can be any number of things, or a combination. Here are some common examples:

• Your specialized credentials
• Your quality
• Your experience with a certain type or caliber of client
• “Extras” you may include that similar providers don’t
• Your pricing

Avoid Pricing as a USP

While being the least expensive option can attract clients, anyone with an ounce of marketing sense will tell you that you should never market services on price. It may work as a USP for products – look at Walmart. But you’re not Walmart. You’re not offering products. You can’t manufacture something cheaper, you can’t buy in bulk, and you only have a limited number of hours per day that can be allotted to providing a service.

Web writers who try to market primarily or solely on prices generally don’t last very long. They can’t meet their income goals in the long term, or they find that once they’ve set their reputation as a “cheap” provider, it can be nearly impossible to move beyond that image when they are ready to start charging rates in line with other professionals.

Don’t do it. There’s no good excuse. And don’t make the common mistake of thinking you should start extremely low when you’re new, because you can drastically increase rates later – most can’t. You’ll never earn to your full potential if you go this route.

Example: Web Content Writing

One of the services I offer is Web content writing, including SEO content. You’ve probably seen people advertising SEO articles at rates like $5 per 500-word article. So why is it that my clients are willing to pay me 20 – 100 times more than that for a similar-length article? Because I have a solid USP, and I can back it up.

The primary emphasis of my Web content writing services is the quality. I write business-related content, because I’m a specialist. So my background ( in my education, past client experience, and the fact that I’m a small business owner on top of being a freelance writer) tells prospective clients that I know what I’m talking about. I can write content that generally goes beyond research – I can write from that experience to give them something truly unique or original. That comes at a premium (and specialization is usually a great component of an effective USP for writers). I know how to show clients that higher quality content than those $5 articles can actually improve their business – improve their reputation, increase word-of-mouth marketing on their behalf, and even flat out make them more money. Again, they’re willing to pay more, because my content not only can get them search engine results, but help them solidify a long-term business identity.

What’s Your USP?

Is there anything that sets you apart from the countless other Web writers vying for the same gigs? If not, you should start putting some thought into it. Can you specialize, if you’re not already? Can you improve your credentials? Can you think of benefits your writing would have for clients that similar writers aren’t thinking to mention? Can you offer something extra (like a free report, consulting related to the writing you’re providing, etc.) that might attract clients to you over your competition? If nothing makes you the best choice, you need to change that.

BACKGROUND

I chose to evaluate WebWritersGuide.com, because it’s a relative infant compared to some of my other blogs. That means it has a huge amount of room to grow from this starting point. If you follow this blog regularly, you also know that I recently launched the first in my Web Writer’s Guide e-book series – the blog was originally launched as a vehicle to promote those e-books. It’s made no trackable income on its own yet through the last complete month (September 2008), and I’m obviously hoping to change that through e-book sales. That makes this the perfect time and the perfect blog for an evaluation – I can see what I’m doing well, what I’m doing wrong, and make changes to improve the blog’s value to me.

THE EVALUATION

• Audience – I think the audience here is reasonably well-targeted, and doesn’t need a change. The title makes it clear that the site is targeting Web writers, and I think most of the content makes it clear the site focuses on two primary things – 1) Freelancing (not full-time employee jobs) and 2) Web writing for yourself. I do have a blogging category setup that has no posts yet, so I should branch more into that to try to attract more bloggers to the audience (especially since there’s an e-book planned down the road specifically targeting bloggers). I’d also really like to put my marketing / PR background to good use and make this site the source for freelance Web writers to find information on effectively marketing themselves.
  
  



• Content – I see two current problems with the content right now – 1) There’s not enough of it, and 2) Most of the recent posts are about the e-book rather than value-added content for visitors. While that’s expected near launch time (announcing sneak peeks, announcing the launch, announcing the affiliate program, etc.), I should have been working in other content at the same time, and I’ve done a poor job of that. So increasing content needs to be the #1 priority I think.
  
  
• Search Rankings – There are currently 31 pages indexed in Google. That’s pretty “normal” given that there are only around 15-16 posts live, plus the home page, category pages, etc. To improve my presence there, I need to post far more often.

  In Google’s search results, one of my pages comes up #8 for the site title (not in the top 30 for other general phrases like web writers or web writing yet). Ideally, I want this to be #1 for at least the site title, or at a bare minimum in the top 3 – 5.  There’s a book with the same short-version title, so that’s going to be the primary competition to beat out for placement. I’m completely anti black-hat tactics, so it won’t be a terribly quick process to fix that, but I’ll start by evaluating my site meta details, adding post meta details to all new posts, tagging, and doing more link-building for the site title. In essence, SEO is just a limited form of PR (which is what I do best). It’s about visibility in a narrow medium (search engines), and that’s what I need to work on. At the same time, I’m very against becoming a “Google slave” – relying on search engine for the bulk of my traffic, and therefore income / sales. So I’ll be putting emphasis on improving traffic from other sources far more than directly worrying about SEO constantly – this has proven to ultimately lead to much higher rankings for target phrases in the end for me on other sites, and I don’t plan to mess with that strategy.
  
  

• Traffic – Traffic has increased quite a bit in October since the e-book’s launch, but let’s focus on full months for now. The first month with traffic was May 2008, with only around 50 unique visitors and a little over 500 pageviews – pitiful. I’ve done a terrible job of building the site up between then and September, which is my own fault for not posting regularly and building up a solid following on that site for blog itself (which was designed to later be the promotional vehicle for the e-book series).

  This is an area where I need to make some major efforts to see some major improvements. Stats in September were a little under 150 unique visitors and a little over 2200 pageviews (while not officially counting it here, there are already over 500 uniques and 5000 pageviews for October, so it’s definitely improving with the launch of the e-book, and that’s only been live for about a week now – November should be the first full month to witness changes related to the e-book being released).

  I’m fortunate in that I have four other writing-related blogs, and a business-related blog. I basically relied on knowing they were their with built-in audiences, rather than building a significant separate audience for WebWritersGuide.com – that’s going to be one of the biggest changes moving forward (more notes in the branding section). I’d really like to see this at 2-3k uniques per month and at least 20k pageviews per month within 3 – 6 months, more in line with where this blog was with the same amount of effort. I need to get it on a regular posting schedule, and make it “my baby” for a little while.
  
  

• Inbound Links – Google’s Webmaster Tools show 1605 incoming links, and Yahoo shows 2517 Inlinks. This is as high as it is most likely from my own links from other sites in my network, as well as forum signatures. I need to build more natural links. I won’t submit to link directories or submit my own sites to social bookmarking / networking tools (while I used to have no problem with this, over the last year or so I’ve come to consider it unethical, and don’t want my blog’s brand tied to it). A new free report I’m hoping to launch soon may help with this.
  
  
• Brand – The blog (and e-book series) have strong branding potential, but are both too new and unknown to have a solid brand yet. I need to map out the brand image I really want to establish, and work out a PR plan that combines both branding for the blog and e-book series with personal branding (for example, there’s very little personal branding now – I need to add a photo of myself for the trust factor, more background info, etc.).
  
  
• Profit – Assume no profit through the last full month (Sept. ’08). The few ads there weren’t uniquely trackable, and profit would have been minimal if anything. Also assume no costs beyond $10 – 15 for the year (for hosting and the minor portion of the Web hosting package it’s included on).

  A new income stream was launched in October ’08 – the Web Writer’s Guide e-book series. Sales have been off to a slow start, with no current affiliate sales. The biggest thing to do now to increase profits is to promote the affiliate program. I also need to come up with a broader promotional strategy for the e-book for direct sales.

  While I don’t believe in general article marketing through article directories to promote personal brands / services, I’m considering trying it with 5 – 10 articles promoting the e-book in the resource box. I’ll also be making the sales page the link I include when commenting on related blogs in the niche, and will be introducing graphic ads onto other sites within my own network before the end of this month. I’m also planning to release a free short report to promote the e-book in the next few weeks.

  Another obvious way to increase profits moving forward will be to add more e-books to the series, although not too quickly in succession (don’t want to jeapordize the sales potential of each title by oversaturation within my target market too quickly).
  
  

• Design – The design is a free template without major edits. Overall, the color scheme suits the niche and audience, and the general layout works well, giving me room to promote the products and blog posts equally well (including multiple decent potential ad placements, which will let me play with conversions in different areas if needed).

  There are some minor things I can do to improve the design – for example I could decrease spacing between lines, and increase it between list elements for easier scanning. The current blue for the links in-post is a bit washed-out looking, so I could darken that and see if it improves clickthroughs.

  In the long-run, if the design seems to inhibit sales, traffic, etc., it might be worth getting a custom theme created, but for now it doesn’t seem to be necessary for this particular site.
  
  

• Domain – The WebWritersGuide.com domain was registered in February 2008, so it’s still a relatively new domain. Nothing can be done about that but to let it age.

  The domain itself is top-level (in this case .com), key-word rich, and brandable, meaning it’s generally a good domain for the niche and blog (and products promoted there), and doesn’t need improvement on that front.

If you were curious about it, but you haven’t picked up your copy yet, take a look at what the first few reviews had to say – so far we’ve heard from Anne Wayman, Angela Booth, LaToya Irby, and Abby Beal. I’ll be adding more from other reviewers and customers as they come in.

I’ll also be back to regular blogging at WebWritersGuide.com today with a post on proving your value to prospective clients, so be sure to check that out!

I’m planning to finish up edits on the e-book this weekend, and it’s scheduled for launch either Friday of next week or the following Monday. Next week I’ll be sharing a free excerpt of the e-book, the TOC so you can get an idea of what’s included, and an early sneak peek at my custom one page business plan template for Web writers. However, you’ll have to be subscribed to AFW via email if you want the earliest access (Monday)! For everyone else, you’ll be able to check them at WebWritersGuide.com on Wednesday of next week.

So keep your eyes peeled at the Web Writer’s Guide blog for the first in the new e-book series on making a living writing on the Web – The Web Writer’s Guide to Launching a Successful Freelance Web Writing Career.