SUBJECT: Five Portfolio Pointers

Heres whats on my mind today: your portfolio. 

This is a collection of your own work  usually in
the form of a website, but occasional in a printed
brochure. 

No matter what stage you are in your career, its
worth it to have an EFFECTIVE portfolio.

What do I mean by that word?

It doesnt need to be huge.

It doesnt need to even be stuff you were paid to
do.

It just needs to be engaging and make your clients
imagine how good itll be if they had a guy like
YOU working for them.

So begin with your own portfolio pieces. When you
start writing on paid jobs, youll start to
daydream about those perfect gigs. 

You might think about how EASY it would be to make
a big sale if you had a perfect product to work
with. One that had a bunch of testimonials and
pretty screenshots showing how well the product
worked.

Umm why not just make spec pieces for those great
products?  

And if you really want to show off (and have a
small budget), you can split test a sales letter
with your material against a PLR products sales
letter. Usually these are written by outsourcers
in a hurry  and you can legitimately say you
increased response by X percent.

Where should this portfolio exist?

Well, you can make a physical package for personal
meetings  this can be really impressive if youve
done work in the clients niche, or have before
and after stuff to show them.

You can also put it on your website. Creating an
effective website is a bit of a broad topic but
remember to keep your navigation clean and simple.

Finally, give your work a double-check for grammar
and punctuation. Typos arent the end of the world
for a professional writer, but youd be surprised
at how many potential clients can use that as a
shortcut to gauge your competence. Be careful. 

Your portfolio is there to impress people. Make
sure that every element looks as good as possible!