Freelance Online Portfolios

There has been much posted this week around the freelance writing blogs on freelance portfolios - what needs to be included, what needs to be left out, the importance of having one, etc. So much so that I decided to revamp my basic, quiet little portfolio into something pretty darn neat.

With the help of a great writer and friend Dawn Friedman, I am currently under construction at TerreeceClarke.Com. Little did I realize there are so many decisions to make:

• What do I want the site to look like?
• What color, theme, graphics or no?
• What do I want to project? What types of business do I want to attract?
• Should I include this blog? Wrap all 3 that I write into one?
• Are flowers professional?
• Do I need to add some red for good career feng shui?
• Can I put corporate work and examples with freelance magazine writing?
  

And then some. Yikes! I had no idea what I was getting into, but that made me realize that perhaps I had taken my site for granted. It's not even listed with Google for goodness sakes! I've treated it like something you needed to have because experts said so, but truly never utilizing the space. Talk about a waste of hosting money.

Redoing my site has forced me to consider several questions - What do I want from my career? Exclusive magazine work? More corporate work? More editing? Is there a way to have all three? What about journalism? Can I show that I'm versatile without losing the "serious journalist" edge? Are flowers too girlie for journalism?

So I will spend the weekend pondering and hammering it out. Going beyond "What kind of gigs do you want?" Paying. I really feel like Harland, I'm blessed to be talented enough to do a variety of writing styles really well, but ya gotta pay me.

Magazine, corporate and journalistic writing - can you have it all? What does your online portfolio say about you?