Portfolio FAQs

NO. unless your college work fits perfectly in your niche and displays a marketable service. Instead of taking the time to edit your work from college, spend your time creating pieces from scratch.

Your portfolio should specifically target:

• the service you want to offer (i.e. blogs, newsletters, sales emails, welcome sequences, website copy, etc.)
• the clients you want to land
• the audience your client is marketing toward

I recommend most writers simply start with 2-3 examples of each of the services they’d like to offer (at least 3 total pieces).

That can be:

• 2 blog posts and 2 sets of 3 product descriptions
• 3 email sequences
• 3 pages of website copy for 3 different hypothetical clients (Try: Sales or Home & About pages).
• 3 sets of product descriptions
• 2 teardowns w/ mock ups of how you’d do it better

I highly recommend creating a FREE website right away in under 2 hours (how? Try the templates in the “Free Portfolio Website Templates (Notion & Canva)” lesson!).

Wait to create a time consuming website until after you’ve been in business for at least 3 months.

Most likely, you’ll spend a lot of time overthinking your website when you could be spending that time getting your first clients and finding out if you even like the niche you picked.

You’re going to want to COMPLETELY tear down and re-do your website in 3-6 months. I guarantee it. Don’t waste your time. Just get something SIMPLE up. Then, plan to re-do it later when you have more expierence.

Yes, you can start sending Letters of Introduction (LOIs) before your portfolio is completed.

Letters of introduction are simply a way to connect with potential clients. It’s not a pitch, it’s a conversation starter – it’s networking. You need those connections to build up over time so that you can cash them in later for gigs. So start building them early and don’t worry about being perfect!

I’d recommend holding off on sending pitches (anything beyond the “do you ever work with freelancers?” question in the Get Clients Guidebook) until you’re actively ready to accept a new client. So you should be done with the Business Setup Checklist, your portfolio, know your niche, set your rates, and created your packages.

Yes — but AI should not be fully writing your portfolio pieces for you, and you should never post anything straight out of an AI tool without editing it yourself first. AI-generated writing is pretty easy to spot, and it's not going to show potential clients what you're actually capable of.

The way I'd recommend using AI is as a thinking partner, not a ghostwriter. Use it to brainstorm angles, ask yourself better questions about your topic, get unstuck when you're staring at a blank page, or pressure-test your outline. Let it make you a better writer — not a faster copy-paster. The goal of your portfolio is to show clients what you can do. Make sure it actually reflects that.

Yes, if it's relevant to the niche and services you're trying to offer now. Work you did in-house for a company is fair game as long as it wasn't covered by an NDA — check your contract if you're not sure. If you can use it, treat it like any other portfolio piece and consider turning it into a case study so you can speak to the goals, your process, and the results.

First, ask your client if they'd be willing to make an exception for portfolio use only. A lot of clients will say yes if you ask nicely and make it clear it's just for your portfolio — not for public promotion. If they say no, here's what you can do instead:

→ Redact it — this means removing all identifying information, not just the client's name. Think: brand names, product names, industry-specific language, any stats that could identify the company, logos, and screenshots with visible branding. If someone could figure out who the client is from context clues, keep editing. → Recreate it — use the NDA'd project as inspiration and create a similar piece from scratch for a fictional client. You can speak to your process without sharing the actual work. → Use a testimonial instead — if the client is happy with your work but the work itself is off limits, ask if they'd be willing to write you a short testimonial. Social proof goes a long way.

As soon as you have real work to replace them with! Once you've completed a project for an actual client, add it to your portfolio and phase out the mock piece it most closely resembles. You don't have to do it all at once — just make it a habit to update your portfolio every time you finish a project you're proud of.

A good rule of thumb: by the time you've had three to five clients, your portfolio should be made up entirely of real work. And don't be precious about keeping old pieces up just because you spent time on them. Your portfolio should always reflect where you are now, not where you started.