Freelancing: Why Your Portfolio Isn’t Working

For a freelancer, a portfolio is like a shop window for a store. It is both an advertisement and a veiled offer of cooperation. The portfolio should demonstrate clearly all the skills of a specialist in order to regularly supply him with new clients. The key word is should. But in real life, it happens that there is a portfolio, but there are no new clients. Why does it turn out that the portfolio is worthless and does not work at all?

Most freelancers don’t actually showcase their own work. There is a portfolio – and okay. This is where the freelance community’s biggest problem lies. Many freelancers simply don’t know how to sell their services. Today, it is not enough just to be a high-profile specialist to succeed in the freelancing industry. Nowadays, a freelancer has to be a sales manager, a digital marketer, a bit of an analyst, and sometimes even an intermediary. And a portfolio, even the coolest one, is just a small part of the whole freelance business.

What should be in a good portfolio

How to create a portfolio depends on how effective it is. If there is a demand for services, then you need to create a quality offer. You need to constantly invest something new in your portfolio, but you need to do it carefully. Too complex, bright or specific examples can only scare customers away. A freelancer needs a constant stream of clients. Therefore, you need to find a middle ground and fill your portfolio in such a way that it generates the maximum number of customers.

But here a freelancer can be ambushed: you can form a portfolio in such a way that the flow of customers becomes so stable that the contractor will be busy working and fulfilling orders, losing control over his own business. Therefore, there should be a “magic button”, by clicking on which you can pause the flow of orders. Pressing again – and the virtual gateway is open again and orders from customers again rained down.

There is such a “magic button” on the freelance exchange Author24. This is a paid account. If a freelancer who works on the exchange has a good portfolio, then everything happens according to the following algorithm:

• purchased a paid account;
• invested in promotion;
• received a lot of offers from customers.

In this case, the freelancer is provided with work for several months in advance, and if a long-term project comes across, then for several years. Although on Author24, even without a paid account, you can provide yourself with regular orders, since new projects and cooperation proposals arrive on the site every day.

Freelance exchanges are a specific ecosystem. There is a huge number of customers who simply do not look for performers on the stock exchange. Therefore, relying only on the portfolio is not necessary if you have a desire to develop and move on.

The solution to this problem lies on the surface – a freelancer should have another portfolio or a separate website where he can place all examples of his work, which fully show his knowledge and skills.

What sections should be in a quality portfolio

You can often find creative portfolios of freelance illustrators and designers online. They are so creative that it becomes unclear what services a specialist actually provides and how to contact him. Everyone has seen such colorful and incomprehensible portfolios that did not work.

Only what brings results works. Therefore, the portfolio structure should be as simple and understandable as possible for any potential customer. Keep in mind that most clients have a vague idea of ​​the freelancing world and are very afraid of making the mistake of hiring the wrong person. Therefore, the portfolio should be, as they say, user-friendly, there is no way without it.

If the performer is not known in the freelance niche and is not a top performer, then each page of his portfolio should have selling content. Not in terms of selling, like texts in a landing page, but really working for profitable cooperation.

What sections should be in a freelancer’s personal portfolio? At a minimum, there should be such blocks:

• provided services (with subsections);
• main page;
• portfolio;
• information about the artist;
• contact details.

You can scroll through the pricing page, the blog, the previous customer testimonials page, all at will and situation. If the reviews work, then great, but if there is zero traffic on this page, then there is no need for it.

For a freelancer’s portfolio to work, the “Contacts” block must also be filled out. It is enough to write something like: “If you like my work, then write to me and I will definitely help you.” It seems simple, but this is already a personal contact that will surely melt the ice of mistrust.

If the client understands that the freelancer has the skills he needs to solve his problem, he will contact him anyway. Therefore, the artist’s portfolio must be convincing. With every pixel, it must convince the client on all pages, from the main block to the contact details. It is necessary to ensure that the customer understands that he has found what he has been looking for for so long. As a rule, setting up a portfolio the first time so that it works will not work. Most likely, a few attempts of a freelancer will fail, but if he strives for success, he will understand how the freelance market works and will be able to adapt his portfolio to all its current requirements.

When, after many sleepless nights, the diploma is finally ready, I want to pass it and forget it. But the university will not lag behind the student so easily. After all, the full text of the diploma was read only by the supervisor, and a whole commission will gather to evaluate it. Therefore, in many respects, his assessment depends on how the student defends his diploma.

So what is a successful defense?

• Competent protection text
• positive diploma review
• confident answers to commission questions

In the introduction to the course it is necessary to indicate many important points. One of them is methodology. The student is required to indicate what methods he will use in the study of the topic. This is not the easiest task, and often students cannot cope with this task themselves. In this case, you can contact us. Our specialists will write you a paper of any complexity, and you can discuss the price with them personally.

In the introduction to the course it is necessary to indicate many important points. One of them is methodology. The student is required to indicate what methods he will use in the study of the topic. This is not the easiest task, and often students cannot cope with this task themselves. In this case, you can contact us. Our specialists will write you a paper of any complexity, and you can discuss the price with them personally.

In the introduction to the course it is necessary to indicate many important points. One of them is methodology. The student is required to indicate what methods he will use in the study of the topic. This is not the easiest task, and often students cannot cope with this task themselves. In this case, you can contact us. Our specialists will write you a paper of any complexity, and you can discuss the price with them personally.

In the introduction to the course it is necessary to indicate many important points. One of them is methodology. The student is required to indicate what methods he will use in the study of the topic. This is not the easiest task, and often students cannot cope with this task themselves. In this case, you can contact us. Our specialists will write you a paper of any complexity, and you can discuss the price with them personally.

Speech structure

Of course, what exactly to say in the defense depends mainly on the topic of the thesis and on what exactly is written in it, but there are general recommendations that are suitable for everyone.

• First of all, we need to greet the members of the evaluation committee. (“Dear members of the attestation commission! Your attention is presented to the final qualifying work on the topic …”)
• Introductory part. Here you need to reveal the topic and identify the issues that are raised in the work.
• Relevance of the topic. At this stage, it is important to prove the relevance of the chosen topic and the degree of its development in other people’s works. Indicate the subject, object, objectives and purpose of the study.
• Theme disclosure structure. Here you just need to list the paragraphs that are in the work and briefly describe them.
• Problem statement. To confirm the relevance of the topic, it is necessary to state the problem and indicate the debatable opinions on this matter.
• Conclusions. At the end of the speech, the commission should hear the conclusions that the student came to in the course of writing the diploma, in which there are ways and methods for solving the stated problems.

On the one hand, it seems that it is much easier to write a graduation speech than the diploma itself. However, high-quality speech is a skillful squeeze out of the work, as well as its competent presentation. And it often happens that a diploma is written with the highest score, and a student gets a worse grade. Therefore, if there is a lack of self-confidence, you can order a speech on our website. And then the probability of failure due to bad speech will disappear. After all, we give a twenty-day guarantee for the work, and if something does not suit you, you can demand that the author finalize the order for free. We make sure that students are satisfied, so if the final version of the work does not meet the stated requirements, you will get your money back.

Formal requirements

When writing a speech for a thesis, you must also take into account that there are purely formal requirements.

• Time. Do not forget that there are many students, but only one commission. Therefore, the time for a defensive speech is regulated and ranges from 5 to 7 minutes. At the same time, you should remember about the time that will be spent on commission questions.
• Intonation. Where, no matter how on the defense of a diploma, is it important to win over listeners? Therefore, it is better not to read the speech monotonously, making accents with intonation.
• Style. When presenting a speech, it should be remembered that the main goal is understanding on the part of the commission. Therefore, you should not be too smart, but you can’t switch to colloquial speech either. In this matter, you need to observe the golden mean.
• Pronouns. As in the diploma itself, it is important to remember during the defense that although the author of the diploma is clearly spelled out, there are a lot of true owners of knowledge reflected in the work (the authors of all the sources the student relied on plus the supervisor), so first-person pronouns are not appropriate here.
• Questions. After the end of the speech, questions from the commission will inevitably follow, and you need to be ready for them. Suggested questions should be written down in the course of writing the thesis, work through all the questions that arose during the pre-defense, and you can also look at the questions at the end of chapters from textbooks on this topic.
• Pre-protection. In such a matter as defending a diploma, it is better not to be presumptuous and neglect pre-defense. On it, you can practice giving a speech and write down possible questions from the audience. This will allow you to feel more confident in the official defense.

Of course, these are only recommendations, and no one forces you to strictly follow them. However, the rejection of some positions during the defense will create additional questions from the certification committee, which is not always loyal. Therefore, it is best to think through all possible questions and answer them in advance in a defensive speech. Then the teachers will have a minimum of questions, and they will be grateful for the saved time.