How to build a million dollar portfolio

06.02.202215.12.2022 Sam

When choosing a specialist, the customer pays attention to the presence of reviews and, of course, to the portfolio, which indicates the experience of the performer and his capabilities. It is rather difficult to assess the professionalism of a remote specialist in the absence of personal communication, therefore, having correctly completed examples of your own work in your portfolio, you are more likely to receive an order and count on long-term cooperation.

How to build a portfolio correctly

This information will be useful for beginners who are serious about freelancing. For a copywriter, a portfolio is made up of written articles, texts that can be sorted by topic: selling, SEO, slogans for advertising companies, posts for social networks, product descriptions, etc. If you are engaged in design, your task is to show the customer your capabilities in the field of banner development, design products, website design and logos. At the initial stage, not every freelancer has a portfolio, so if you have managed to create several works, complete projects and have accumulated material to add to examples of work, you need to take the time to properly design.

First, select categories that you can conveniently sort your work into. For example, for a photographer, you can highlight the main areas of shooting: subject, wedding, reportage, portraits, etc.
In each direction you choose, you need to choose the best examples of work that can best convey your professionalism. Do not take everything in a row, first evaluate each work on a ten-point scale and include the best works in the section. Let 3-5 best works be presented in each direction than 15 ordinary and unremarkable ones.
Beautiful portfolio design also matters. Agree that a freelancer who writes articles can create one file and add several dozen articles to it without dividing them into categories, without appropriate design. But will the customer, after opening such a document, want to try to independently search for an example of a selling text among a bunch of articles? Most likely not.
In addition to the freelance exchange, where each specialist has the opportunity to create a portfolio, we also recommend posting examples of work on the Internet. To do this, you can create a website or web page with a beautiful design and user-friendly interface. You can place a link to your work in your resume, add a link in your profile for review.

How to choose suitable works for portfolio?

Every newbie has a similar question, but as mentioned earlier, you need to post decent material. Quality works for you, not quantity. Even a professional who can have a thousand examples of work behind him, this rule works. An experienced specialist perfectly understands where he did a better job, and which he would not like to put on public display.

Where can I place my portfolio online?

A personal site is the best option, because you can link to examples of work on your own business card, indicate in your profile on the freelance exchange, and also leave a link on a forum, website, or in any community.
If you are looking for customers and jobs exclusively on the remote work exchange, a portfolio posted on the resource of the portal itself will help to attract the attention of the client. Some exchanges provide the opportunity, for a fee, to highlight the portfolio in the general catalog.
On special sites – directories of freelance work.
If you would like to post examples of your work on the forum, be prepared to update them several times a month, as topics change quickly and the effect of adding a portfolio is short-lived.

As practice shows, the first two options really allow you to find regular customers – a website and a freelance exchange. If you invest in the promotion of your own website, there is a chance that the client will find you. But you can also create a personal resource for posting examples of work and provide a link to it upon request. On the freelance exchange, you can receive both one-time orders and offers of long-term cooperation. To increase your chances of finding a regular client, list your portfolio in a freelance directory. The works in the catalog are sorted by the rating of the specialist, which depends on the number of added works, the number of transactions and feedback on cooperation, portfolio views. Therefore, it is important not only to have a correct and beautiful design, but also to take care of the internal rating on the freelance exchange.

Other options for placing a portfolio have a place to be, they just bring the desired result much less often. But sometimes, by posting a link to the portfolio in the comments on the profile forum, you can get a better offer, because the customer decided to start the search by browsing freelance forums.

Proper portfolio design on the freelance exchange

In addition to the title of the work, you can enter a brief description of the submitted work, add a photo and a link to the source of the placement. A designer can add a screenshot of the site he has developed, a journalist or copywriter can also add a screenshot of his work, which can be found on a website, online publication or social networks. It is enough for the programmer to describe the essence of the work and provide a link to the site where you can get acquainted with the developed control system.

You can specify a specialization and select several areas that you need to fill in with examples of work. It is worth adding at least 1 example to each section, but it is better to collect the best works and place 3-5 high-quality examples. Since by specifying an additional specialization and leaving it empty, a customer who wears your portfolio in the catalog and sees an empty field when going to the section will most likely continue the search and choose another artist.

Speaking of the number of jobs, some remote work exchanges encourage performers to add their work to the portfolio by accruing for each certain number of points that affect the rating of a freelancer. Therefore, specialists are interested in constantly filling the portfolio with new examples of work.

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.

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, we need to say hello to 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 the commission is one. 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.