creative writing portfolio title page

WEBSITE ESSENTIALS

12 best writing portfolio examples and how to create your own

• Brandi Hunter

Get started by: Creating a website →  | Getting a domain →

When it comes to starting a business  around your writing, visibility is everything. The more well-curated and attention-grabbing your writing is, the higher the chance that potential clients and publications will notice your talent. Making a website  that presents your writing portfolio can help introduce the industry to your talent and invite new work.

You may be thinking, “I’m a writer, not a website designer”—that’s where Wix can help. Its templates and beginner-friendly website builder make getting started as straightforward as it can get. To get the creative juices flowing, here are 12 writing portfolio examples from Wix users. Later on, we’ll provide a more straightforward step-by-step guide to building your own.

Start building your online portfolio  with Wix today.

12 writing portfolio examples

Jed Donahue

Sam Carlson Creative

Lauryn Higgins

Jessica Van Devanter

Madison Gray

Jane-Ellen Robinet

Christina Sterbenz

Bryn Dippold

Charlotte Kho

Emma Newell

Maddie Pfeiffer

Rachel A.G. Gilman

01. Jed Donahue

Jed Donahue’s website is a great example of how speaking to your client’s pain points can compel them to reach out. The homepage header copy, “When you need great content, I’m here to help,” focuses on the customer’s needs. Testimonials from previous clients provide proof that Jed can deliver results. Meanwhile, the “What I can do for you” section gives a practical breakdown of the workflow and services that clients can expect.

02. Sam Carlson

Sam Carlson takes his writing portfolio a step further by putting his client work front and center. He highlights his creative flair and prowess as a copywriter by including engaging introductions for each case study. Every project page boasts a concise and clever summary, followed by the client's logo and key project assets. Additionally, his "Fun" page, which presents his personal projects, offers a glimpse of his hobbies and talents outside of writing.

03. Lauryn Higgins

If you, like Lauryn Higgins , have an extensive writing portfolio that includes several bylines with well-known media companies, you can strategically add publication logos to your website and link them to your author pages to show off your credibility. On her “Awards and Publications” page, she features snapshots of some of her best clips, along with several awards.

04. Jessica Van Devanter 

If you don’t have any visual content to display and don’t want to go through the process of finding a set of free-to-use visuals that match your branding and content, take a look at Jessica Van Devanter’s writing portfolio. By making the site’s design the focal point, she bypasses the need for external graphics or images that may not align with her branding. 

Her logo, a shrewd-looking fox, serves as the background for the large header, which captures the viewer's attention upon arrival. Below it, a mountain graphic underlays the main content area, providing a sense of continuity without overpowering the text. 

The structure of each page is reminiscent of a timeline, with her written works positioned as milestones, guiding visitors through her professional journey. The bright green and white font colors provide a deliberate contrast against the muted blue background, ensuring readability and drawing the eye to her written work.

Use Wix’s logo maker  to start building out your personal brand.

05. Madison Gray

As a writer and an artist, Madison Gray masterfully demonstrates both skill sets throughout her portfolio. Pairing her highlighted works with original images draws visitors in and creates a visually engaging narrative of her talents. Each project page indicates which skills she utilized to complete the project, offering a comprehensive understanding of her multifaceted abilities.

06. Jane-Ellen Robinet  

Jane-Ellen Robinet limits her writing portfolio to a page to help website visitors get the information they need quickly. The above-the-fold section summarizes her unique value proposition (“INSIGHT + PERSPECTIVE + EXPERIENCE”) and provides specific job titles for the services she provides (“Editor | Writer”). The header features anchor links to each section of the page to ensure easy navigation. 

07. Christina Sterbenz

Rather than categorizing work by publications, Christina Sterbenz structures her portfolio page around writing topics and pairs each section with a compelling image from one of the relevant clips. This strategy adds visual appeal and gives each topic a personal touch, making the stories more approachable and intriguing to visitors. The images, paired with informative captions, humanize the subjects, enticing readers to delve deeper into her work.

In terms of website design, the portfolio benefits from a clean layout and a modern, minimalist font, which together enhance the site's readability and aesthetic appeal. Visitors can effortlessly scan the pages, finding what they are looking for without feeling overwhelmed. Additionally, the consistent use of design motifs—such as circles and lines throughout the site—contributes to a cohesive and memorable brand identity.

Like this format? Use this creative CV website template  to get started.

08. Bryn Dippold  

Bryn Dippold uses Wix’s blog maker  to showcase her work samples. This approach of republishing content directly on her portfolio, rather than merely linking out to external publications, serves as a strategic method for keeping visitors on her site for longer and providing a comprehensive view of her work.

Many Wix website templates already come with an integrated blog. Alternatively, you can choose to add the blog feature to any template, tailoring it to fit your unique style. Wix allows you to customize the blog settings, enabling you to curate and present your best work in a manner that aligns with your professional image and goals. 

09. Charlotte Kho 

Charlotte Kho uses neutral colors, layered design elements and striking imagery to introduce herself as a digital and creative storyteller. The “Resume” page provides a lot of information, but its clean layout is easy on the eyes, and you have the option to download her CV. On the “Work” page, Charlotte offers a small selection of her best work, plus links to view more of her published pieces.

Like this layout? Make it your own as Charlotte did by customizing this business CV website template .

10. Emma Newell 

Emma Newell's website demonstrates a balance of simplicity and engaging elements, creating a visually appealing and user-friendly experience. The site employs subtle animations that add a dynamic touch without overwhelming the visitor. Notably, when you click on any link in the menu bar, the content below appears to swipe out of view as new content takes its place. This seamless effect maintains the homepage's structure and provides an uninterrupted browsing experience.

11. Maddie Pfeifer

Maddie Pfeifer effectively leads with her experience by featuring her resume on the homepage. It details her past work, highlights her skillset and lists the awards she has received in the course of her career. We appreciate that she prominently placed her contact information above the fold for easy accessibility.

Her website is a model of organization, making excellent use of Wix’s advanced menu features . The dropdown functionality in her navigation bar allows for an expanded array of options, enhancing the user experience. Visitors, when exploring the “Portfolio” page link, are greeted with the option to select content categories like “Event coverage” or “Crime & courts,” tailoring their browsing to their interests.

12. Rachel A.G. Gilman 

Rachel A.G. Gilman elevates her homepage's simplicity with a playful, animated headshot, contrasting colors and a classic font choice, creating a dynamic first impression. Under the “Writing” tab, her comprehensive archive is meticulously sorted into distinct categories, making it easy to sift through her published work and accomplishments.

How to make a writing portfolio of your own

After exploring some of the best portfolio website examples , you’re probably eager to get started on learning how to make a portfolio  of your own. Whether you're a seasoned writer or just getting started, these tips will help you present your work in a way that captivates and communicates your unique voice and skills. 

01. Identify your target audience

To properly tailor your site design to your audience, you need to identify who you’re looking to impress. For instance, if you’re using this type of website  to pitch to editors, you might consider spotlighting your best features or most impressive bylines. On the other hand, if you’re cultivating a professional portfolio  for freelance clients, you might want to put testimonials or a list of services front and center.

02. Establish your goals 

Setting clear goals is crucial to track your progress and success. If your objective is to boost engagement with freelance clients, you might measure this by the number of inquiries or project offers you receive through your portfolio site. On the other hand, if increasing your visibility as a writer online is your goal, you could focus on monitoring website traffic, page views, or how long visitors stay on your site. Regularly assessing these aspects will help you understand what's effective and what needs improvement in your portfolio.

03. Choose the right platform

When looking for a platform for your online presence, choose a portfolio website builder  that aligns with your technical ability and the amount of time you can dedicate to maintenance. Although creating a bespoke website might be impressive and a simple clippings curator (such as Muck Rack) would be convenient, it’s a better idea to go for a builder that combines the best of both worlds, offering both customizability and convenience. 

With Wix, you’ll have hundreds of customizable templates to choose from and AI tools that make designing and filling it with images a breeze. Furthermore, Wix enriches your website with features like built-in forms, custom email addresses, and newsletter capabilities, ensuring you can easily connect with your audience and maintain those connections effortlessly.

Check out this selection of Wix website templates for writers .

04. Decide how you want to structure your showcase

When building the “Works” or “Clips” section of your online writing portfolio, your focus should be on showcasing your writing as well as highlighting the outlets you've collaborated with. Select pieces that represent your best work and reflect the type of work you aspire to continue doing. Remember, it's always about quality over quantity. A handful of outstanding pieces will have a greater impact than a multitude of average ones.

If you're at the beginning of your career and lack professional bylines, don't hesitate to include your best work from college or independent projects. Additionally, consider starting a blog that reflects the kind of work you aim to do professionally. 

05. Build an archive

Imagine losing your most valued work if a website goes down or a publisher removes your article. To prevent this, create an archive on your portfolio site. By uploading and publishing posts using the Wix content management system, you not only safeguard your work but also boost your site’s SEO and engage visitors more effectively. However, remember to check your contracts, as some publishers may restrict this. If time is limited, consider downloading your articles as PDFs and linking to them on a dedicated page. It's best to maintain this archive separately from your featured works, ensuring they continue to be the main attraction.

06. Flesh out the rest of your site

Your writing portfolio is more than just your work; it's a complete presentation of your professional persona. Each page on your site plays a critical role in telling your story. Here's how to make them count:

Home: The homepage is your portfolio's front door, welcoming and guiding visitors. It's crucial that this page clearly communicates what you offer as a writer. Make sure visitors can instantly understand your area of expertise and writing style.

About: On your “About” page, detail your professional journey, educational background and skill set. This page is an excellent place to infuse personality into your resume. Consider including a PDF version of your resume so hiring managers can add it to their databases.

Contact:  The “Contact” page is your open invitation for communication. Offer multiple methods to reach you, such as a contact form and an email address. Consider using scheduling software  to make it easy for potential clients to set up consultation calls. 

When writing the copy for these pages, make sure your tone is consistent, engaging and speaks to your desired audience. If incorporating imagery, make sure they’re high-quality, complement the text and reinforce your professional image. Each element should seamlessly blend to form a cohesive and inviting online presence.

07. Test and publish

Broken links, grammatical errors or faulty contact forms may lead visitors to doubt the quality of your work or discourage them from reaching out. Make sure to do a thorough assessment of your site, and consider sharing your writing portfolio with others to get their feedback.

08. Update your website

Regularly update your portfolio with your latest work. This keeps your site fresh and shows potential clients your active involvement and range of skills. A current portfolio can also inspire new project ideas among visitors.

Top tips for your writing portfolio

When it comes to planning, creating and maintaining your writing portfolio, there are a number of tips to help you create a great one.

Tailor your portfolio to the specific writing niche or genre you're pursuing. Include samples that demonstrate your expertise and writing style in that area. Your writing portfolio is a showcase of how well you with with words and content, make sure it reflects that to the best of your ability and experience.

Prioritize showcasing your strongest writing samplespieces, even if it means having fewer samples. Choose work that highlights your skills, versatility, and ability to meet client expectations.

Each piece in your portfolio should tell a story. Briefly explain the project's context, your approach, the challenges faced and the outcomes achieved.

Include testimonials from satisfied clients for the purpose of adding social proof and to demonstrate the quality of your work.

Make your portfolio easy to navigate. Use a clear menu, categorize your work and implement smooth transitions between pages.

Let your personality and writing style shine through. Use visuals, tone of voice, and layout to create a cohesive and memorable brand identity that reflects you and your work.

Related Posts

How to make a professional portfolio

How to create a marketing portfolio: tips and examples

17 best portfolio layouts for creative professionals

Was this article helpful?

• Portfolio Tips
• Career Tips
• Portfolio Examples
• Get UXfolio!

4 Portfolio Cover Page Tips with Great Examples to Impress Your Future Employer

Klaudia Simon

In an ideal world design leads and recruiters would spend hours reviewing your UX portfolio . In the real world that hardly ever happens. Most of them spend a minute or two sorting through dozens of portfolios to choose the ones they’ll review in depth. During this process, there’s only one page they’re guaranteed to see : your portfolio’s cover.

Defining the cover page

The cover page is the first page of a portfolio, therefore, it’s the first thing people see when handling a physical portfolio, opening a portfolio document, or landing on a digital portfolio website. Its purpose is to hold together the various pieces and parts of a portfolio and to introduce the portfolio’s owner to the visitor/user.

Our research findings

As part of our research at UXfolio , we’ve interviewed many decision-makers to learn about their routines and perspective.

Most of them paint a similar picture about the hiring process: they get dozens of applications in a matter of days and they have limited time to make a hire. For design leads the situation is even worse because reviewing candidates is a task on top of their regular duties.

This means that they have to make quick decisions and be very selective.

Can you change that? The answer is no. But you can optimize your portfolio front page to capture their attention in that limited timeframe, so your application makes the cut and advances to the next stage of the hiring process, like the UX designer interview .

Why should you care?

A lot depends on your portfolio’s cover page since it’s your virtual first impression. If it’s up to par, your visitors will go on and explore your content, like your projects and about page. And this should be your key objective because it’s your projects that seal the deal by showcasing your expertise, talent, and process.

Your portfolio is a product

Your portfolio is a testament to your personal taste. When working for a client, company, or agency it’s part of the job to make compromises and adjust to the project. But in the case of your portfolio, you get a free hand.

Yet, you must remember that you’re not the user of your own portfolio. It’s the potential client, recruiter, or design lead who’ll be interacting with it. So, designing a portfolio means balancing your personal taste with their needs.

The 2 pillars of a cover page

If your portfolio title page makes a great first impression, your user feels compelled to dig deeper. To do that, they have to interact with your portfolio. Based on these facts, we can define two areas of focus:

• Look -> for the first impression.
• Structure -> so they find everything they want.

Easy-peasy, right? Yet, so many designers get it wrong because they get carried away while working on their portfolio, losing sight of its use cases and their own goals.

To avoid this, we’ve gathered a few straightforward rules that your can follow while working on your portfolio cover page design:

1. Look: optimizing for the first impression

The first impression is all about the look of your portfolio’s cover page. The goal is to make something beautiful, universal, and professional. Fonts, colors, whitespace, layout, and visual hierarchy all influence this. Together, these elements are responsible for the first impression your portfolio – and you – make. Therefore, you need to get it right:

Rule 1: Make your user feel at ease

Overdesiging is a common portfolio mistake. Many designers – especially juniors – believe that in order to show their personality every pixel of their portfolio needs to make a statement. The result is usually anxiety-inducing and very of its time.

Meanwhile, simplicity and minimalism are timeless qualities that evoke a sense of familiarity, making your user feel at ease . This is why many portfolios look so similar: people feel more comfortable with things they can pinpoint and categorize: ‘This is a portfolio because it looks like a portfolio.’

What’s even more important is that a simple portfolio cover page will direct your users’ attention to your project thumbnails.

Rule 2: Focus on your project thumbnails

Your portfolio’s cover is a hub from where your users navigate to various content such as projects, about page, contact page, and so on. From these, your projects are the most important because they reveal your talent, process, and experience.

In digital portfolios, projects are usually linked through thumbnails which take up the largest space on the cover page. So, they need to look amazing on their own and as a group.

The biggest project thumbnail mistake is using thumbnails with different styles. Just think about it: your thumbnails are in close proximity on the same page. If they’re not in harmony, you end up with a messy effect, indicating that you’ve failed to consider your portfolio as a whole.

Therefore, if you must prioritize one task above all from your portfolio front page design tasks, it should be your thumbnails.

What to feature on your thumbnails?

1. Snippets of the project deliverables

If you’re from a visual field – such as UX/UI or graphic design – put a preview of the finished design on your thumbnail. You can frame it in a device mockup or leave it naked, just make sure to use a nice layout that works for the rest of your project thumbnails as well.

2. Screenshots

Even if you didn’t do design on a project, your work has contributed to the design. Therefore, you can use a screenshot of the product on your project thumbnail. Again, you can frame it in a device mockup or keep it low-key.

3. Simple text

There’s something very sleek and professional about thumbnails that include nothing but text: a title and maybe a short description. So, don’t be afraid of this approach. It’ll look fantastic if you choose the right font, with legibility in mind.

Another option is to find the companies’ logos, unify them (with an overlay), and place them on harmonizing backgrounds. But keep in mind that this thumbnail type needs some text (title and short description) for context.

Photos work great on thumbnails too. But, you have to be careful. First, choose photos that are relevant to the project. Second, make sure that each project photo has the same color profile. You can achieve this by applying a filter or preset in an app like Lightroom.

4 simple rules for thumbnail consistency

• Use the same device mockup style on each thumbnail, or
• use the same thumbnail layout.
• Use the same background color on each thumbnail, or
• use harmonizing background colors.
• Match the color profiles of your thumbnails.
• Use overlays, presets, or filters to match clashing visuals.

2. Structure: optimizing for the user

Once you have your users’ attention, they will take a closer look at your portfolio. This means that they’ll start interacting with your cover page. Here’s what you should watch out for:

Rule 1: Follow the beaten path

We’ve already alluded to portfolio cover pages looking similar. This is also true for their structure and information architecture. Most portfolios look something like this:

Obviously, there’s some variance to this structure, but the three main elements are almost always constant:

• Short bio/intro
• Project thumbnails

These elements and structure work because the user can access all the necessary destinations in your portfolio right away. It’s their personal choice whether they’ll start with your projects or your about page. What’s important is that they can do so without having to think twice.

Once you start experimenting you risk confusing your users. Here are some of the biggest and most common portfolio cover mistakes:

• Hiding any of the essential elements.
• Over-animating essential elements.
• Forcing users to wait for essential elements to appear or become clickable.
• Making the user work for the information.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t experiment or express your creativity. The twist is that you need to be creative enough to create something that feels yours but doesn’t alienate your user.

So, keep it simple. Make your navigation, short intro, and your project thumbnails at least partially visible in your cover page’s first fold. Apply your creative energies to their style instead of their behavior and placement. If you go in with this mindset, you’ll make your and your users’ life easier:

• You dedicate your time to what matters most, and
• the users will have a delightful experience on your portfolio cover page.

Rule 2: Barebones approach

Let’s take a closer look at the 3 elements of the portfolio cover page and how to optimize them:

1. Navigation

Keep your navigation tidy! Your portfolio’s navigation should link only to the cornerstone content of your portfolio. This includes your about page, resume, and maybe a contact page. You can also include your projects here, but they’ll be linked through thumbnails anyways, so it’s not a must.

2. Projects

Keep your projects on your cover page and, if possible, make them visible in the first fold. After opening your portfolio, most users will want to see your work so you should make it easy for them.

The number of projects you need to include in your portfolio depends on the design discipline you’re practicing. However, these are the universal pointers:

• Quality over quantity: include your best work only.
• Projects that turned out great.
• Projects you’ve learned the most from.
• Projects that highlight most of your skills.
• Projects that have beautiful deliverables.

Everything that you’re second-guessing is better left out or reworked in a way that adds some value to your portfolio.

You can’t predict which project your visitors will click on. What if they choose the half-baked one that you’ve just added to reach a “project count” that some random article advised? That’d be a bummer. So, keep it curated and keep polishing the projects until they add some value to your portfolio.

3. Short bio

‘Tagline’ would be a much better word for the short bio on your portfolio cover page. It’s way more indicative of what it should be: a sentence that describes your perspective. Keep it short, sweet, and – if it’s something that comes to your naturally – witty.

For a long-form introduction, you can use your About page. Based on our research, people will read it if the portfolio makes them interested.

Let’s get to work!

Now you have a realistic image of what a portfolio cover page is all about. If you’ve read this far, you already know that we’re not here to sell you anything that’s not based on reality. Portfolio building is a serious business. Your future and livelihood depend on it.

If you’re looking for a portfolio builder that allows you to focus on what really matters, try UXfolio ! Our portfolio-building tool comes with stunning, minimal templates that can be customized according to your needs. Also, UXfolio comes with unique features like:

• Case study builder.
• Text ideas.
• Built-in device mockups.
• Various galleries.

Try it for free!

Limited Time Offer! Save up to 50% Off annual plans.* View Plans

Save up to 50% Now .* View Plans

10 Writers with Portfolios that Stand Out

These freelance writers know an attention-grabbing portfolio is a key factor when it comes to landing gigs. Check out these tips to create a killer portfolio.

A well-made writer website is an important tool for networking online as a freelance writer or editor. Twitter can be useful for making connections and finding gigs or potential clients, but a professional online portfolio is necessary when pitching new article ideas or applying for jobs.

Your online portfolio website can be simple, such as a biography and list of published clips. Or, you can add more depth with a CV, personal projects, and a blog post or two to showcase your writing.

Our Pick of the Best Writing Portfolio Examples

A well-designed writing portfolio is essential for showcasing your work as a writer. Format has compiled a list of some of the best writer websites to help inspire you.

These writers cover a range of genres, from journalism to fiction to fashion, and their online writing portfolios reflect the quality of their work. Format’s website builder and these writing portfolio examples provide a winning combination for success in your writing career.

Our collection of online writing portfolios can provide inspiration and help you think about what to include in your own portfolio.

Find more website design ideas at our round-up of the best online portfolios built using Format .

Jennifer Fernandez

Brooklyn-based writer Jennifer Fernandez uses a grid-based theme to showcase a range of links to writing samples, including a thumbnail image and title for each one. Fernandez has been on staff at Travel + Leisure, Architectural Digest, and Martha Stewart Weddings, and has worked for business clients including Zappos and Brooklinen. She organizes her writing website into categories of Design, Travel, and Lifestyle content to make browsing easy and to showcase the type of writing she has experience in.

www.jennifermfernandez.com Format Theme: Hue

Akwaeke Emezi

Award-winning Igbo and Tamil writer and artist Akwaeke Emezi keeps things simple on their writing portfolio with a text-focused design and lots of information about their work. Their debut autobiographical novel FRESHWATER was critically acclaimed by publications like The New Yorker and NPR, and they also have two new books forthcoming from Knopf and Riverhead Books. Their website is a simple way to put the main focus on their work.

www.akwaeke.com Format Theme: Offset

Kristen V. Bateman

Fashion and culture writer and editor Kristen V. Bateman keeps her online portfolio visually interesting with a theme that introduces each of her published clips via an image and title. Bateman’s extensive portfolio can be browsed by publications (which include Vogue, New York Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, and many more), as well as by category.

www.kristenbateman.com Format Theme: Coral

Elise R. Peterson

The work of New York artist and writer Elise R. Peterson has appeared in Paper Magazine, Lenny Letter, and Elle, among other publications. Her recent book with Feminist Press, How Mamas Love Their Babies, explores an inclusive idea of motherhood along with co-author Juniper Fitzgerald. Including a link to pre-order her book right on her sidebar menu ensures that visitors to Peterson’s site will be up to date on her latest work.

www.eliserpeterson.com Format Theme: Ora

Rebecca Hobson

Freelance journalist and writer Rebecca Hobson introduces her online portfolio with a professional photograph of herself and links to different sections of her writing website. Based in Bristol, Hobson has also lived and worked in India. She has written for publications including the BBC, Vice, and The Times . Organizing her writing portfolio into different sections such as Content Marketing and Current Affairs, her freelance writing portfolio allows viewers to explore all the different facets of her work.

Format Theme: Peak

Alice Driver

Award-winning and widely-published journalist Alice Driver includes a detailed yet concise biography introducing who she is and what she does, a great way of allowing visitors to her site to quickly understand the focus of her work. An additional page of recent clips, organized with titles and thumbnail images, makes further reading of her published projects instantly accessible. Based in Mexico City, Driver’s work focuses on migration, human rights, and gender equality.

www.alicedriver.com Format Theme: Mica

Tara Pixley

Los-Angeles based photojournalist and scholar Tara Pixley was a recent Visiting Fellow at Harvard’s Nieman Foundation, and has published her photography and writing on media in a range of publications such as Newsweek, New York Times, and ProPublica. Pixley’s online portfolio features a selection of her photojournalism as well as a section showcasing some of her published writing.

www.tarapixley.com Format Theme: Horizon Left

A Chinese writer and reporter based in Beijing, Qin Chen writes about Chinese society for English-speaking readers. With experiences as a senior video producer for The New Yorker and a documentary producer at CNBC , Qin’s online portfolio showcases her published writing and videography.

www.qinvisual.com Format Theme: Order

Elaine Bleakney

Writer Elaine Bleakney introduces her works on her website with images of the book covers and recommendations from peers and critics. Her simple layout keeps the focus on her work, easily allowing visitors to follow links to her published work or consider purchasing one of her publications.

www.elainebleakney.com Format Theme: Mica

Scott Broker

Scott Broker’s writing website features a headshot and brief biography right on the homepage, instantly giving visitors a feel for who he is. Based in Ohio, Broker is currently an MFA candidate at Ohio State University, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His writing portfolio includes a selection of publications with a brief description of each one.

www.scottjbroker.com Format Theme: Mica

Tips for Building Your Own Killer Writer Portfolio Website

After reviewing the writer portfolio examples for inspiration, you can build your own portfolio. To effectively showcase your work as a writer, you must also have an eye for design.

Brainstorm Creative Portfolio Titles

A writer’s portfolio isn’t complete without a creative and catchy title. Writing portfolio titles can be difficult to come up with, but they are an important first step in creating a great portfolio site. The title is the first thing a prospective client reads, so you must grab their attention if you want them to continue.

A well-conceived creative portfolio title should be big, bold, and targeted to your audience. Consider the tone you are setting and how it relates to the message you want to convey with your work. Consider including your name in the title so the reader will remember who you are. Also, consider how the title will look before selecting a font for your writing portfolio site.

Portfolio Essentials:

A portfolio typically includes examples of your work, an about me section, and contact information for clients. Using the right writing portfolio format to showcase your work is a great way to attract engaged clients. The best writer portfolio sites, such as Format, offer a range of templates and a drag and drop builder to help you create a professional portfolio.

Creative Writing Portfolios

To create a strong writer portfolio, choose a website builder with customizable features and an easy editing process. Format offers a feature-rich portfolio site builder specifically designed for creative writers. Their range of templates and examples can also help provide inspiration. This allows writers to focus on creating content for their clients, rather than web design.

Creative Writing Portfolio Examples

We’ve compiled some of the most striking creative writing portfolio examples on the web, so you can get your creative juices flowing. Our recommendations above highlight Rebecca Hobson and Elise R. Peterson as creative portfolio writing samples that hit the right level of charm, sophistication, and individuality. Like what you see? Use Format’s website-building platform to set up a beautiful creative writing portfolio that exhibits the best of your work, just how you wanted it to look.

Freelance Writer Websites

The best writer websites express the writers’ flexibility and competency across a broad range of writing contexts. Bringing together examples of work produced for various sectors and requirements is crucial to conveying your writing abilities. However, It is also important to consider your personal skills and tailor your portfolio to highlight your strengths and industry-specific experience. Our pick of great writer website examples, such as Elaine Bleakney and Akwaeke Emezi , find the right balance of personal writing skills and subject-focus.

Journalism Portfolio

An online journalism portfolio should showcase your career highlights and best work as a journalist. Format’s template builder can help you effectively present your skills and experience to news agencies. This is crucial for advancing your career in journalism, whether you specialize in print, broadcast, or online journalism. A high-quality portfolio website is key to standing out and attracting new opportunities.

Journalism Portfolio Examples

Looking for examples of some of the best journalist websites to spark your creative mind? We’ve identified Tara Pixley , a Los-Angeles-based photojournalist, and scholar, as a case in point of a journalist site that uses photography as a method to engage clients with her journalistic competencies.

Similarly, award-winning journalist, Alice Driver , uses her online journalism portfolio to help clients understand more about her career and her areas of focus as a journalist. Both of these journalists, among many others, rely on Format as the best website for journalism portfolios.

An appealing online portfolio for journalists should feature your best and most recent work, as well as a list of the news agencies you have written for. If you haven’t got any published articles yet in your repertoire, that’s no problem at all. You can write several articles right on your new site. Just ensure that they are formatted like a real news article and have no grammar or spelling mistakes.

How to Make a Writing Portfolio for College

A well-formatted writer portfolio can give you that added boost for your college applications and help you stand out from the rest of the competition. Moving your existing portfolio online can make it easy for college admission departments to see the depth and breadth of your work. The best way to do this is to use a dedicated writers portfolio website such as Format, which is built to help writers network put their talents on full display. We have writers portfolios examples and intuitive templates to help you get started.

How to Share Your Online Writing Portfolio and Gain Traction

Once you have built your writer portfolio website and feel happy with the aesthetic, it is time to get the word out. The best websites online writing portfolio examples are also highly integrated with social media and are SEO-friendly. Format benefits from all of the latest SEO tools as well as social sharing features. This ensures that your personal brand stays at the top of the search results, making it easy for potential clients to find you.

Which Writing Portfolio Website Should I Use?

Format offers a comprehensive and user-friendly website builder for content writers. The platform’s customizable templates and digital marketing tools make it easy to create a professional online portfolio.

This allows writers to showcase their work and communicate with clients, while also focusing on writing and advancing their careers. Format is voted among the best portfolio sites for writers, and our customer support team is available to assist with any questions or issues.

Consider using Format to create your online writing portfolio and elevate your writing career.

Want to see more inspiring websites? 10 Animation Portfolios that Get Creative with Website Design 10 Artists Taking Ceramics to the Next Level 5 Websites Built Using Format’s New Spruce Theme

A Guide to Improving Your Photography Skills

Elevate your photography with our free resource guide. Gain exclusive access to insider tips, tricks, and tools for perfecting your craft, building your online portfolio, and growing your business.

Get the best of Format Magazine delivered to your inbox.

2024 Winners Announced: Format Career Launcher Prize in Partnership with OCAD University

Unlock the True Potential of Your Visuals: 12 Must-Learn Color Grading Techniques in Lightroom and Photoshop

8 Makeup Artist Portfolios for Creative Inspiration

Building Your Brand In The Photography Industry

Discover 5 Retro-Style Digital Cameras for an Authentic Film Look

Collage Artist YoYo Lander on Exploring the Essence of Humanity

Finding Inspiration: Essential Strategies for Keeping Your Photography Spark Alive

*Offer must be redeemed by July 31st , 2024 at 11:59 p.m. PST. 50% discount off the subscription price of a new annual Pro Plus plan can be applied at checkout with code PROPLUSANNUAL, 38% discount off the price of a new annual Pro plan can be applied with code PROANNUAL, and 20% discount off the price of a new Basic annual plan can be applied with code BASICANNUAL. The discount applies to the first year only. Cannot be combined with any other promotion.

10 Portfolio Cover Page Templates [+Examples]

Portfolio cover page templates are an excellent option to make a stunning portfolio that stands out. It enables you to focus more on your work instead of thinking about its presentation. Portfolio sites are essential for freelance creators who want to attract more potential by effectively showcasing their work. 

Portfolio templates and website themes for photographers, artists, and graphic designers save time and budget. Simple CSS tinkering can make most portfolio themes unique.

Below are portfolio cover page design templates from major web platforms that you can consider to showcase your portfolio.

10 Portfolio Cover Page Examples

1.  thomas.

Thomas is one of the most stylish Adobe Portfolio website templates available. Simple and elegant, this portfolio cover page makes the work speak for itself. A scroll displays the project’s title and provides more images and information.

Existing Creative Cloud subscribers may prefer this template because it has Adobe Portfolio. Many creatives leverage Thomas to significant effect.

2.  Flatiron

Flatiron is a portfolio template from Squarespace. It has a visually appealing gallery display that integrates images of varying aspect ratios. Another option is to keep the site navigation unobtrusive and straightforward to ensure your portfolio reflects accurately. The puzzle structure maximizes the space available on the site for your work, while the menu is in the top left.

WordPress offers a lot of customization if you know a little coding. Helium is an excellent WordPress template for portfolio cover pages as it provides a broader range of features.

Helium provides an excellent user experience for anyone visiting your site, with three various portfolio layouts, a lovely blog, and a sophisticated AJAX navigation system. Helium’s full integration with Easy Digital Downloads makes selling digital goods or prints easy.

4. 3D portfolio design template

We adore the design of this template from Wix that works beautifully for a 3D artist. It’s suitable for showcasing any creative portfolio, but it works best for moving images.

You may showcase your top three images on the full-screen using parallax scrolling. You can leverage grid-style to show more work samples below. It’s a no-nonsense portfolio template to help you stand out with your 3D work.

5.  Malken-Hill

Cargo Collective provides a selection of outstanding portfolio layouts. A clean, white background displays your work and provides access to more images and info. The top navigation bar contributes to the minimalistic mood and sets the tone for less is more for portfolio sites.

6. Marta

Marta is an elegant theme from Adobe Portfolio. It is designed by an Amsterdam-based designer Marta Veludo. Visitors can always see your most vital information because of the fixed navigation feature that fluidity transforms colors while scrolling.

Navigation options are on the left side of the page, and the logo is positioned in the center. Responsive grid and fixed gutters are leveraged to build the entire site. This results in an eye-catching and slick option for a portfolio cover page.

York is a stylish Squarespace portfolio cover page template designed considering the unique needs of creative designers. It’s delightfully minimalistic in comparison to thumbnail-based alternatives. It focuses more on standalone projects with half-width or full-width images. Above the fold, an essential part of the Portfolio Cover Page is that it reserves an elaborate introduction.

You need work to support a straightforward portfolio template that positions the designer with complete confidence. It also offers the option to highlight a few of your genuinely outstanding projects.

8. Emma Brewer

Many of Wix’s portfolio templates are incredibly flexible regarding the kind of work they may display, although each one typically has a suggested discipline.

Art directors and graphic designers are the target audience for this Emma Brewer theme. The homepage features large, half-page thumbnails that link to expansive project galleries.

For projects with multiple touchpoints, this is ideal for displaying a hero image at the top, followed by a paragraph of information and a selection of secondary images.

9. Throne

Throne, another highly adaptable WordPress template, is apt for a full-fledged studio or a freelance creative. There are many options for customization, making it ideal for those with diverse portfolios that span multiple disciplines, as the navigation lets you search by category.

This portfolio cover design offers more video support, widgets, icons, fonts, CSS3 animations, and page layout options.

This WordPress theme requires high-resolution images, but it’s worth it. You can also include social media links with this portfolio website template if that’s your thing.

Snaps is a portfolio template for portrait-oriented images, illustrations, and other works of art. The simple, basic design focuses on your tasks and fits any screen size.

3 Tips For Designing Your Portfolio Cover Page

1. your portfolio cover page should stand alone..

Your portfolio page is so much more than a collection of projects! Design is always crucial, even if you can’t design your portfolio cover page. Fonts, colors, whitespace, layout, and visual hierarchy are significant factors. Not just your projects, but these elements can make a first impression.

2. Show some personality

When applying for a job, you should spice up your portfolio. Remember that most companies are looking for like-minded individuals. Why wait for a phone or in-person UX designer interview when you can leapfrog? 

Display it on your portfolio cover page, show your name, position, and contact information prominently where people can see them immediately. However, adding hobbies or activities can help you get ahead.

3. Your projects are the star.

Your portfolio design goes beyond your header and bio. Instead, it begins when you complete your projects. Your projects are vital in your portfolio; therefore, make them big. Grab all the attention now! Portfolios should contain three to five projects – your best work. Putting them in a single line or a carousel won’t work.

A portfolio cover page records an individual’s achievements, skills, and abilities. Unlike a resume, which lists a person’s qualifications and recent accomplishments, a portfolio showcases a person’s past work and current skills and interests.

The portfolio cover page is a concise summary of that person’s work. The purpose of the cover page is to promote a person’s skills and achievements. It’s a way to attract prospective employers’ attention.

Employers rarely have the time to look through a candidate’s entire resume. The portfolio cover page is a savior for both the employer and the individual. The person can highlight their best work and abilities, and the employer can decide whether to hire or promote them based on their cover page .

Key Takeaways

• Portfolio cover templates can save time and energy.
• We can customize templates and add information.
• A professional appearance would be an attractive feature for employers and meet their needs.
• A portfolio cover page is a great marketing tool. The available templates can help simplify this process.

You should include projects and significant pieces of work that you’ve managed or involved in your portfolio. Include any relevant outcomes and lessons you’ve learned and any relevant skills or methods you’ve used in the past.

Physical or digital records of your achievements and accomplishments are formats for a portfolio. A professional portfolio can help you stand out from the crowd when applying for jobs that don’t typically require a resume or cover letter.

Portfolios enable you to show, rather than tell, about the skills you’d like to highlight on your resume or in an interview. When you’re searching for a new job, a portfolio is an excellent approach to showcase your abilities.

Latest Blogs

In this blog, explore the golden rules of using AI marketing tools so you can leverage the benefits to their maximum potential.

In this blog, you’ll learn how to avoid the pitfalls of SEO over-optimization while enhancing your site’s performance.

In this article, we’ll take a look at what AMP is, its advantages and disadvantages, and how it affects SEO.

Get your hands on the latest news!

Similar posts.

7 mins read

15 Best Firms Offering Design Services in India

5 mins read

All You Need to Know About Data-Driven Design

6 mins read

Decoding Design Communities and Their Advantages

Home » Planning & Creating » How to create a writing portfolio

How to create a writing portfolio: 7 fundamental steps

The point of a portfolio is to give viewers a sense of what you can do for them. And portfolios can look very different while still getting that job done. Some of our Blurb writers have gotten hired by emailing screenshots of Facebook posts—while others have opened up professionally bound layflat photo books during interviews. Keeping in mind your end goal (selling yourself) will help ground you in this process.

Here are seven steps to help you create the perfect writing portfolio:

1. Introduce yourself

If your portfolio is your full sales pitch, think of your introduction as your elevator pitch. This sets the tone and context for your work. State your name, the type of writing you do, and any relevant background information that describes who you are.

Remember, this is a writing sample, too.  Make it unique, valuable, and memorable—and from your natural voice. This is your chance to tell your story from your point of view. Make it count.

2. Organize your writing samples

Gather up all relevant writing samples you have. These can be everything from Super Bowl ads you’ve scripted to op-eds you’ve written for your high school newspaper. And if you don’t have enough, you can create hypothetical projects for brands that exist or that you make up to showcase your skills—just make it clear they’re examples and not paid work.

Once you have all your writing samples gathered, it’s time to organize them. Keep in mind who you’re showing your work to and include the type of samples they’re most interested in. If you’re angling to carve a niche, consider grouping your work into topic or format clusters. If you’re showing off versatility, group them by medium.

Here are the top ways to organize your writing portfolio:

• Chronologically: If you have a wide range of writing samples or a linear progression in your career, consider arranging your work chronologically and share how your skills have evolved.
• Topic: If you specialize in particular types of writing, you could group your samples by topic. For example, you could organize your work by industry for your technical writing or trade book writing—or by sections dedicated to industries, verticals, or genres.
• Medium: If you write for various mediums and channels, be it journalism stories, ad creative, UX writing, storytelling, or blogging, organize your work by these key pillars to help readers understand your versatility as a writer.

No matter how you organize your work, start and end with your strongest samples. Recruiters spend less than three minutes per portfolio , whereas most hiring managers spend five to 10 minutes. Either way, that’s not a lot of time. Make sure your portfolio makes a splash to start and is easily scannable.

3. Cull your writing samples

Once you’ve compiled all relevant writing samples for your portfolio, now comes the difficult task of narrowing them down. If you’re in the early stages of your career, you may not have a lot of work to distill. But for experienced writers, it’s important to whittle down your samples to showcase only your best work. 

When making the final selection of samples to include in your writing portfolio, consider the following:

• Diversity: Depending on the structure you envision for your portfolio, consider choosing samples that capture your range and versatility as a writer. For example, creative writers might want to include a mix of short stories , screenplays, essays, or novels .
• Relevance: Your writing samples should reflect the type of writing you want to do in the future. If you’re interested in writing for a particular publication, highlight samples that overlap with that publication’s style and tone.
• Quality: As a rule, only include your best work when creating a writing portfolio. It can be helpful to recruit a mentor, friend, or colleague to get different perspectives on what others view as your highest-quality samples.

4. Craft your navigation

As you organize and narrow down what work samples you’d like to include, you can start identifying patterns for structuring your writing portfolio. In doing so, think about how you’d like viewers to navigate your book.

A table of contents, menu, or sections can provide guideposts for viewers to better travel through your writing portfolio and understand what it includes. In addition to thematic structure and the general flow of your portfolio, consider design elements like thumbnail images for each piece or major section. This adds a visual appeal and a touch of creativity that goes a long way in grabbing your prospective readers. Other fundamentals include:

• Sections: If you have ample writing samples to include, divide your portfolio into sections or chapters. This will make it easier for readers to find the pieces they’re most interested in.
• Navigation: Make sure your table of contents or website menu is simple to understand. In a digital context, you can include links to each section or piece of writing for easy navigation.
• Design: Your portfolio should be clean, clear, concise, and easy to read. Set the mood appropriately and use a consistent font, color scheme, and design elements for your sections, headlines, and menus to make them cohesive with the rest of the portfolio.

5. Design a layout

Once you have all of your writing samples selected and organized, you’ll need to think about how to best present your work in a way that’s visually appealing and on-brand with your particular style and tone. This is where the design of your portfolio comes in. When designing your portfolio, consider the following:

• Choose a format that’s creative yet easy to navigate. Whether creating a hardcopy portfolio or a website portfolio, you want to choose a format that aligns with your writing style and the context of your samples but also one that’s easy to navigate. Be creative but don’t let the design distract readers from your portfolio’s content. 
• Use a clear and readable font. Make sure that the font you choose is easy to read, both in print and digitally on the screen. It’s best to stick with very simple, legible fonts that won’t distract from your writing.
• Incorporate images or graphics. Consider adding visuals to your writing portfolio that capture the context of your work. Whether they’re symbolic photos or images that truly correspond with your samples, consider imagery that relates to your writing and engages your readers. Just be sure that they don’t detract from your copy.
• Keep it consistent. While you want your writing portfolio to be visually engaging, you also want to ensure that it’s professional and on point with your personal brand. Often, less is more. So, avoid using too many colors or fonts , and put together a design layout that’s consistent and aligned.

6. Summarize your work

Depending on the length of your writing portfolio, it can help to provide some context for your samples—especially if you can prove your worth with impressive stats. Similar to a novel’s blurb shown on the back cover of a book, these could be short summaries that introduce individual samples, case studies that outline your business results, or thematic sections of your portfolio that add color to your writer’s journey.

Writing short summaries or blurbs of your work gives readers a sense of what they can expect from each piece of writing. While not a requirement for writing portfolios, these blurbs can help guide the overarching story behind your experience. When writing these short summaries, consider the following elements:

• Overviews that summarize your work. You can include the genre , topic, purpose, brand, or writing style.
• Your intentions or goals. Break down the problem you solved with your writing pieces, like whether your objective was entertaining, educating, or persuading your readers, and who the project was for.
• The scope of the project and your role as a writer. Make sure you highlight whether your work was part of a larger publication or your own personal blog. Talk about timelines, titles, and how you contributed to any large-scale projects or group work.
• Any key performance indicators (KPIs). Hiring managers on marketing teams will be very interested in the results of your work, like how much traffic a piece earned, how much engagement it received, or how your work led to a particular business outcome.

7. Include your resume and contact info

When using your portfolio to land your dream job, including your resume (or a version of it) is a good supplement to showcase all your experience. You could include it at the beginning or end of your portfolio. In any case, it should be easy to find and relevant to your target audience.

You’ll also want to include a way for viewers to contact you, like your professional email address or social media account. Depending on the context of your portfolio, you may even consider adding a link to your LinkedIn or Instagram profile so employers can see more information about you and easily get in touch. If you print your portfolio, add links or QR codes to your professional website or digital portfolio, too.

Tips for creating a writing portfolio that wows

Now that you’re familiar with creating a writing portfolio, several additional points are worth calling out. These are general best practices and things to consider when bringing your portfolio to life.

Quality over quantity

Less is often more, as it’s generally better to showcase a small collection of high-quality writing samples rather than inundating your readers with numerous less-than-stellar pieces. Be selective with the work you choose, and aim for a diverse range that emphasizes your strengths and genres of focus.

Know your target audience

Identify your target audience for your writing portfolio, as this can help determine the specific writing samples you include and how you organize them. Keep in mind that you should tailor your portfolio to suit the needs of your potential clients or employers. Print on demand allows you to swap in and out samples that best align with each client or employer—or you can tailor your digital portfolio with specific landing pages for each application or industry.

Keep it clean, simple, and error-free

Your writing portfolio should be easy to navigate, visually appealing, and error-free. Use a simple design and make sure your writing samples are well-organized and clearly presented. Your portfolio’s overall design layout and format will help readers digest its contents. 

And since you’re a writer, typos are usually unforgivable. Get a friend or mentor (or both!) to proof your work before you send it out.

Create digital and print writing portfolios

There are many pros and cons for digital and hardcopy portfolio books . While having a digital writing portfolio might be needed for digital applications and remote positions, a print version will definitely have you standing out while attending in-person meetings and interviews. Ultimately, the decision should depend on your personal preference, the needs of your target audience, and your intended usage of the portfolio.

However, we’d suggest both. You’ll need digital samples to get through the initial stage of most applications, but few things are more impressive than a perfectly bound physical portfolio in face-to-face interactions.

Keep your writing portfolio up-to-date

Your writing should always be fresh and relevant, so don’t forget to regularly update the contents of your portfolio with new pieces or achievements. Also, it’s a great idea to tailor your portfolio for each interview. Doing this will help demonstrate your interest and commitment to the company or client.

What makes a strong writing portfolio?

Certain characteristics make for standout writing portfolios. Consider these five cornerstones of strong portfolios:

• Showcase the depth and diversity of your writing ability, including various genres and styles, to help demonstrate your versatility and range as a writer.
• Maintain consistency in your tone and presentation throughout your portfolio, even if you showcase work with different styles for different brands.
• Feature work most relevant to your primary target audience and the type of writing jobs you want to land in the future.
• Choose the most engaging writing samples that reflect your style and focus, highlighting your marketable attributes and unique skillset.
• Assemble your portfolio in a clear, cohesive, and organized manner, making it easy for readers to navigate and absorb your content.

Above all, remember that your writing portfolio reflects you and your abilities as a writer. Take the time to create something unique and memorable. We believe in you!

If you’re interested in creating a print version of your writing portfolio, Blurb offers the tools to make a professional, bookstore-quality portfolio book that will impress. 

Get started using a beautifully designed portfolio template, or create your own custom layout. Not only can you print as many books as you need on demand, but you can choose from a variety of formats, from large layflat portfolio books to smaller and more affordable options that make great leave-behinds.

portfolio , writing portfolio

This is a unique website which will require a more modern browser to work! Please upgrade today!

This is a modern website which will require Javascript to work.

Please turn it on!

Table of contents

• Made with Copyfolio
• Portfolio Tips

29 Writing Portfolio Examples & Practical Tips to Create Yours

You can read thousands of guides on creating a writing portfolio –and you might still end up staring at your screen, not knowing where to start. Because sometimes what we need even more is to see real-life examples and get some inspiration. And that’s exactly what we’re going to show you today.

We collected 29 writing portfolio examples: real websites of real writers, to give you some idea about what usually goes into them and what they tend to look like. But keep on reading, because we’ve also added some brief and practical tips for creating your writing portfolio .

29 real-life writing portfolio examples

• Shanice Perriatt

Shanice's writing portfolio was created with Copyfolio, using the Letterpress template

2. Christian Boutwell

Christian made his portfolio with Copyfolio, using the Journal template

3. Rebecca Georgia

Rebecca built her portfolio with Copyfolio, using the Typewriter template

4. Emma Buckley

Emma's portfolio uses the Letterpress template of Copyfolio

5. Lara Ramirez

Lara created her writing portfolio with Copyfolio, using the Journal template

6. Halle Snavely

Halle used Copyfolio with the Letterpress template and Ink color palette to create her writing portfolio.

7. Felicia Ang

Felicia created her portfolio using Copyfolio, and the "Journal" template

8. Carly Zumar

Carly created her writing portfolio with Copyfolio, using the "Letterpress" template

9. Erica Sykora

Erica's copywriting portfolio was created with Copyfolio, using the Typewriter template

10. James Tweddle

James created his portfolio with Copyfolio, using the Billboard template

11. Kat Boogard

Kat's writing portfolio features thumbnails with a coral, navy, and white color palette.

12. The Literary Co.

The portfolio of The Literary Co. features thumbnails with laptop mockups.

13. Fika Bahroeny

Fika's writing portfolio website was created with Copyfolio

14. Robin Catalano

Robin organized their projects into categories on a separate portfolio page.

15. Eve L. Ewing

Eve L. Ewing's writing portfolio features vibrant thumbnails in a 3-column grid.

16. Ann Friedman

You can find the top pieces of her work on Ann's "Writing" page

17. Alejandro Castro

Alejandro's site is a great example for a writing portfolio with a dark background.

18. Brent Barnhart

Brent's B2B content writing portfolio starts out with a logo wall featuring top clients.

19. Malek Murison

Malek uses text styling to draw attention to the most important details in their portfolio.

20. Kristi Hines

Kristi features testimonials in her writing portfolio, to add to her credibility.

21. Jesca Austin

Jesca added brief summaries for project categories in her portfolio.

22. Tyler Womack

On his portfolio page, Tyler features his writing projects in a simple four-column grid.

23. Libby Hakim

Libby Hakim's content writing portfolio feels almost like a blog, with a sidebar to the right.

24. Tomi Adeyemi

A great example of featuring books in an author portfolio website, by bestselling author Tomi Adeyemi.

25. Micky Treutlein

Associate creative director and copywriter Micky Treutlein features projects in a 3-column grid.

26. Daniel Forte

With a crisp white background, the colorful thumbnails really pop in Daniel's portfolio.

27. Jim Vallet

Jim added his project thumbnails as a masonry grid with no white space in-between.

28. Simon Steinhardt

The simple but aesthetic writing portfolio of Simon Steinhardt

29. Leah Chamberg

Copywriter Leah Chamberg added her projects under a prominent logo for personal branding.

If you’d like to see more specific examples, check out our collection of copywriting portfolio examples –or our article about creative writing portfolios .

Here’s what you can learn from these writing portfolio examples

What is a writing portfolio and why do you need one.

Let’s start with the basics. A writing portfolio is essentially a website that houses your best pieces of writing. Those writing samples live on your site along with the most important information about you and your work that a potential client or employer needs to know. Based on that, they should be able to decide if they want to hire you as a writer or not.

How to get writing samples for your portfolio?

Having a website to host all of your work is one part of having a portfolio. But collecting the writing samples themselves is just as important. If you have years of writing experience, where you get them from is given. But what if you’re just starting out and need some credible pieces to add in there? Let’s see a few options you have:

• Spec ads or made-up projects. The term ‘spec ads’ will be most commonly known among copywriters –they refer to advertisements that a designer and a copywriter create just for practice. The same goes for other writers too: just make up a project and follow through with it. Even though it’s not real client work, these projects work wonderfully in portfolios, as they still clearly show your skills and writing style. You’ll find lots of these when browsing writing portfolio examples.
• Work for friends or family. The next step between making up projects and getting real client work is offering your writing services to those around you. If there’s anyone with a business that you could write for, ask them! Just make sure to tell them that you’d like to include it in your portfolio and do your best while completing the assignment.
• Guest posting. Another popular way, mostly for content writers, is guest posting. That means writing an article and applying to post it on someone else’s blog. There are different ways to approach it, but the end result is the same: a blog post with your name on it, on an (ideally) credible site, linking back to you. If you can get your name on a few well-known sites, it will look amazing in your portfolio, that’s for sure.
• Publishing on Medium. Guest posting takes a lot of pitching and sending lots of outreach emails. If you don’t want to do that, you can go ahead and start publishing your content on Medium instead. Without having to create your own blog, you can add your pieces and link to them from your portfolio website.
• Posting on your own accounts. Creating content and writing copy for social media is a popular area for writers –and what better way to show off your skills in it than using your own accounts? Nobody will restrict you or tell you what to do and you can also rest assured that it will stay online, just as you originally posted it.

7 tips for creating a website based on these writing portfolio examples

We’ve now gone through what a writing portfolio is , why you need one, and how to get writing samples to fill it up. We even checked a bunch of writing portfolio examples to get a little boost of inspiration. What’s next?

Getting to work and actually creating your writing portfolio website . Keep on reading for our best tips to make that process a hundred times easier and more productive for you.

Create an organized website for easier browsing

Clients and hiring managers don’t have all the time in the world: expect them to spend a maximum of 10 minutes going through your portfolio. And that’s why it’s incredibly important to have an organized website that they can navigate easily.

With the very first look, they should already know who you are and what you do. And they should also be able to navigate to your projects in under a minute. Once they’re done with checking your work, they have to be able to find your contact information easily.

Having a good experience on your website will also help you make a good (digital) first impression with them.

Limit the number of your projects to save time for the viewer

Following the same line of thought, limiting the number of projects you showcase will also help your viewers to actually finish reading through everything. We recommend adding around 4-6 projects, as you could see that in the writing portfolio examples above too.

With that many featured projects, you can showcase a good variety of samples, without overwhelming your visitors. Just remember, your motto for your writing projects in your portfolio should be quality over quantity.

Use eye-catching thumbnails for better conversion rates

Getting someone on your site and guiding them to your case studies is the first step. Making them actually click through is the next. How can you do that? With eye-catching thumbnails.

Humans are naturally drawn to images (and especially faces), so choosing ones that stand out can help to drastically improve the click-through rates on your site. Just make sure that the image you choose:

• visually fits in nicely with the site and the other images around it,
• will be visible even on smaller devices like tablets and smartphones,
• and that it actually has something to do with the project it represents.

Write case studies to show exactly what people want to know

Okay, let’s see the list so far: they are on your website. ✓ They know who you are and what you do. ✓ They found your projects and clicked on them to see more. ✓

Now is the time to convince them of your professionalism by taking them through your best projects. Here’s what you’ll have to include about each of them.

• A brief summary. Write a sentence or two to summarize the project. If someone only has time to read that, they should still find out the type, topic, and scale of the project.
• The project background. Write a little bit about the client you worked with and the task you were given. It will help the readers better understand and assess the final piece.
• The creative process. Sometimes seeing how you think and solve problems is even more important than the actual results. So talk a little bit about your creative process while working on the project before showing what you came up with in the end.
• The final results. This goes without saying, but in a portfolio, the actual writing pieces should also be featured in one way or another. We caution against just simply linking to it, as it can change or go unpublished. Including at least a screenshot (if not more), as you could see in our writing portfolio examples, about the project is always a good idea.

Add social proof to build trust with your audience

Anybody can say anything on the internet these days, so it’s no surprise that people are cautious about believing everything they read. One way to make your readers feel at ease about trusting you with their projects is by including social proof on your website, or in your case studies.

Whenever you finish working with a client, always ask them for testimonials. You can then feature them on your page, showing visitors that the people who have tried your services were more than happy with your work.

If you can, include a photo of them and a link to their business or profile, to add even more credibility to their testimonials.

Include your contact info to make it easy to get in touch

Once your visitor is convinced that you’re the one they want to work with, there’s one last thing left for them to do. They need to get in touch with you.

So do make sure they don’t drop off at this point, you need to make it super easy for them. The best way to do that is to have a “contact” item in your menu or navigation bar. That way your contact information is just one click away, no matter where they are on your website.

On the contact page, you can include your email address, phone number, and if you have a physical location they can visit, your address too.

As a bonus, you can write a few lines about what they can expect when they write to you. How much time does it usually take for you to reply? How is your process for getting started with new clients? Anything else they should know before reaching out? Write it all down to make them feel even more comfortable and confident about getting in touch.

Use a website builder for writers to create your portfolio quickly and easily

Our last and probably most useful tip is for actually getting started and creating your writing portfolio website.

In most cases, building a website either requires design and coding skills –or lots of time, waiting for the popular visual builders to finally load. Not to mention the time it takes to master using them, as they can be much more complex than they seem at first.

Instead of wasting time or getting frustrated, choose a website builder that was designed for writers, just like you. One that loads super fast and makes the website building process quick and easy for you. One that eliminates minor design decisions to make sure whatever you upload, your website is going to be stunning.

Try Copyfolio and create your own writing portfolio website today. You just have to follow a few simple steps:

• Sign in –it only takes two minutes. You can sign in with Google or Facebook, or ask for a link via email that will sign you right in. No password needed.
• Tell us your name and profession. This will be the title of your site at the beginning, and that’s all the info we’re asking for. No more filling out pages upon pages of unnecessary personal information.
• Choose a template. This will essentially decide the style of your website, as it comes with a color palette and font presets. But don’t worry, you can change it later anytime, without losing anything you’ve added already.
• Add copy to your pages. You’ll start out with the 3 most important pages: home, about, and contact. Go through them and type in all the information you need to display.
• Add your projects and write the case studies. As we discussed above, you should describe your projects as mini case studies. Follow our tips and write about your top projects, adding images to illustrate as you go.

And there you have it! You’ve just created a complete, professional website in the span of just a few hours. Send us a link when you are done, your site could be the newest addition to our writing portfolio examples!

Dorka Kardos-Latif

Digital marketer & portfolio expert, the face behind all content on Copyfolio 👋

More articles like this

21 Social Media Portfolio Examples & The Guide to Build Yours

Check inspiring examples, learn how to navigate projects under NDAs, and find out how to create a social media portfolio quickly and easily with Copyfolio!

18 Marketing Portfolio Examples to Get You Inspired

We collected 18 marketing portfolio examples to give you some inspiration. Not only that, but we’ll walk you through why each of them is great, so you can learn while getting inspired.

13 mins read

Writing Portfolio 101: What It Is, What It Should Include & How to Build One Really Fast

Are you creating your first writing portfolio? Or, updating it to meet current trends & impress modern clients? Either way, this article has you covered.

Shreya Bose

Written by Shreya Bose , edited by Protim Bhaumik , reviewed by Eric Hauch .

24. Jun 2023 , updated 20. Nov 2023

Writers, I’m not going to pretend you don’t know that you need a portfolio. Unless you are literally starting out with your writing career (and you've been chilling under a rock so far), you know a writer is defined by their work... and a professional writer shows their work in their professional online portfolio.

But not every portfolio is equal. Some don't make the cut when potential clients are evaluating them, and their failure is only sometimes because the actual work in the portfolio is sub-par. Sometimes, the portfolio design, its non-navigability, or the lack of relevant information disqualifies the portfolio and its owner.

So, in this article, I'll detail the essential elements of an online writing portfolio that actually gets you hired. I'll also throw in some writing portfolio examples, and introduce you to a tool that lets you collate your writing samples into an industry-best portfolio website within minutes.

So, what should go into your writer's portfolio?

A succinct but comprehensive introduction.

Keep things short, unless you're a winner of multiple major awards or you've studied in two different Ivy League schools. Otherwise, briefly mention what you do, who you've worked with, and any outstanding achievements (awards, Guinness Book Record for deep ocean diving, etc.).

If you're a freelance writer or you run a freelance writing business, you can include a line or two from a notable client testimonial.

ALL your work in ALL formats (text, audio, video)

This is the heart of all portfolio sites. If you're a writer or journalist, showcase your articles. If you're a photographer, display your best photos. If you're a graphic designer, exhibit videos, websites, animated elements, and still images you've worked on.

If you've produced content across different formats (text, audio, video), include all of it in your own portfolio. This is especially true if you have a creative writing portfolio. It indicates that you're comfortable working with multiple content avenues and makes you an asset for companies looking to expand their presence on numerous social channels.

A portfolio builder like Authory lets your import your work in different formats (text, audio, video, and social media posts).

Potential employers want to see writing portfolio sites showing off that you stay good at your job over time and aren't just a one-hit-wonder. The fact that you've written one great article a year isn't as great as writing one great article each month or week

Your digital portfolio should display this, and the best way to do so is to import ALL (or most) of your work in ALL formats — and display them accordingly on your portfolio.

Read More : Why your portfolio should include ALL your work in ALL formats (audio, video, text)

Real-world results

Nothing speaks like real-world results. Writing portfolios that showcase some real-world results are usually the ones that get more attention.

If you've got a few years of experience, you should have some numbers to indicate your competence. Have you written 50 articles in a year, perhaps? Have these articles driven organic traffic up 34% during that year? As a content marketer, have your skills driven greater engagement with a site or an even higher number of signups or purchases?

What to look for in your ideal portfolio builder

No matter what domain you work in, your portfolio page builder should come with the following essential elements:

1. Easy to set up & use

Writers need a portfolio builder that's super easy to set up and maintain because our focus needs to be on the actual writing. You cannot spend days copy-pasting links to your published work, and structuring headers, footers, section descriptions, and adjusting imagery for your portfolio.

For example, Authory’s setup process is exceptionally low-effort. All you do is enter the URLs of the sites on which your work is published, and Authory will find & import all your bylined content to its own database. That way, you have a complete repository of all the work you've ever done, at your fingertips.

2. Should look good

A portfolio showcases your best work, and it needs to look amazing. It also needs to load quickly, be searchable, navigable, and look great on any device, desktop or mobile.

You don't need award-winning designs gracing your portfolio, but your portfolio should be easy on the eyes and easy to look through.

Your portfolio should also look great on desktop and mobile screens, so pick a portfolio builder like Authory that automatically makes all portfolios responsive.

3. Should allow categorization

Typically, writers work for various organizations, publications, and clients. Since a prospective client is unlikely to go through work unrelated to their industry, it makes sense to share only what's relevant.

For example, let's look at Marijana's freelance writing portfolio: authory.com/MarijanaKostelac

Marijana is a content marketer who has written for different domains, all of which are on her portfolio. In order to showcase her work in some sort of order, she showcases them in different Collections: e-commerce , creator economy , email marketing , content marketing , and video marketing . She can share each of these Collections separately so that the client only sees what she has achieved within the relevant field.

4. Should support different content types

Creators produce content in many formats, and a good portfolio builder should be able to include all of them. Your portfolio should be able to flawlessly showcase content in text, audio, and video formats, as well as from different platforms like podcast sites, social media platforms (like LinkedIn and Twitter), etc.

5. Should be up-to-date

Keeping your portfolio up-to-date is extremely important, as recent work is usually the most relevant to your audience. As a writer, more often than not, my portfolio site is a little dated because I am more focused on my day-to-day rather than updating. But this oversight always impedes my ability to get more work as potential clients miss out on my latest pieces.

And that's why a self-updating portfolio — a portfolio that automatically updates itself with your new work — is a game-changer.

Authory, by default, offers you a self-updating portfolio. Once you add your sources (URLs of sites where your work was published), Authory automatically updates your portfolio whenever you publish on those sites again. So, anytime a new bylined piece shows up on any one of the sites you previously fed into the system, it'll show up in your Authory database (and you'll get an email notification notifying you every single time).

6. Should back up your content

Sites go down, files go missing. But, as writers, few things are as bad as losing our writing, published or unpublished. While a portfolio doesn't necessarily have to act as a backup tool, your professional life will be so much easier if it does.

Losing my work is something I've dealt with more than once, and I do not recommend the panic I felt every time I realized that work I've done for a client was taken down from their website. And... I hadn't backed it up.

Authory backs up your content automatically. Just add your sources, and anything Authory imports will be automatically backed up. The original site may go down, but you'll always have your copy on Authory.

How to efficiently create a portfolio with ALL your work (and very little effort)

Authory is a dedicated portfolio-building platform, which allows users to create a professional work portfolio in literally a few minutes. To create a portfolio with ALL your content (in different formats), follow the steps below:

• Sign up for Authory (for FREE) using this link .

Once I choose “Continue with Google” and enter my email ID, the tool automatically fills in the fields for my name (taken from my email data).

• I chose my profession as “Writer” and then click “Next Step.”

In the next screen, I see that Authory has already automatically found the “sources” — websites where my bylined articles are published ( nytimes.com & washingtonpost.com , for example). Of course, if it has missed a source, I can add it manually (just the site URL), OR I can choose to add all my sources manually.

• Click “+ Add.”

Authory will take up to 48 hours (often less) to import every bylined article to its database. Once the process is complete, you can segment your articles, videos, podcasts, audio files, and social media posts into relevant “Collections” — think of them as folders within your Authory database.

Creating a Collection on Authory

Once all your work has been imported by Authory, go to the “Collections” tab on your Authory dashboard.

• Click “+Create Collection.” You’ll see that I already have a set of Collections in the mix.

• Add a name and description to your new Collection. Click “Add.”

• You’ll be taken inside your new Collection. Click “Go to Content” next to the “Manually” option.

• Once you click “Go to Content,” you’ll be taken back to your main content dashboard. Since Authory has already imported your pieces, you can select the ones you want to slot into this particular Collection.

• Select the relevant files (articles in my case), click “+ Add to collection” to the bottom right (highlighted above), find the name of the Collection you created, and click on it.
• Go back to the “Collection” tab you clicked before on the dashboard. You’ll see your new Collection.

Adding your Collection to your Authory portfolio

• Now that you’re done creating a Collection(s), it’s time to add it to your portfolio. Go to the “Portfolio” option on your dashboard.

• Click the “Content” drop-down to the left. Click “Add collection.”

• Choose the Collection you just created — “New Collection,” in my case.

• And voila! Your new collection has been added to your portfolio.

• To check the final product, click “Go to portfolio” on the left.

• You’ll be taken to your portfolio in a separate window. This is what clients will see when you send them your Authory portfolio.

If you’d like to explore this example portfolio, feel free to do so: https://authory.com/shreya-bose

Writing portfolio examples that deserve your attention

David pogue.

David Pogue is a six-time Emmy winner, a New York Times bestselling author, and a five-time TED speaker. He is also a correspondent for "CBS Sunday Morning", a periodic host of "NOVA"; as well as the host of the “Unsung Science” podcast.”

Erin Rupp writes about productivity, well-being, and self-development. Her work stands out because of her depth of research, as well as insights from her own experiences.

Alex Hargrave

Alex Hargrave is a Reporting fellow at E&E News. Her portfolio page showcases a number of impressive writing samples (some of them in PDF).

Mary Ann Gwinn

Mary Ann Gwinn is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and book reviewer for the Los Angeles Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Seattle Times, Kirkus Reviews, and other publications. She is also a Pulitzer jurist.

Why use Authory over other portfolio builders?

As demonstrated above, Authory doesn’t just give you the space to copy-paste links and assemble a digital portfolio. It literally does over half the work: finding all bylined content you’ve ever published, importing it automatically, saving it permanently (again, automatically), and enabling you to organize your pieces into different collections.

A self-updating portfolio (no need to keep adding new work manually)

Authory will AUTOMATICALLY import a copy of every bylined piece from every site into its own database.

These sites are called "sources." You add as many sources as you want, and every single bylined piece from every single source will be imported automatically.

You don't have to track down links to your published work (especially older pieces). As long as you remember the URL of the site where your work exists, Authory will collate all your content for you in one dashboard.

Authory can import content from behind most soft paywalls (as long as it is a bylined piece) and some hard paywalls. However, it cannot be used to import copies of articles, podcasts, and videos you haven’t created or featured in.

There isn’t any need to manually upload/copy-paste your content. That said, if you happen to have any non-bylined content, you can always do so manually in those cases.

Automated backups (never lose your content, ever)

All the content that Authory imports from different sources is saved permanently. You'll never have to worry about losing any of your published work. Even if the original website where it's published goes defunct for any reason, you'll always have a copy safely stored on Authory's server.

All backups are in the original format — text and/or media. No screenshots. This is super important because it lets you search through your content database, making it a valuable research tool.

Continued importing of past and future content (less effort for a 100% updated portfolio)

Once you enter a source, Authory won't just import your existing publications. Anything you publish on the same site (after you've fed its URL into Authory) in the future will also be imported automatically. In other words, Authory will import your past and future content.

Authory also sends email notifications for every new piece it imports, so you'll always know if something you submitted has been published.

Many Authory customers have also observed that Authory notifications reached their inboxes faster than Google Alerts .

Apart from these, you also get a slew of miscellaneous but necessary features:

• Ability to search through both your portfolio and your content database to find articles/audio/videos based on keywords . Prospective employers and hiring managers can use this to look for topics on your portfolio, and you can use it to find specific pieces within your Authory content bank.
• Ability to create a custom domain with a click.
• All imported content can be downloaded as high-res PDFs or exportable as HTML files — no lock-in period.
• Get a custom domain and personalize your portfolio even further.
• Multiple, low-effort options for customization to make your portfolio visually appealing and easy to navigate.
• In-built analytics that provides real numbers on content performance (engagement, readership) across the web and popular social media sites every 30 days . You get to see how your readers/viewers are responding to your work.
• Allows creation of newsletters with a couple of clicks. After setup, Authory will automatically send your newly published content to subscribers.
• Widgets to display your personal portfolio on other sites, such as your personal website (if you have one).

Authory has been chosen by quite a few well-known names in my domain, people who could have picked any tool in the world, but decided that Authory best met their needs. There's 6-time Emmy award winner David Pogue , Steven Levy, Editor at Large, WIRED , and Brian Fung, a Technology Reporter at CNN , to name a very few.

Get started with Authory for free and see for yourself what works for you!

Seasoned writer & editor working with B2B & B2C content since 2017. Writes about music on weekends. Trying to overcome caffeine addiction.

More articles

The ultimate guide to creating a successful writing portfolio.

Step-by-step guide to creating your writing portfolio. Tips, examples, and everything you need to make a writing portfolio clients will love!

Protim Bhaumik

almost 2 years ago

10 Journo Portfolio Alternatives for 2024

A list of alternatives to Journo Portfolio that you can test out before building/upgrading your next incredible portfolio!

over 1 year ago

This Executive-Turned-Journalist Has Written for 54 Different Publications — Yet Keeps His Work Perfectly Organized

Howard M. Cohen has written for considerably more publications than the average journalist. That’s why finding a solution for how to present and protect his work has been vital for him.

almost 4 years ago

Freelance life is a hustle — here’s how journalist Jeanette Beebe learned to handle it

In this interview, healthcare and tech journalist Jeanette Beebe shares how she keeps track of her articles, connects with readers, and puts public interest reporting at the center of her work.

about 5 years ago

Clippings Portfolio — Pros, Cons & Alternative

Does a Clippings portfolio work for you? Here's a detailed review of Clippings, a look at its pros & cons, and a look at Authory as an alternative.

Top 7 Contently Portfolio Alternatives: Contently Alternatives for Writers

Learn what the top 7 Contently portfolio alternatives are and which one you should choose to build your portfolio.

• Collections
• Journalists
• Content Marketers
• Thought Leaders
• Partner Program
• Writing Portfolio
• Journalism Portfolio
• Writing Backup
• Content Marketing Portfolio
• Social Media Portfolio
• Best Portfolio Builders
• Portfolio PDF Examples
• Twitter Archive
• Portfolio Creator

How to Create Your Writing Portfolio from Scratch

How do you build a writing portfolio from scratch as a beginner?

The big question for new freelance writers.

You need a writing portfolio.

This is a sample of your writing in the industry or topic you want to get paid for.

You need to have a writing niche to write samples for your writing portfolio, but it’s not required.

A freelance writing prospect typically won’t hire you unless they have read your writing in the niche they require. You can click the image below to view it better.

A recent prospect let me know that they read my writing samples on my writing portfolio page on my site. My samples told them that they liked my style and wanted to hire me this year.

Having a solid professional-looking writing portfolio filled with your best writing can really make or break you as a writer trying to make this a business.

So, let’s dive into all of this and see what the best way is to build your portfolio.

What is a Writing Portfolio?

A writing portfolio holds your best writing article samples as a freelance writer. It demonstrates your writing skill in your niche topic and shows off the places you have written for.

You can house your one on your blog – the best place – or on a writing portfolio site like Contently or LinkedIn.

But if you have no experience as an online writer, how can you create a professional portfolio?

I’ll go through exactly how but to tell you in one sentence: The best way is to create up to three writing samples that showcases your wonderful online writing in the industry or topic you want to write for.

So, the key to all of this is to have writing samples online .

Learn in this video about different freelance portfolio sites for your writing portfolio

Does your writing portfolio have to house EVERY piece of writing you’ve ever done?

It should only have relevant, up-to-date content that showcases your best writing ability in the writing niche or niches you want to write for.

On mine, I share writing samples for different topics I enjoy writing about – digital marketing, blogging, social media, WordPress and personal development.

But is it okay NOT to have a portfolio of your articles?

No, I don’t think so and neither does freelance writer Kaitlyn Arford thinks so. Not having a writing portfolio is a barrier.

“I think that not having a portfolio hurts creatives looking for work! You have to look professional online, because hiring managers are reviewing your LinkedIn, your portfolio, and your online presence (aka Googling you) to decide if they should work with you.”

A Writing Portfolio Example

There are many ways you can display your freelance writer portfolio as I mentioned.

By far the best way is a page on your writer website.

You can just add links to your this page or stylize it using a page builder or using WordPress’s editor.

To me, this is the most professional way to display your content writing portfolio to potential clients.

So, a writing portfolio template might look like this:

• Niche focus (ex: Digital marketing)
• Feature Thumbnail Image
• Link to published article

Let’s look at more writing portfolio examples to help you house your samples or clips.

Other freelance writing portfolio examples are based on social media.

Every freelance writer NEEDS a LinkedIn portfolio as well as your writer website.

Here is mine:

Why is LinkedIn a good place to house your freelance writing jobs?

Because many brands and companies are on LinkedIn and as Andy Strote shares , having a LinkedIn portfolio can help you rank in Google!

“A big reason to be on LinkedIn: Google loves it. Build your profile, with your portfolio on LinkedIn. Work your network. It will show up at the top of most searches. Take advantage of that.”

And, as freelancer Maggie Aime pointed out, you get work from your profile.

“I have a LI portfolio and had a handful of inbound leads.”

To add a portfolio item to LinkedIn:

• Under Experience in your resume section of your profile, click on the + up on the right corner
• Pick add a position
• From here, fill out all the necessary information

• At the bottom, click on add media
• Add the link to your published article on your client’s blog or guest blog

• Click apply and there you go

Why do you need more than one if you will most likely link to your website’s portfolio page in your pitches?

Because companies use LinkedIn and they find writers on LinkedIn.

If you optimized your LinkedIn portfolio , you’ll gain writing gigs.

There is also an option to use your LinkedIn profile as a resume by going to your profile, clicking on more and then clicking on creating from profile.

LinkedIn is free to sign up but you can only have one LinkedIn profile.

If you already have one for your current job, you might have to hold off on creating a LinkedIn portfolio and use another portfolio site.

If you search for a writing portfolio website, you’ll see many examples, but I personally like Contently as a site to showcase my writing.

Companies go Contently to find writers and if they find my online writing portfolio , I can pick up a gig right then and there!

Here is my Contently profile:

What’s nice about using Contently is that it’s a free writing portfolio website.

To add an article link to Contently:

• Log into your account
• Go to edit profile
• Go to projects

• Click on the + in the upper right hand corner
• Pick from the list (import from a single URL is probably the one you will choose)
• Add the link and click on get details

• Fill in any information like the format, topics, and skills
• Go to your Contently portfolio and check out your new item

Later on I will talk more about Medium, but for now, know that Medium is one of the writing portfolio sites where you can house writing samples.

Here is mine profile:

Over the years, Medium has become a “must-have” for a freelance writer in terms of housing your writer clips and using it as a portfolio to share with potential clients.

Many businesses are using Medium and I’ve heard of writers who write speciality topics like cryptocurrency, land writing jobs.

You can also connect with other writers too!

Freelance writer Anna Aksenovich says,

“I use Medium as my portfolio. The great thing about it that it also has a big community of writers and audience too so while being a portfolio your pieces can also get additional exposure.”

Go ahead and sign up to Medium !

After that, here’s how to add a writer sample item to Medium:

• For a published article (like an article from your blog that you own), go to Stories > import story

• If you want to create a writing sample on Medium, go to the pencil icon next to your profile picture.
• Add a title, subtile, and start writing (or pasting what you wrote on a Google Doc)

So, what is the best writing portfolio websites from my list?

I strongly feel your writer website portfolio page should show the most up-to-date writing and should be the one page you link out to in your pitches.

Are There Other Ways to Create a Writing Portfolio Online?

While I have never used these sites, many other writers have.

Here are 4 more portfolio websites to check out.

• Journo Portfolio – they have a free tier where you can host 10 portfolio items
• Clippings.me – a free website portfolio builder. Just add a biography, customize your pate, add your writing work and there you go!
• Writerfolio – although it’s free to create (no sign up needed), it does cost $4/month.
• Writer’s Residence – there’s a free 30-day trial for this easy-to-use free portfolio builder

The Articles to Use in Your Freelance Writing Portfolio

So, do you only put blog posts in your writing portfolio?

No. You put the type of articles you want to get paid for . This might mean:

• sample emails for a copywriting portfolio
• mock-ups of white papers
• site content for an About page
• magazine article

I typically write blog posts, so my writing portfolio is made up of blog content.

I also think this is the easiest type of content to create and to market for your business. You can land regular work as a freelance blogger.

So, if you want to have a technical writing portfolio, you would have writing samples about standard operating procedures or specific tech content for a certain industry like health.

If you want a creative writing portfolio, I would share links to any projects you have like a book or poems. You can also share editorial content (an op-ed) with a creative slant for a certain industry.

But, should you just draft up samples in Google doc or is there a better way to create a writing portfolio? Yes!!

How to Make a Writing Portfolio From Scratch

The best way to create a writing sample for your portfolio is to guest post .

This means your post is published on someone else’s blog. It can be  paid contributions , but more often than not, it’s a free opportunity for you to market your business in front of a brand new targeted audience.

Guest posting also gives you the ‘street cred’ as a professional freelance writer.

How to build a writing portfolio with no experience doesn’t mean it’s impossible since you can guest post.

My first three writing samples were not really in my niche, nor were they at all related to each other.

The first was for A Nation of Moms . I wrote about gut health for toddlers. I thought natural health would be a good niche to get into. My second was for Social Media Today .

The Social Media article helped me break into the digital marketing niche – the niche I currently write in.

Finally, the third sample was for Psych Central on how to improve your mood. I was ecstatic for this sample as it was on a very prestigious platform, even though I wasn’t sure I wanted to write about mental health.

As you can see, not defining a niche didn’t stop me from writing about things I knew – natural health, mental health and social media (the last one I was learning at the time and wanted to write about it).

But, my suggestion for you for TODAY is to work on creating samples that fall into one main industry. It’s okay to have two writing niches but to make good money, clients want an expert and not a jack of all trades.

So, how do you guest post to fill up your writing portfolio from scratch?

1. Run a Google Search

The easiest is to run a Google search on the niche you want to write for + “write for us.” Here is an example of dog blogs!

You can search for literally anything + write for us to get guest blog opportunities.

2. Read The Guest Blog’s Guidelines

Every place you guest blog for your writing portfolio will have a different set of guidelines to submit your post. Some may want a Google doc while others want you to send an attachment via email.

There may be strict rules on what types of links to include, who you can mention in your post and how to write your post and the length of the post. Here are The Abundant’s Artist’s guidelines .

Be careful of guidelines saying you have to PAY MONEY to THEM.

This is not necessary to create a freelance writing portfolio.

3. Create Your Guest Blog Pitch

Now comes the fun part – crafting your writing pitch based on the guidelines you just read!

Again, different blogs want different things. Some want 3-5 topic suggestions while others want an outline of one post idea.

Figure out what they want and come up with a great topic or list of topics.

Here is my pitch for A Nation of Moms:

I suggest you research how to craft a pitch for guest blogging. It’s important that your pitch comes off personal and sounds like you know the blogger’s content.

Simply using a template for your guest pitch, won’t work in landing any guest posts.

Instead, read the blog you want to guest post and learn about:

• How long their posts are
• The format for their posts
• Their popular high sharing topics
• Their headlines

This information can help you stand out in your pitch. The blog owner will know you did your research.

4. Write the Guest Post

When you get accepted, it’s time to write the guest post. One thing to note – don’t pitch the SAME topic and outline to multiple guest blogs.

If you pitch the steps to eat paleo to five health blogs and two of them accept your pitch, you can’t write that post. And you can’t swap another idea either.

Instead, think of similar blog topics to pitch.

So, for the health example, if you want to guest post on a health site, come up with several ideas that can be similar if you have a hard time coming up with blog topics :

• 5 Steps to Get Your Family Eating Paleo
• Why Paleo Eating Isn’t Just a Fad
• 25 Easy Paleo Snacks to Take on The Run
• 5 Easy Ways You Can Start Eating Paleo

For a step-by-step tutorial on writing a guest post to help you build your writing portfolio from the ground up, check out my Youtube video.

5. Craft Your Author Bio

One of the best reasons you want to build your writer portfolio using guest posts is you get an author bio.

Your author bio is the place to market your freelance writing business!

A good bio has these components: what you are offering, what type of content you provide, how to reach you and some kind of way to tell your personality.

My author bio has evolved over the years as I’ve grown as a freelance writer. Here is my most current author bio:

6. Submit Your Post And Wait

After you submit your post (via the way the blogger indicated in the guest post guidelines) it’s time to wait. You will probably get a response from the blog owner saying that they received it and give you a timeline of when your post will be published.

Other blogs may want you to edit and revise your content before they publish your post.

Once all of that is handled, you wait until your post is published.

During this time you can pitch for more guest spots, work on your writer website and start pitching to job boards .

As a new freelance writer, you gotta hustle every day. Figure out the tasks you need to do to get your business up and running !

7. Create Your Writing Portfolio (H ow to Format a Writing Portfolio)

You hear back! They published your guest post and you have a link now!

That’s great! Now you can create your writing portfolio.

Create a page in your WordPress site and name it Writing Portfolio or writing samples.

• Go to the backend of your WordPress site
• To go Pages > Add New
• Write the title and save for draft while you add your portfolio items

From there you can drop your link or stylize it with a page builder or with WordPress’ editor.

* I do have a detailed step-by-step lesson in Writer Website in a Weekend on creating all of your pages, including your portfolio page.

Here’s an example of using WordPress’s native builder Gutenberg, a page builder, to create a writing portfolio.

8. Fill Up Your Writing Portfolio

You just have one writing portfolio item.

You need more!

My suggestion is to have at least 3 writing samples for your freelance portfolio to start out with. I would choose writing topics that are somewhat similar, unless you state different writing niches.

While guest posting is the best way to create a writing portfolio, another way is to create a Medium profile and submit your writing to publications on Medium.

Medium has thousands of publications that have submission sections. For these places, you don’t need to pitch, just sign up or send your draft link of your Medium post.

For example, here’s my piece on Storius , a Medium publication.

9. Create Multiple Writing Portfolios

A trick I use to look like a highly credible writer is to be everywhere online! You can do that easily by having multiple writing portfolios online.

I have several from Contently to Clearvoice to LinkedIn to Medium and more!

Make sure to check out my video at the beginning of this post to check out all the places you can have a portfolio and go ahead and make some writing portfolios!

4 Writing Portfolio Tips

1. have a strong writing portfolio format.

Typically, your portfolio is a page online that shows multiple links or images for your writing samples.

There is no hard and fast rule for how your writing portfolio should look like, just that you have one or more than one to show your writing expertise.

2. Have a Good Writing Portfolio Mix

It’s up to you what type of writing samples you want in your writing portfolio. For me, I only have blog posts on my portfolio page. But for you, you might have mock up samples of a press release, white papers or emails.

List out your services on your writing portfolio and then share links or examples of those services.

3. Is a Writing Portfolio a Resume?

No it is not. Your writing portfolio demonstrates your writing skill while a resume summarizes your educational experience, accomplishments and skills.

You can, however, use your portfolio in place of a resume if a client asks for a writing resume and you don’t have one to share.

4. What to Included in a Writing Portfolio

I would not put any writing samples that aren’t in my niche, that are too short (since I write long-form content), or not the best type of writing I have online will not be shown on my portfolio.

It’s Time to Create a P rofessional Writing Portfolio

There you go!

A guide to building a writing portfolio from scratch. Don’t feel that since you are a beginner you can’t have a professional writing portfolio under your belt. It will take a bit of time, but you can definitely have one!

You’ve done your research and you know this is the creative outlet you need and help you quit your 9-5 job for good !

So before you start pitching or even starting a blog , you need to create a writing portfolio that sells yourself!

With anything new, there will be different ways to get to the same end goal.

For me, I had absolutely no experience writing for businesses or being online.

Sure, I went to Facebook or Pinterest, but I did that for personal reasons, not to market something.

I didn’t know what to do or how to do it once I realized I wanted to freelance write.

I made mistakes in the beginning too and had to learn the hard way what tools I needed to start freelance writing .

So, I’m excited that you found the way to get started successfully!

It’s your turn – have you started your freelance writing portfolio? Let me know in the comments!

Share this post with your friends!

Leave a reply cancel reply, 112 comments.

5 Creative Writing Portfolio Examples To Get You Started

As a creative writer, you’re versatile. You’re skilled at weaving narratives that are compelling and inventive. When you’re in the zone, it feels like the words just flow from your fingers and onto the page… well, except when writing your own portfolio. Sound familiar? You’re not alone.

Sometimes, the hardest writing to do is the kind promoting yourself and your own skills. Yet, it’s an essential task if you want to make a living as a creative writer. To help clear up the writer’s block that can happen when creating your portfolio, take a look at these five creative writing portfolio examples. They showcase a range of different types of writers and will give you fresh inspiration to draw from. 

Sarah Jayne Kipling

UK-based creative writer and literary editor Sarah Jayne Kipling has been published by the likes of The Evening Chronicle and The Sunday Sun. She also works as an editor and proofreads literary manuscripts and academic journal submissions. Kipling does a great job using her portfolio to highlight the breadth and diversity of her work, with sections for news stories, features, blogs and even poetry.

With such a heavy background in journalism, it makes sense that Kipling’s portfolio takes a formal tone, with a bio that’s centered around her literary achievements and accreditations. The tone you use in your bio should be reflective of the work you’re looking to land. For example, if you’re a humor columnist, your bio might be lighthearted and use playful language. If you’re a PR professional, you might take a more conservative approach, and so on.

Laventry Repin

Laventry Repin is a creative writer who has published more than 400 bylines across three countries. He uses his bio to outline his interests, which cover everything from ancient history to adventure travel. Here’s the key–the interests he mentions in his bio are directly tied to the samples in his portfolio, like a clip on hiking the Fish River Canyon in Namibia. Your bio should function not as a standalone item, but as an introduction and segue to the samples you’ve chosen to showcase. 

Though conventionally, the clips in your writing portfolio are meant to link to examples of your work, Repin gets creative and uses one of his clips to link to a PDF of his resume. This is a nice way to give viewers access to more extensive information and professional background than what’s listed in the writer bio. Finally, he invites the viewer to connect with him on other platforms, linking to his website, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles along with sharing his email address.  

Cale Anthony Boudreau

The work of creative writer Cale Anthony Boudreau encompasses many different mediums, from blogs and short stories to video games and comics. His creative writing portfolio is not only a great example in and of itself, but an important reminder of the many different ways there are to make a living as a writer. 

In one clip, Boudreau showcases the work he’s done creating character profiles and back story for an upcoming illustrated comic. This is noteworthy because we tend to assume that everything in a writing portfolio needs to be a piece of published work. In fact, that’s far from the truth. Your creative writing portfolio can be used to feature work that is still in progress, pieces that you’re working on getting published and even writing you did just for fun. It’s also a useful way to give readers a sneak peek of a project before the full version of a piece is widely available. 

Giaco Furino

Giaco Furino is a screenwriter, entertainment journalist and branded content creator. His work has been featured by outlets like VICE and Popular Mechanics. Furino is a great example of how you can use your creative writing portfolio as a tool to generate interest and show off buzz about your latest and greatest project. In his bio, he begins by announcing the premiere date and location for his new screenwriting project. Then, he uses the topmost section of his clips to link to news coverage and reviews of the film itself. Genius!

Not everything in your creative writing portfolio has to be written by you. If there are third-party publications where you’ve been interviewed as an expert or your work is covered, don’t neglect the opportunity to promote them in your portfolio. 

Furino uses additional portfolio sections to organize his work both by category (news, branded content, reviews, etc.) and by date range. This is a useful way to help visitors easily skim through all of your work or find a specific piece they’re looking for. 

Carolyn Jung

There’s a saying in the business world: “the riches are in the niches.” Sometimes, it pays to go deep on a single topic. Food writer Caroyln Jung is a shining example of this. She writes about one thing–food–and uses her online writing portfolio to demonstrate that she’s an expert at it. 

Though Jung writes about a narrow subject matter, the samples in her portfolio show us that it doesn’t limit her versatility. She’s covered food for all kinds of media, from newspapers and magazines to public radio and podcasts. Further, she doesn’t just write about recipes or restaurants. Her portfolio showcases creative food-based topics like profiles of noteworthy chefs and food-centric travel pieces. 

If you’re an expert in your niche, be it football or fashion, use your portfolio to prove it. As we mentioned earlier, not every writing sample has to be a byline in a publication like the New York Times . Works in progress, articles for niche online publications and posts on your personal blog are all viable ways to demonstrate your writing skills and subject matter expertise. 

Clippings.me

Now that you have some inspiration on the content for your creative writing portfolio, where should you host it? For a free and easy solution to create your online writing portfolio, check out Clippings.me . 

Clippings.me is an online service that helps writers, journalists and bloggers showcase their best work and share it with the world. With Clippings.me, you can build your bio, add writing samples and customize your page without writing a single line of code or handling any complicated tech setup. 

First, begin by registering for a free Clippings.me account here . Follow a few simple prompts to fill out the content of your writer bio and choose from a variety of design templates. Then, add your writing samples by linking to clips on the web or uploading them from your hard drive. Categorize them so they’re easy to browse. Finally, share your portfolio link far and wide to invite others to check out your work. 

Clippings.me is the highest-ranked writing portfolio website, which ensures your portfolio shows up prominently in search results. Its superb support team answers support inquiries within 24 hours, while upgraded options like custom domains and unlimited clips are available for a low monthly fee with no contract. The free tier of Clippings.me has no strings attached and no credit card is required to sign up. 

Join more than 80,000 writers who use Clippings.me to host their portfolios by signing up here . For more useful information to build your online writing portfolio and jumpstart your writing career , check out the Clippings.me blog . 

Musings and updates from the content management team at Clippings.me.

The Online Coding & Design School With A

• Entry Level Tech Jobs
• Front End Developer
• Full Stack Developer
• UI/UX Designer
• Learn to Code
• Get Hired in Tech

Showcase Your Skills With These 9 Free Portfolio Templates

A great portfolio is the single most important tool for landing your dream tech job.

Whether you’re a freelancer or looking for a full-time gig, a spectacular online portfolio is a must-have when you want to get hired. Sure, a great resume and cover letter are important, but if your online portfolio doesn’t stand up and show off your skills to potential employers , your chances of landing the job are zilch.

For creative professionals, your portfolio site is an online resume for showcasing your eye-catching and high-quality graphic design skills to potential clients, recruiters, and hiring managers. Your portfolio can be a work sample that shows off your best work and showcases your work experience.

If you want to get into a creative field quickly, a portfolio website template can save the day. Rather than having to start from scratch with HTML and CSS and nail user experience right off the bat, you can use a premade template to save time and get a portfolio website up ASAP.

While some web designers prefer to use their own designs , if you want more practice, you can use a template as inspiration for your web design portfolio.

One thing to note: if you’re using a portfolio template, you still want to make sure your portfolio homepage is social media- and search engine-friendly and your contact information is there so clients and hiring managers can reach you.

Below are 9 FREE portfolio website templates you can get started with right away. Some are built on Bootstrap (a starter framework that doesn’t require a content management system) and others are for WordPress (the most popular CMS on the planet).

Is Tech Right For You? Take Our 3-Minute Quiz!

You Will Learn: If a career in tech is right for you What tech careers fit your strengths What skills you need to reach your goals

Bootstrap Portfolio Templates

1. creative.

First up: a Bootstrap portfolio template that’s ideal for keeping things simple. This is a great one-page design that’s mobile-optimized and flexible, so you can keep the attention on your work.

A mobile-optimized and flexible portfolio template to show off your work Download the template here.

We love this Bootstrap portfolio template because it’s bold and playful but still easy to find what matters. With clear call-to-actions and a simple top navigation, give this a go if you’re looking for an agency feel (even if “agency” actually means you’re a one-person team).

A bold and playful portfolio template to wow clients and employers Download the template here.

WordPress Portfolio Templates

3. activello.

Next up is our first WordPress portfolio template. If you love working in WordPress (or are a student taking our WordPress course), using a WordPress website as a portfolio of your work is a great way to show off your know-how in interactive ways. In this case, Activello is bold but minimal, so you can keep the focus on the work you’re doing.

A bold but minimal portfolio template from Activello Download the template here.

4. Asteria Lite

This is a great portfolio template for web developers in particular because it keeps the focus on your projects without distracting visitors with unnecessary splashy visuals. (Hence the “Lite” part of the WordPress theme name).

A simple and clean template for web developers Download the template here.

This is another WordPress theme that requires some hi-res images, but it’s well worth it. A portfolio website template for bold visuals, you can also include social links (if that’s your thing).

A stunning template that lets you include social media links Download the template here.

Sometimes less is more, and this simple WordPress theme proves just that. It’s a great portfolio website for showing off coding or other tech projects.

Less is definitely more with this template from Adapt Download the template here.

We like how unexpected this portfolio site template is, especially the reversal of gray and white. It’s muted but also bold (look at that font!) and a great template for showing off visual design or related work.

Show off your visual design chops with this template Download the template here.

A unique template with a right-aligned navigation structure, try this portfolio theme if you want to highlight powerful imagery.

Got powerful images? This template is the one you’ve been looking for Download the template here.

9. Draft Portfolio

Just as the description implies, this is a great portfolio website template for graphic designers or illustrators. Bold and playful, it has one of the most contemporary vibes on our list.

A bold, playful, and contemporary template Download the template here.

If you’re ready to make a career change — which would explain why you’re looking up portfolio website templates — why not try our Free Coding Camp to see if a career in tech is the way to go? If you’d like to dive right in, Skillcrush’s Break Into Tech course will teach you everything you need to know.

Cameron Chapman

Category: Blog , Entry Level Tech Jobs , Front End Developer , Get Hired in Tech , Resumes and Portfolios , UI/UX Designer

Related Articles

12 of the Best Online Writing Portfolio Examples – Updated for 2024

Jessica Michael

Sometimes when it comes to how to create a writing portfolio, we can all use some inspiration. With that in mind, I've gathered 12 of the best writing portfolios I've seen. We will go over what makes them so great and great lessons that you can use for your own writing portfolio website .

But first, let's make sure we're all on the same page by answering the question, what is a writing portfolio and how can you have one of the best?

What is a Writing Portfolio?

A writing portfolio is an online website where you promote your writing skills and expertise. In addition to samples of your past writing, your writing portfolio might also include an About Me page, a Contact page, and a Services page.

There are a few different ways that you can create a writing portfolio online.

You can always use a website builder like Squarespace or Wix , or even build it yourself with Wordpress. These are a great option if you have specific design needs and are comfortable with platforms like these.

A quicker, easier way is to use a writing portfolio website like JournoPortfolio . Sites like this are specifically designed with tools for writers and anyone else who needs a writing portfolio. You will be up and running in minutes, with quick article upload tools that allow you to import all of your writing samples in just a few minutes.

Why You Need an Online Writing Portfolio

Your writing portfolio is not just a place to house your writing. It is a strategic tool that you can use throughout your writing career to attract clients.

Whether you are a freelance journalist , copywriter, content marketer, or ghostwriter, your writing portfolio will always be a place where you can send potential clients.

Once there, your portfolio is a one-stop-shop where clients can get an idea for your writing style, your character, and your experience.

Without your portfolio, they would most likely have to piece together what they could from your social media and whatever else they could find online. And, after a few aggravating minutes, there's a very real risk that they will give up entirely and move on to someone else.

So now that we all understand what a writing portfolio is and why it's important, let's look at real-life examples of writers who are absolutely killing it on their portfolio. These are the best writing portfolios online right now, in no particular order.

12 of the Best Online Writing Portfolios Examples

1. ann friedman.

As a freelance journalist, Ann Friedman has written for such big-name publications as The New York Times , Elle magazine , and The Los Angeles Times , to name but a few.

But it's more than just her bylines that make this portfolio a stellar example for freelance writers and journalists.

Let's start with her minimalist design. Because she has so many projects going on – writing, a newsletter, and a podcast — she uses her home page strategically to filter you where you need to go.

Depending on your own writing portfolio and business goals, you might want to follow suit. Remember, less is sometimes more. After all, you don't want to overwhelm your website visitors with too much information up front.

2. Brittany Berger

I must say, I rather love the fact that this writer/content marketer greets you on her home page in a T-shirt and headphones.

It goes to show that you don't have to fit into a certain mold to be a freelance writer. It actually pays off to be unique and stand out from the crowd. Whether that's with your visuals, your color palette, or your witty writing style, it's up to you.

As you create your writing portfolio, ask yourself…

• What makes me different?
• How can I make my writing portfolio stand out?

In addition, she backs up her tongue-in-cheek writing style with evidence of her writing and strategy chops. Every bit of content on her site backs her up, from her Services page where she goes in-depth into content strategy, to her About page where she shares her background and press mentions.

So, even if you want to stand out on your page, make sure that you can back up every claim with hard evidence.

3. Tyler J. Koenig

I must say, I always love when portfolios greet you with a healthy dose of personality. And Tyler Koenig does that, with mix of confident and casual vibes that are completely in-line with his brand.

While he exudes a casual confidence, you can clearly see the amount of work that he puts into his portfolio. There are tons of content that showcases his expertise, as well as a solid block of experience that he discusses in his About section.

Another aspect that I enjoy about his profile is that he's not afraid to talk about his personal life and interests. You can see it on his home page where he gives a nod to his love of basketball, as well as his About page, where he goes deeper into how the love of the sport has shaped his career path. These details clearly enhance his portfolio.

You, too, can take your writing portfolio one step further by including relevant details that speak to your life experience and how you've been molded you as a writer.

4. Susan Shain

As a freelance journalist, I love how Susan Shain breaks through many stereotypes in her portfolio. From her down-to-earth photos to the engaging backstory on her bio page, she showcases her witty writing and her adventurous spirit.

You can tell right out of the gate that Shain is a natural storyteller. In everything that she writes, she pulls you in, including into the journey that she took to become a freelance journalist.

In her writing portfolio, she shares her vast catalog of past work, including bylines in The New York Times , The Atlantic , and NPR .

As you build your writing portfolio, you might also look for ways to expand your bylines – perhaps guest posting for prominent blogs or checking out industry publications. They'll usually have a page that outlines what they require of freelance writers and journalists who write for them.

5. Alice Lemée

Alice Lemée uses the space on her home page to warmly welcome her audience. She doesn't have a bold statement or an outrageous claim. She simply introduces herself and lets you know in the very first paragraph what she does and for whom.

Plus, let's take a second to talk about her picture. It's not a classically professional photo – and that's a good thing! It fits her copywriting brand, is high quality and clear, and includes a beautiful smile.

She also uses her portfolio website to feature many samples of her work, both in her blog and her portfolio itself. It gives ample proof of the consistent quality of her work.

And she also has a newsletter – which is a wonderful strategy to nurture interest in your brand. It's definitely something to consider if you have the time to contribute to it in a meaningful way!

6. Allie Decker

I love how the first image you see of Allie Decker is an animated version of her photo. It is a playful, creative way to greet her audience.

Her intro deals with the whimsical and the practical. She goes from describing her writing as the "intersection of SEO and storytelling" – both major commodities in the writing world – and then goes on to tell you about the major websites and publications where she has written. If you have similar bylines, putting them on the topfold of your homepage is a great way to showcase your expertise.

I also enjoy her Contact page. In addition to her form, she also outlines the various reasons you might contact her, including hiring her as a freelance writer or editor, working with her marketing brand to develop a content strategy, or even to invite her as a speaker on a podcast. This is a subtle way to let people know exactly how she can help their brand.

7. Tiffany Regaudie

You know what Tiffany Regaudie does as soon as her page loads – freelance copywriting. This saves you time. Now you only have to scroll down to publications where she is published, samples of her work, and testimonials from past clients.

Having a bold statement up top like this can really draw in your audience and make them want to learn more.

And we see another example of a call to action, this one for a free, 30 minutes chat. Even the word "chat" is very unassuming and straightforward, as opposed to words like "strategy session" or "discussion," which can intimidate your audience.

If you want to use a similar CTA on your portfolio, take the time to analyze your word choices to make sure you hit on the right tone for your brand.

8. Sara Clemence

This freelance writer leads with her writing, with samples of her writing right on her home page.

And, instead of including a photo of herself, she introduces her with a simple, one-liner that grabs your attention: Award-winning freelance journalist, travel writer, author, editor.

Many of the examples we've seen so far include a photo or a bold statement, but this one intrigued me because of its straightforward, down-to-business feel. It's professional and gets right to the reason why you're there – to see her work.

She also separates her site into sections where you can learn more about her as a writer, editor, or author of a book. If you have several different services you would like to offer, this is a great way to showcase each one individually.

9. Jolene Cheok

Jolene takes client engagement to the next level on her portfolio. Not only does she offer a direct line through her Contact page, but she also strategically places a button beneath her biography, inviting visitors to book a 15-minute consultation via bookk.me. This approach stands out as a top-notch conversion strategy for copywriter websites, exemplifying how to craft a copywriter portfolio that provides clients with diverse avenues for connection.

10. Allen Wildes

Allen Wildes stands out as a B2B/B2C copywriter and content expert, boasting collaborations with renowned entities like Nike, Architectural Digest, and Trendhim. His portfolio meticulously highlights his elite experience, showcasing the prominent brands he has partnered with right on the homepage. Each brand is clickable, leading to a dedicated page that narrates the projects he's undertaken, complemented by carefully selected images. Additionally, his highest-ranking blog posts are showcased on a distinct page, with the site's minimalistic design ensuring a professional atmosphere throughout.

11. Gracia Kleijnen

Gracia Kleijnen, hailing from the Netherlands, melds her talents as a freelance copywriter and Medium blogger into an engaging portfolio. The homepage welcomes visitors with captivating images that reflect her personality, offering a glimpse into her journey and professional focus. Additionally, she provides a Tools and Resources page, outlining the essential platforms and apps that power her copywriting ventures, complete with affiliate links for a touch of entrepreneurship. Gracia's portfolio is further enriched by a blog, blending personal insights with her professional facade.

12. Adriana Calado

Adriana Calado, a freelance copywriter and digital marketer, specializes in human rights, sustainability, and cultural topics. Her portfolio's homepage features an extensive About Me section, offering insight into her background and passions, along with links to other site areas for easy navigation. The services page breaks down into six subpages, each detailing Adriana's offerings in copywriting and digital marketing.

This layout simplifies the process for potential clients, providing them with precise information they're seeking without unnecessary searching.

Concluding Thoughts About the Best Writing Portfolios

If there's anything I want you to take away from this article, it's this: Writing portfolios come in every shape and size. Don't tie yourself down to imitating any one portfolio.

Of course, there are certain things that all portfolios should have:

• Writing samples, so people can actually see your work.
• A bio , so people can learn about you and your background as a writer.
• A contact page so people can easily get in touch.
• Images, to break up the text and connect with your audience.

But outside of these things, you have a lot of creative freedom. Create something that not only displays your writing chops, but also, infuse it with your individual personality.

I hope you've enjoyed this sampling of the best writing portfolios I've seen on the internet and that they inspire you to go forth and create your own great portfolio .

Happy writing!

Jamie Mendes

Photography marketing: how to promote your photography on instagram.

What is a Call To Action and How to Create One for Your Digital Portfolio

How to Build a UX Writing Portfolio and Our Best Examples to Get You Inspired

Curated by journo portfolio.

Subscribe to a monthly email of useful links, tips and advice for people interested in portfolio-building.

No spam, ever. We take your data privacy seriously and you can one-click unsubscribe at any time.

Prefer English?

• Internet , Wordpress themes & Page Builders

30+ Personal Portfolio Templates (Free & Paid)

It is essential to have a personal website because it helps you to promote your skills or land your dream job .

However, it may be strenuous to design and develop a website from scratch . Not to mention, you have to consider factors like loading time, responsiveness, quality content, catchy colors, and fonts, etc. when developing the website.

Fortunately, you can make use of a personal portfolio template that will help you create an attractive personal website without hassles.

All you have to do is to modify the website template with your personal information and then publish it.

So, in this post, I will show you over 30 personal portfolio templates both free and paid that you can use to create a personal website .

30+ Personal Portfolio Templates (Free & Paid)

Tokyo is a portfolio template for freelancers to create a personal website to sell their services. It is a fully responsive HTML template that is also ideal for agencies.

Aside from being responsive to all types of devices, Tokyo is available in both light and dark versions, and it is also optimized with CSS3 animations. It has an ultra-fast loading time coming up in less than three seconds.

Tokyo is a developer-friendly template that is easy to customize and is well-documented, with free updates, which make it a top personal portfolio template for creating an interactive website.

Tokyo is the perfect portfolio template for freelancers. This beautiful template is fully responsive, optimized with CSS3 animations, ultra-fast, easy to customize and well documented.

InBio is an attractive, one-page personal portfolio template that is ideal for various categories of freelancers.

It is an easy-to-modify web template with adjustable colors, light and dark layout, customizable dashboard, several widgets, and thousands of Google Fonts. It also comes in more than 24 variations, which give you more options for choosing a portfolio template adapted to your needs.

InBio is responsive and adapts to all device types. Apart from being search engine optimized, it offers you a modern design with 100 percent valid W3, fast loading speed, support for multiple browsers, free updates, and fast customer support.

Check Out :  Best Free Wordpress Gym Themes

InBio is an attractive, one-page personal portfolio template ideal for freelancers in various fields. The template comes in 24 different versions which gives its users ample choices to pick the design they want.

If you want a personal portfolio template that is built with ReactJS, then you should consider using Shane.

Shane is a fully responsive ReactJS personal portfolio template with CSS3 animations, making it well-suited for various use cases as a freelancer or business person.

The Shane template comes with four demos that are ideal for drawing attention. Thanks to its documentation, you should be able to modify and install this template even without coding knowledge. All you need is a code editor program to edit the source files.

Conversely, Shane has an extremely fast loading time and it is optimized for search engines.

Also Read :  Best Free & Paid Gambling Wordpress Themes

Shane is a robust personal portfolio template based on ReactJS. The template is easy to install and make modifications without requiring you to have any coding knowledge. Try it today!

Among our list of the best personal portfolio templates, here is Tunis, a template with light and dark versions.

It is a one-page responsive template that is compatible with multiple browser types. It is written with HTML and CSS3, which attributes to its attractive design.

As a navigation-friendly template, it has ten attractive color skins that can be toggled using the live style switcher.

Likewise, Tunis also features a blog page for posting updates.

Worth Exploring :  Best Free & Paid Wordpress Real Estate Themes

Tunis is an amazing personal portfolio template giving you 10 attractive color skins that can be toggled using the live style switcher. It is compatible with most browsers and features a blog page too.

Krozo is a personal portfolio template built with the latest React v17. It has a clean design that enhances the user’s experience (UX), although it is a one-page website template.

It is Bootstrap 5 compatible, which can boost your conversion rate with lightning speed.

Krozo is responsive on all device types and is SEO-friendly. Not to mention, it incorporates a blog page, dynamic contact form, and text loop effect.

Also, it comes with six modern demos and it is well-adapted for mobile navigation.

Explore : Best Squarespace Templates For Video

Krozo is a creative portfolio template for those who like a minimal clean look. It is built with React latest version 17. Features include dark and light version, superfast, mobile responsive, SEO optimized and more.

Waxon is an alluring personal portfolio template that is ideal for professionals. It is a fully responsive design template with navigation features designed for all kinds of devices.

It comes with about eight attractive design styles including an RTL style. It is a simple yet powerful template that can be easily customized thanks to its documentation.

Interestingly, Waxon has about twelve color skins and two magic cursors for navigation. Plus, it features a contact form and Google Maps at the footer.

Waxon is a great choice if you want a beautiful personal portfolio template. It offers 8 amazing styles including an RTL design. Not only that, you get razor-fast speed, 24/7 support and more.

If you want a stunning personal website , you should consider Sliim.

It is a fast-loading HTML5 and CSS3 template responsive on all device types.

Sliim features four homepage demos with multiple page layouts. Plus, it is built with the Bootstrap 4 Framework which makes it visually attractive.

Notably, it has about fourteen color skins and it is available in both dark and light versions.

Unlike other personal portfolio templates, it is a multi-page website template. Also, it supports dynamic web pages like portfolio and blog pages.

Sliim is a popular template among professionals. Its long feature list includes multiple homepage variations, light and dark mode, responsive layout, 100% customizable, ultra fast speed and a lot more.

Icard is a mobile-friendly personal portfolio template that is also suitable for building a resume or VCard website.

It is written with HTML5, Bootstrap 4, and CSS3. Also, it features an Ajax-built dynamic contact form.

Interestingly, Icard is available in two variants i.e. light and dark. Likewise, it is SEO-friendly and well-documented for easy modification.

Additionally, it features attractive pages such as About, Blog, Portfolio, and Resume. Not to mention, website visitors can download the resume page.

Explore :  Best Free & Paid Political Wordpress Themes

Icard is a wonderful personal portfolio template offering loads of features. It's fully responsive, customizable, SEO optimized, & retina-ready. Includes Google fonts, well laid documentation and offers free updates too.

Baha is a stylish and alluring personal portfolio template built with HTML5, CSS3, and JQuery. It is a fast-loading and cross-browser-compatible website template.

Notably, Baha incorporates retina support to keep your visitors engaged as well as background music integration which is a unique feature appreciated by website visitors.

The template is available in nine demo styles. Also, it incorporates six color schemes, four menu positions, and LTR/RTL support.

Conversely, Baha features Google Fonts, Google Maps integration, contact forms, and multiple boxing settings.

An eye-catching personal portfolio template, Baha includes tons of features to choose from. It offers 6 color schemes, RTL support & Google map integration besides serveral other features.

10. Ruposhi

Ruposhi is a flexible personal portfolio template that is ideal for models, actors, or musical artists. It is built with HTML5, CSS3 and based on Bootstrap 4, which makes it an attractive template.

With Ruposhi, you are provided with access to Google Fonts, contact form, FontAwesome icons, and good documentation.

Furthermore, it comes with a dark background and fluid navigation, which is ideal for displaying photo galleries.

Ruposhi is a personal portfolio template ideal for models, actors, and artists in creative fields. This beautiful template comes with a comprehensive document that easily guides its users through HTML & other aspects.

Another personal portfolio website template on our list is Moscow.

Moscow is written with HTML5 and CSS3. Also, it is a lightweight template that loads extremely fast. It has a simple grid layout that can be flexibly customized to reflect your preference.

Meanwhile, Moscow comes with about 10 color skins that can be toggled using the style switcher. Also, it is available in light and dark backgrounds and features smooth transitions.

Apart from being mobile responsive, the Moscow template incorporates a dynamic contact form and the about page can be downloaded as a resume in PDF file format.

On the other hand, its homepage does not feature a blog. The blog menu can only be accessed via the About Me page.

Also Read : Best Therapy Website Templates

Moscow is another template from Celtano with clean tempting looks. Users can choose from 10 color skins along with the option of setting dark or light version. Its grid layout is quite attractive.

Ukko is a WordPress theme that is ideal for building vCard , resume, or portfolio websites.

Notably, Ukko has a one-page layout with parallax elements, an integrated child theme, and smooth scroll features for easy navigation.

It is 100 percent responsive to all device types with awesome animation features and transitions that make your personal website alluring for your visitors.

Additionally, you can customize this website theme by using Elementor, the most popular WordPress page builder .

Nevertheless, you also get both a video guide and PDF documentation for easy installation and modification.

Ukko is a Wordpress theme for building impressive resumes and CV sites. It comes with Elementor drag & drop builder which lets you easily customize your portfolio as per your needs.

13. Istanbul

Istanbul is a responsive personal portfolio template based on Bootstrap 4 and built with HTML5 and CSS3 codes, which makes it extremely lightweight with fast loading time.

Apart from incorporating six homepage demos, Istanbul features about eight different built-in color schemes, W3C validation, and creative layout.

Also, it comes with an Ajax contact form and Google Fonts. Plus, it supports videos, images, and audio.

Additionally, it is well documented which facilitates easy customization.

Based on Bootstrap 4 framework, Istanbul is a solid template for building personal portfolios. It is extremely lightweight, quick, and offers an all-inclusive list of essential features.

Callum is a one-page personal portfolio template that incorporates a powerful parallax background. It is written with HTML5 and CSS3 code.

It also features a YouTube video background, full, and standard screen menus. In fact, it comes with about nine homepage styles.

It is the ideal website template for showcasing yourself as a developer, designer, photographer, or independent artist .

Callum features a blog section and other sections, including about us and contact sections. It also comes in seven color schemes with unique blog designs.

Other Callum features include W3C validation, responsiveness, Owl Carousel, Google reCAPTCHA, etc.

Callum is an ideal choice for photographers, designers, and artists who want to display their work creatively. A powerful parallax, & youtube video background, as well as an overlay full screen menu are among its highlights.

Growth is a simple personal portfolio template that is built for WordPress users.

Interestingly, the Growth WordPress theme comes with seven homepage design options and it integrates with Elementor, which provides you with unlimited customization options.

Likewise, it seamlessly integrates with WooCommerce, which enables website owners to sell their services and process payment.

Conversely, Growth is responsive and easily adapted to all screen types. It comes with about 40 premium widgets, over 5000 free font icons, smooth transition effects, etc.

Check Out : Best Wix Yoga Templates

Growth is an elegant personal portfolio theme, especially for those who love using Wordpress. A massive feature list along with a powerful drag and drop builder in Elementor makes it the theme of choice.

Kitzu is a creative and responsive portfolio template for showcasing your work as a designer, developer, artist, model, or photographer. It is written with valid markup languages i.e. HTML5 and CSS3.

Kitzu features over 24 color options, and it comes in two variants: image background and video background. It is also retina-ready and compatible with modern desktop and mobile browsers.

With Kitzu, you gain access to over 700 icons, Google web fonts, blog page, filterable portfolio gallery, resume page, portfolio items, lightbox, etc.

Simone is a one-page HTML5 portfolio template with a clean and unique design.

It features five different homepage variations including a RTL version, unlike other personal portfolio website templates on our list. Also, Simone supports both light and dark modes for each homepage variation.

Nevertheless, it is ultra-responsive to all screen types, and it features 10 color schemes that you can toggle.

It also incorporates sticky menus, Google web fonts, Owl Carousel, CSS3 animation, and Ajax contact form. It also integrates with Font Awesome which enables you to customize your preferred social media icons.

Plus, you can easily customize the Simone template by using its documentation.

If your preference is a personal portfolio template written with HTML and CSS5 codes and not based on Bootstrap, then Arlo is the right option to consider.

Arlo is a stylish website template with about 22 homepage demos that is suitable for building a personal website.

Conversely, Arlo incorporates a one-page design layout. Not to mention, it is SEO-friendly and loads faster on modern web browsers .

Notably, Arlo features twelve color schemes, two magic cursors, and it also integrates with Google Fonts.

Andle is a personal portfolio template built on the React JS framework and based on Bootstrap 5.

Andle features a menu tab and multiple sections, including homepage, about me, portfolio, pricing, blog, and ccpages.

Not to mention, it integrates with Google Fonts, that way, you have flexible options for changing the website typography as you wish.

Also, Andle features a responsive layout, Getform contact form, and is compatible with all modern browsers.

Mim is a WordPress-based personal portfolio template that is ideal for creating a personal website for freelancers, startups, programmers, and artists.

It incorporates the Unyson page builder, which enables users to drag and drop content elements like testimonials, galleries, etc. without coding.

Also, it integrates with the WordPress Customizer. That way, you can modify your website appearance instantly.

Interestingly, Mim is available in two versions i.e. RTL and LTR. Likewise, it facilitates light and dark mode variations.

Meanwhile, you can quickly import your preferred demo version using its built-in demo importer.

21. Sunshine

Sunshine is an HTML-coded personal portfolio template that comes in two different versions with six color schemes for endless customization options.

Its striking features include solid portfolio details as well as unique pages like Home, About Us, and Blog.

Sunshine incorporates a mobile-optimized lightbox for integrating images, video, and audio from various platforms, including YouTube, Vimeo, and SoundCloud.

Sunshine comes prebuilt with over 67 different page out animations, over 30 social media icons, and it integrates with Google Fonts.

The portfolio template is responsive to all device types, and thanks to its HTML5 and CSS3 coding, it loads with blazing speed.

Also, it includes documentation known as a help file, which allows you to easily modify it.

Zonar is a personal portfolio template you should consider for selling items on your personal website since it integrates with the WooCommerce plugin. Aside from that, it is suitable for all kinds of freelancers as well as startups.

Zonar integrates with WPBakery, a drag-and-drop builder for unlimited customization options. It also features a built-in content demo installer that allows you to import demo content with a few clicks.

Additionally, Zonar incorporates six homepage styles, including slider, image, carousel, and revolution slider.

Nevertheless, Zonar provides you with unlimited color options, four different style portfolio pages, ajax page transitions, etc.

Nevertheless, you can quickly install this WordPress theme and customize it by using its extensive documentation.

Gfolio is a personal portfolio resume theme designed to be fast and responsive to all screen sizes. It is built with HTML5, CSS3, and Bootstrap 4.

Gfolio has eight homepage demo versions with different color schemes for high-degree customization options. Hence, you can edit colors, drag and drop widgets, and alternate between light and dark skins.

With Gfolio, you have access to 38 HTML pages, free Google Fonts, Fonts Awesome Icons, and free updates.

Moreover, retina-ready Gfolio is W3C validated, and it comes with comprehensible documentation for non-tech-savvy users.

Check Out : Best Law Firm Website Templates

24. CWW Portfolio

If you want a free WordPress theme for your personal portfolio website, then you should consider CWW Portfolio, just as its name implies.

It is based on Bootstrap which makes it attractive. Plus, it is fast-loading and responsive on all device types.

CWW comes in light and dark skin versions that make it daytime and night-time adapted. It also has customizable sections for homepage, contact, CTA, service, portfolio, etc.

25. Online Portfolio

Online Portfolio is a personal portfolio WordPress theme perfect for creating an intuitive website as a developer, photographer, painter, artist, or graphics designer.

Customizing Online Portfolio comes easy thanks to its multiple customization options and documentation.

Additionally, Online Portfolio is 100 percent responsive and fast-loading since it is built with HTML5 and CSS3 code. It is also SEO friendly with support for top WordPress plugins for enhanced features.

Not to mention, you can easily import its demo content with a few clicks.

26. Mik Personal

Mik Personal is dark-themed and lightweight, making it the best option for personal portfolios.

Notably, Mik Personal is a child theme of Mik. So, you have to download Mik for free before customizing Mik Personal.

Mik Personal is well-organized and built using HTML5 and CSS3 for a faster loading speed.

Moreover, it is a search-engine-optimized template with easily customizable features, Ajax-based contact form, Google Fonts, icons, and adjustable widgets.

27. Elegant Portfolio

Elegant Portfolio is a free WordPress theme ideal for creating a fully responsive personal portfolio website as a photographer , graphics artist, painter, and other professionals.

As a cross-browser-supported theme, it is responsive to all screen sizes. It also has highly customizable features that include drag-and-drop widgets, multiple color schemes, icon types, and integration with Google Fonts.

Although Elegant Portfolio is free, you have to download the Perfect Portfolio WordPress theme as well before you customize it.

Nevertheless, it features several homepage sections you can show or hide based on your preference.

28. Personal Eye

Personal Eye is a free personal portfolio template that is optimized for search engines. It is a light-speed personal portfolio template ideal for various use cases.

Interestingly, it has about five different blog styles. Not to mention, you can easily customize its theme options by using the basic WordPress customizer.

Conversely, Personal Eye works well with the Gutenberg Editor; hence, you can easily modify content blocks based on your preference.

29. Portfolio Web

Portfolio Web is a minimalist free WordPress theme built with HTML5 and CSS3 codes. It features multiple background choices and homepage options.

With Portfolio Web, you can design your Homepage and add as many pages as you desire using available Portfolio Web widgets.

This WordPress theme is responsive on all device types and compatible with all browser types.

Other features that make Portfolio Web a desirable website template include sliders, multi-language support, breadcrumbs, more color choices, and social media integration.

30. Personal Info

Personal Info is a personal portfolio template well-adapted for exhibiting brands and personal information.

Personal Info features elements including homepage, contact, portfolio profile, and blog page.

Also, Personal Info is built for WordPress CMS, and it features highly customizable options, including color schemes, font types, drag-and-drop widgets, etc.

31. Rabin Resume Vcard

Rabin Resume Vcard is a WordPress theme that incorporates flipbook animations and other premium features for free.

Whether you’re a freelancer or business person, Rabin Resume is perfectly suited for your personal portfolio website.

You will find Rabin Resume highly customizable with unlimited colors, multiple background choices, icons, Google Fonts, menus, etc.

Check Out : Best Squarespace Templates For Writers & Authors

32. My Resume

My Resume is a free WordPress theme/template that you need to showcase your skills, achievements, and experiences, irrespective of your profession.

It is SEO-adapted with highly customizable features. Not to mention, it is built with HTML5 and CSS3 which makes it lightweight for robust functionalities.

Apart from being highly responsive, it also features CTA for higher conversion, multiple background choices, loads of fonts, and icons.

Wrapping Up – 30+ Personal Portfolio Templates (Free & Paid)

Now, you have over 30 of the best personal portfolio templates to choose from.

However, I will advise you to choose a premium template over a free template to access more features and wider customization options.

Also, choosing a premium template gives you access to customer support that you can depend on if you encounter any issue during customization or thereafter.

Tom loves to write on technology, e-commerce & internet marketing. I started my first e-commerce company in college, designing and selling t-shirts for my campus bar crawl using print-on-demand. Having successfully established multiple 6 & 7-figure e-commerce businesses (in women’s fashion and hiking gear), I think I can share a tip or 2 to help you succeed.

Portfolio Templates

Digital Business Portfolio Template

Editable Graphic Design Portfolio Template

Digital Marketing Services Portfolio Design

Interactive Architecture Portfolio Template

Interactive Art Portfolio Template

Interactive Home Decor Portfolio Design

Editable Digital Creative Portfolio Template

Jewelry & Watches Portfolio Template

Personal Investment Portfolio Template

Business Financial Portfolio Template

Minimalist Work Portfolio Template

Minimal Work Portfolio Template

Creative Work Portfolio Template

Beauty & Planet Project Portfolio Template

Social Media Marketing Template

Marketing Specialist Portfolio Template

Creative Design & Illustration Portfolio Template

Service Portfolio Template for Companies

Professional Business Tips Portfolio Template

Minimalist Fashion Design Portfolio Template

An impressive and informative portfolio is a must these days if you want to stand out from the crowd. Let’s be serious, we all know how important it is to present your work through a professional portfolio. No matter if it’s a photography portfolio , graphic design portfolio , fashion portfolio , resume portfolio, or simply architecture portfolio , Flipsnack’s got portfolio ideas for every situation. You might say that is impossible to make a creative portfolio without design skills! This couldn’t be further from the truth. We’ve already done the design thing for you, so all you’ve got to do now is to edit whichever portfolio template you want! So easy, right? Flipsnack offers you hundreds of free online portfolios so you can unleash your creativity and create the best portfolio ever that will definitely catch everyone’s attention! As we’ve said before, it can be any kind of portfolio, we have plenty of everything. Are you a passionate photographer and want to present the beautiful shots that you’ve captured? How about choosing an online photography portfolio from Flipsnack? Or maybe you’re an architect and you’re preparing to present your work to your next possible client. Try an architecture portfolio layout from us in order to impress! Give the world a chance to admire your outstanding work by displaying it in one of our creative graphic designer online portfolios. Are you looking for a job? What better way to strike at the interview than creating a portfolio in this sense? Pick one of our cv portfolio templates and get that job! And from now on, we also have resume portfolio templates! What are you waiting for? Try these portfolio examples from Flipsnack now! Flipsnack gives you the opportunity to fully customize the entire online portfolio. Pick stunning and professional images from our stock, or simply upload your own photos. Change the background colors, fonts, and graphics to fit your style with our easy-to-use Flipsnack editor. Create a powerful brand identity with our free online portfolio builder and inspire your audience. Once you’re pleased with the final result, download your portfolio design as PDF, JPG, or PNG. And you can also share it with the entire world with just one click. It’s so nice to create stunning portfolios with Flipsnack!

Explore the most complex flipbook maker

Get started for free and upgrade to use Flipsnack's premium features

This website uses cookies

The cookies we use on Flipsnack's website help us provide a better experience for you, track how our website is used, and show you relevant advertising. If you want to learn more about the cookies we're using, make sure to check our Cookie policy

We use essential cookies to make our site work for you. These allow you to navigate and operate on our website.

Performance

We use performance cookies to understand how you interact with our site. They help us understand what content is most valued and how visitors move around the site, helping us improve the service we offer you.

Please note that declining these cookies will disable the ability to communicate with Flipsnack support.

Advertising

We use marketing cookies to deliver ads we think you'll like. They allow us to measure the effectiveness of the ads that are relevant for you.

How-To Geek

How you can create a great title page in microsoft word.

Your changes have been saved

Email Is sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

Quick Links

Cover page templates (and why you shouldn't use them), use styles to create your text, add a section break, add a page border, amend the page alignment, organize your page numbers.

Whether you're writing a book, a business plan, an academic paper, or a newsletter, a title page is a great way to capture your reader's attention, lay out what the document contains, and add professionalism to your work. In this article, we will explore the steps to achieving this.

Microsoft Word offers many template title pages for you to add to your document, which you can access by clicking the "Insert" tab on the ribbon, and choosing "Cover Page" in the Pages tab.

While this might be a good option if you're looking to save time, there are various reasons why it's not the best choice:

• Certain preset designs are overused. Similar to well-known PowerPoint presentation designs or website templates, they look pre-designed and standard, lacking that personal touch.
• Designing your own title page means that you can create and follow your own formatting. If you add a preset cover page after finishing your work, you might find the layout is inconsistent with the remainder of your document.
• Word's preset cover pages contain placeholders where you position your text. While you can move, format, and resize these placeholders, they are created using text boxes (rather than as text on the page itself), so their structure is limiting and insecure.
• Depending on the type of document you are creating, you might want a plainer title page. Indeed, some of Word's fancier layouts would look out of place at the beginning of a formal academic document.
• You might find that the designs do not work for you. Creating your own title page offers more flexibility for displaying what you want, where you want it, and how you want it.

The first step to creating your impressive title page is to use or modify styles . You'll find a Title style in the Style Gallery (in the Home tab on the ribbon), which you can click before, during, or after typing your main document title.

However, if you're not happy with the layout of the Title style, right-click "Title" in the Style Gallery, and click "Modify."

You can then change the style's settings to present your title as you wish. I'd recommend the following settings.

In the Modify Style dialog box, click Format > Font.

Here, change the font to bold and 72 pt (or a similarly large size, but not too big!). This will make your title really stand out.

By default, Word condenses any text in the Title style to differentiate it from the rest of the text. However, since I've chosen a larger typeface, I don't need the text to be condensed. So, open the "Advanced" tab, change the Character Spacing to "Normal," and click "OK" to close your font settings.

With the Modify Style dialog box still open, click Format > Paragraph to open the Paragraph dialog box. Here, change the Spacing After to half your chosen font size. So, since I have chosen size 72 pt font, I'll go with 36 pt for the spacing after the paragraph. Then, click "OK."

Before you close the Modify Style dialog box, decide on your title alignment. In my example, I'll go with center alignment, as this layout looks great on a cover page. Finally, click "OK."

You can now press Enter and type further text beneath your title (such as your name, a second heading, or whatever you wish), and follow the same steps to decide on the style formatting. I've gone with Word's Intense Quote style and modified it to size 20 pt.

So that you can format your title page separately from the rest of your document, you need to add a Section Break . With your cursor at the end of the last word you have typed on the title page, click "Breaks" and then "Next Page" in the Layout tab on the ribbon.

This will create a second page in your document, separated from your title page by an invisible section barrier. If you click the "Show/Hide" (¶) icon in the Home tab on the ribbon, you'll see where this Section Break is added. Click the ¶ icon again to hide these pagination markers.

If you want to add more content to the title page, simply place your cursor before the Section Break, and press Enter. Word will then set the following line to the Normal style, ready for you to add more details.

A great title page always has a page border . To add one, place your cursor anywhere before the Section Break you just added, and click "Page Borders" in the design tab on the ribbon.

In the dialog box that opens, modify the border's Settings and Style to suit your needs. I've gone for a simple box and a solid, thin line, but you can design your border to your taste. Then, importantly, ensure you click the "Apply To" drop-down option and choose "This Section" or "This Section - First Page Only." This is why we created a Section Break in the previous step, and failing to choose this option will add page borders to every page in your document.

When you're done, click "OK" to see the outcome.

At the moment, the text is aligned at the top of the page, but a more professional title page will align the text in the center . To achieve this, with your cursor anywhere in the text you have typed so far, click the "Page Setup" icon in the corner of the Page Setup group in the Layout tab.

In the resulting dialog box, first, open the "Layout Tab." Then, click "Center" in the Vertical Alignment option, and choose "This Section" in the Apply To field. When you're done, click "OK."

You will now see that your title page is nicely center-aligned.

Title pages tend not to contain page numbers, so you need to change one more setting to make sure this doesn't happen when you add numbers to your subsequent pages .

Go to the second page (which you created when adding a Section Break to your title page), and double-click in the footer area.

Then, in the "Header And Footer" tab on the ribbon, check "Different First Page."

Now, in the same tab, click "Page Number," then "Bottom Of Page," and choose your preferred style. Personally, I always go for a centered page number.

Since you told Word that your first-page footer is different from the rest of the document, you'll see that although your second page is numbered as page 2, there isn't a page number on your title page, keeping it clean and tidy without any unnecessary detail.

Now that you have an impressively formatted cover page, make sure you apply the necessary settings to make the rest of your document equally professional .

• Microsoft Word
• Microsoft 365