Your freelance portfolio is your business card in front of the world. It’s important to watch out for some common mistakes the freelancers make. Avoiding these weak points will make you more relevant for the business. There are some things that it’s allowed to brag about on your portfolio, but age is for sure not one of them.
1. Grammar, grammar, grammar…
Grammar is something very important for freelance writers, not so important for designers and maybe meaningless for programmers and developers. But that doesn’t mean that one must write like he never graduated 10th grade. Everyone would like to hire you if you’re good designer, even though you’re struggling with the spelling of complicated words. But what you should not let happen is to write in a way that only you can understand it.
2. Your age
The freelancers are working as freelancers because they are good and they are worthy. So nobody who decided to hire freelancer would be impressed to read “My name is Lance and I’m 19 years old”. However, the years that should be mentioned in your portfolio must be connected with your experience rather than your age. So it will sound way better if you write “I’m Lance and I have done this for 15 years” than focusing on your age. When you present yourself that way, nobody would care if you are 25 or 55 years old.
3. 3rd grade statements
Forget the part where you try to be humble and describe your future dreams, goals and wishes. It’s a forbidden scenario to share who you want to be in the future, what you want to achieve and so on. Don’t tell “I’m new at this”, “I hope I will get better” – it sounds good but only if it’s written as an essay by 12 years old. What a client would want from you to hear is “I am getting better with every project”. So you’d better forget about words like “hope”, “wish” and “try”. Because clients love confidence and they will seek for it in your freelance portfolio.
If you have noticed some other negative trends in freelancers’ portfolios, comments are welcome.
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