The artful blogger: blog your writer’s portfolio

Freelance writing success is pretty much like success in any business: it’s who you know, and who knows you.

Get known via your blog
Your blog is an easy way to get known by editors. Think of your writing blog as your freelance writing portfolio.

For many years, whenever I coached writers in successful freelancing, a student’s first task was to build his writing portfolio. Many students were new writers, and just didn’t have a portfolio, so I helped them to create a portfolio by developing writing samples of the kinds of writing they wanted to sell – articles, brochures, Web pages, and so on.

These days, I advise my students to blog. Your writers’ blog is the new writers’ portfolio.

When an editor or a client checks you out online by Googling you, there should be hundreds, if not thousands of references to your name. When an editor sees your work online in Google’s search engine results pages, she will feel much more confident about commissioning you.

Go to Google now, and type in your name. (This practice is known as ego surfing.) How many references can you find to your name?

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