Are you constantly second-guessing which writing samples to include in your freelance writing portfolio? Perhaps you think you need actual work from clients. Guess what! You can use your self-published blog posts as portfolio pieces. Today I’ll show you how to craft an SEO-friendly blog post that drives business results.
Blog posts are ideal as writing samples because they’re long-form pieces of content and show your knowledge of structuring for readability and SEO. Keep in mind that clients don’t want just any type of blog post.
Blogging isn’t just about putting words on a page, you are being paid to sell a product or service. Your blog posts must drive business results in terms of traffic, leads, sales, or engagement like comments and shares.
In this post, you’ll learn how to build a writing portfolio with no experience and still stand out from the crowd with effective branding and niche marketing even if you’re a complete beginner with no client work!
What Is a Writing Sample?
Writing samples come in many different forms and their main purpose is to showcase your writing skills and expertise in a topic. A few examples of writing samples are blog posts, sales and landing page copy, ebooks, email, and more.
Having a blog post as a writing sample is one of the easiest to tackle for a new writer while showing your skills in formatting, SEO, editing, and writing style.
How Long Should a Writing Sample Be?
If you plan on writing a blog post as a sample it should be between 800-1200 words. Writing samples shouldn’t be too long because prospects just skim them as they might not have time to read a lengthy blog post.
Emails can be from 120-500 words long while landing pages can be around 300 words or more depending on whether it’s a long form or short form landing page.
You only need 2-3 writing samples for your writing portfolio and two of those can be based on evergreen topics. Include one sample on a trending topic to show prospects that you keep up-to-date with what’s happening in your field.
How To Write Blog Posts That Drive Results
First, you have to know what’s the purpose or the end goal of this piece of content. And how does it fit into the sales funnel?
Let’s have a look at the sales funnel process which turns casual readers into paying customers: readers -> leads -> customers
Blog posts are a way to create awareness of a product among readers and it’s usually at the bottom of the sales funnel.
Here’s a sales funnel example:
- If you perform a Google search on “how to send cold emails” the search results will include blog posts from websites selling email marketing software.
- You might read a few of these blog posts and even subscribe to a particular website ‘Software X’ because their blog post was very informative and answered all your questions.
- After subscribing to Software X and reading their emails and blog posts you decide to invest in email marketing software from Software X because you know, like, and trust them.
Here’s another sales funnel example:
- Maybe you’re trying to get more signups to your email list. You can create a few blog posts with a freebie that’s related to the blog posts.
- So if you’re writing an article on “X Tips to Nail Your Discovery Call” you can offer a “Discovery script template” as a freebie.
- Readers who sign up for your freebie will be on your email list and you can continue to nurture them and promote your offers.
Related Posts:
- How Much Should I Charge as a Beginner Freelance Writer?
- How Do You Write a Killer Cold Email?
- How Do I Prepare For a Discovery Call?
4 Marketing Skills to Include When Creating a Sample Blog Post
1. Research the Target Audience
Find out the audience’s pain points, wants, needs, and desires before you start writing. This will give you a load of topics to write about. Your writing samples should reflect topics relevant to your target client’s readers.
So if you’re targeting a company selling hair loss treatments, here’s what this company’s readers like to read e.g. ‘Tips to improve hair loss’, ‘What you need to know about alopecia’, and ‘7 Nutritional supplements for thinning hair’.
The above topics are all niche-relevant samples so when you pitch to a hair shampoo company, the prospect will be like “This person knows exactly what type of people to bring (through SEO) to our blog”
2. SEO
By branding yourself as an SEO writer you can charge more, you should first learn how to incorporate SEO into content. SEO stands for search engine optimization and it’s when you use specific search terms in a blog post to make it rank in search results. Your articles that rank high in SERPs can also be used as social proof on your website.
To find suitable keywords and phrases.
- Type a topic into any free keyword planner and look at what comes up.
- Copy the low-competition keywords (have very little search volume/longer phrases) into a Google sheet.
- Pick a keyword and put this → [allintitle: keyword] into Google search and use the topic if it has less than 5000 results.
3. Craft a Clickable Headline
Headlines should make people stop scrolling and click on it. To do that it must promise something and speak to the needs of the reader. Let’s go back to the topic ‘Tips to improve hair loss’ Here are a few headlines for this topic that speak to the reader’s pain points and desires:
If you need help with headlines try Semrush’s title generator to get you started. This title generator isn’t perfect but it can give you some ideas on formatting blog titles, you just need to make a few tweaks to get a great headline.
4. Master Formatting and Readability
Make use of copywriting techniques like storytelling to make sure readers get through your introduction, this will decrease the bounce rate.
Structure the blog post so that the information flows and makes sense:
A blog post consists of an introduction that hooks the audience with a question, stats, or personal experience.
The intro is followed by a body where all the relevant, steps are explained in detail with subheadings to divide the content and make it easy to read. This shows prospects you know how to write for an online audience as this is mostly specific to online writing.
The last part is the conclusion which just summarizes your blog post, it should include a call-to-action like “comment down below…” or “share this with …” to get more engagement.
What would your ideal client notice while reading your writing sample to make them choose your services for their business?
- SEO keywords are incorporated to help it rank
- It has verifiable stats from notable sources
- It’s a long-form informative piece of content
- It’s formatted correctly with subheadings, bullet lists, and images to make it skimmable
- It can be repurposed for social media posts
Writing Sample Template
Remember, this is a mock-up sample of what a blog post would look like:
Headline [e.g. 3 Ways to Hydrate Your Skin in the Summer]
Introduction [of 2-3 paragraphs]
**Image**
Subheading [H2 tag]
[short intro of 1 sentence]
Subheading [H3]
[1-2 paragraphs…]
Subheading [H3]
[…]
Subheading [H3]
[…]
Note: The H2 subheading can be like a question and the H3 subheadings should be the answers to the question. Like this:
How to get rid of dry flakey skin [H2 tag]
Exfoliate [H3]
[…]
Use a face mask [H3]
[…]
Moisturize [H3]
[…]
Conclusion [H2 tag]
[1-2 short paragraphs]
P.S. You should have at least 5 of the H2 Subheadings in a blog post and every H2 subheading should have H3 subheadings under it. That’s it for the blog post template, tweak it as much as you want as long as it makes sense and flows.
Where Can I Display My Writing Samples?
You can pitch your samples to other blogs as a guest post, but I wouldn’t recommend this as it takes long for these blogs to get back to you and most of them ask you to pay a fee to have your work on their blog. I would suggest publishing your blog post on Medium or Linkedin Pulse.
Other Types of Writing Samples to Use as Portfolio Pieces
If you want to showcase your copywriting skills, then use a few of these types of writing samples below.
Promotional Emails
Creating mock-up marketing emails is fun and takes less time than writing a blog post because emails are around 125 to 300 words. You can get hired as an email writer and charge at least $100 per email.
Landing Pages
If you want to be a direct response copywriter, put a few sales pages and landing pages as samples in your portfolio to show how you write to sell products, and services, or get signups.
Ebooks/Guides
Ebooks and guides can be around 8-15 pages and you should focus on formatting and writing in short paragraphs, it’s best to make ebooks and guides actionable so that readers can take action and get results after reading them.
Nurture Emails
Nurturing emails are sent to new subscribers of a blog introducing the brand, usually, this could be a series of emails that build rapport and trust with readers.
**You can make these samples in Canva and then add the [view-only] link to your portfolio.**
How to Position Yourself as a Freelance Writer
Now that you know how to create writing samples you should also think about how you’re going to market yourself to get high-paying clients, such as:
- Have a website that reflects the niche you specialize in
- Identify profitable clientele to pitch
- Use LinkedIn to boost your target clients’ perception of you so you can get paid high
- Get on discovery calls so you can speak to prospects one-on-one and build trust
- Getting testimonials for your website sends trust signals to clients
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed this post on how to build a copywriting portfolio with no experience by creating niche-relevant writing samples and publishing them on sites like Medium. This is the quickest way to get published and start building your freelance writing portfolio with 0 clients.
Have you started working on your writing samples yet? Let me know in the comments.
FAQs
How Do I Create Writing Samples?
The easiest writing sample for new freelance writers to create is blog posts. Wondering how do you write a good writing sample? Here are the steps to create SEO blog posts for your clients.
- Have a Headline and a focus keyword
- Type this into ChatGTP to create an outline for your article: Write an outline for an X-word blog post on: “Headline”
- Edit the outline: Add new ideas/subheadings and remove whats irrelevant
- Start writing and use the outline to guide you
- Edit the article after 24 hours
- Publish the article and include the link in your writing portfolio
What Do You Do If You Don’t Have a Writing Sample?
If you don’t have a writing sample because you’ve never had any clients, write blog posts and publish them on free platforms like Medium or LinkedIn Pulse and use those as samples for your portfolio.
You can also do a guest post and use it as a writing sample but this is a tedious task and most blogs expect you to pay to guest post.
What Should I Write About as a Freelance Writer?
Struggling to figure out what topics to write about for your freelance writer portfolio? I got you. After choosing a niche, head over to the websites of your target clients. See what they blog about, and write something similar or related to those topics.
Where Do You Put Writing Samples?
Writing samples should be showcased on a portfolio page on your website. If you don’t have a website yet, there are free portfolio sites like Clippings.me, Contently, and Journo Portfolio to showcase your work.
You need at least 2-3 samples that are relevant to your niche. E.g. If you’re a travel writer then only have samples related to travel in your portfolio, it wouldn’t make sense to have health or technology samples among traveling samples.
How Do I Sell Myself as a Freelance Writer?
If you want to market yourself as a freelance writer you need to first have these 3 things:
- Have a niche to specialize in, so you can charge more (clients value a specialist over a generalist)
- Writing samples that fall in your niche
- A portfolio website showcasing your writing samples
After your portfolio website is set up you can promote your business on LinkedIn and connect with potential clients. Another quick method to put yourself out there is cold emailing, check out how to do cold emailing in this post.
How Much Should I Charge as a Beginner Freelance Writer?
Freelance writer rates are different for everyone because it’s dependent on your skills and experience. New writers with 0-2 years of experience can charge between $50 to $80 per hour.
If you’re a new freelance writer charging $50/hour and it takes you three hours to write a blog post you’ll make $150 for that project. If you know how long it’ll take you to do a project you can charge a fixed fee instead of giving your hourly rate.
**It shouldn’t take you longer than 1.5 hours to write 500 words. Remember to time yourself when writing to become a faster writer.