7 Easy Steps to Getting Your Copywriting or Design Samples Up on a Website
April 30th, 2008 Dina at Wordfeeder.com
To all the copywriters who send me emails asking for work, let me throw you a bone. The best way to attract interest in your talent is to get a website up. Not just because you should care what I think, but because you should care what anyone who entertains the possibility of hiring you to write their copy thinks. This goes for designers too, although I’ve never met one who was hard up for projects; most have their work cut out for them.
Step 1. Gather those copywriting or design samples.
Ideally, this should be anything that’s been published on behalf of a client - marketing brochures, magazine articles, website copy, flyers, whatever you have. If you’ve got actual clips of the designed pieces, scan and turn them into PDF files or .jpgs. Make sure the files are small enough that they won’t take ten minutes to load or make people’s computers blow up when they click on them.
Note: if you’re relatively new at this, your “samples” can be self-assigned jobs. Remember, you don’t need killer design skills to make your copywriting samples look tight and together. Open up a Word document, select clean looking headline and text fonts. Grab a free image from http://sxc.hu and paste it in there. If you want to get fancy, change the headline’s color and also the color of any bolded text. Add your contact information. When you’re satisfied with the presentation, hit PRINT and turn into a PDF.
Do this for all the different types of writing you’ve done, and save your sample files in a folder on your hard drive entitled SAMPLES.
Step 2. Create a Samples page for your website or blog.
God willing, you’ve already got a website and you can maneuver around in Dreamweaver or another program that allows you to edit pages using a WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) editor. If you don’t, and aren’t sure where to begin, then it looks like I’ve got some more 7-step articles to write.
Assuming you do have a website, create a Samples page, and add a title and some introductory text that explains who you are and what your specialty areas cover. You can never repeat yourself too many times on a website; so if you’ve already told readers you write copy for the retail gift industry on the homepage, just remind them again in a slightly different way on this page.
Step 3. Upload your sample files.
There are a couple of ways you can do this. If you’ve turned them into PDFs, you can save the PDF files to the folder on your computer that’s titled [NAMEOFYOURWEBSITE.COM]. Then, connect via your FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client, and upload each of the PDF files to your server.
If some of your samples are in jpg format, you can do what I did for BobbysLogos.com. Create an HTML page devoted to that single portfolio piece. For example, maybe it’s a business card that you did for somebody. Add a title - “Copywriting Sample,” or “Design Sample” at the top of the page. Briefly describe what this is, then add a jpg file sized at about 350 or 400 pixels across (whatever looks good) to the page.
Include your contact information and anything else that you might want to tell your prospects. Save the page again. Do this for as many .jpg files as you’d like to showcase on your site.
Step 4. Add links or thumbnails to the Samples page, then link each one to the individual sample file (PDF or .jpg) that it refers to.
Links are clean and neat, but thumbnails offer visual appeal and make your viewers want to click. How to do thumbnails? Simple - for every .jpg file that you currently have at 300 or 400 pixels or whatever, do a “SAVE-AS” and use the same name but add the word “thumb” at the end of the file name. Then, shrink the pixel width to maybe 80, 100 or even 120 pixels across, retaining the proportion so that the file doesn’t look all screwy once it’s resized.
Do that for all the samples you’ll be showing, then save all your new thumbnail files to your website’s folder on your hard drive. Upload via your FTP client as we discussed earlier.
Now back to the Samples page. If you decided to do thumbnails, then add each thumbnail image to the page, and write a little description beside it. Instruct people to click on the thumbnail to view the sample piece. Then link that thumbnail to the PDF or .jpg file that you already saved to your website’s server. (Remember all those sample files we saved earlier?)
If you did links, then you’ll have an easier time getting this page ready but it won’t look as interesting. That’s okay. Sometimes too much visual stimulation confuses people anyway. Use your best judgement to figure out what looks most appealing to your visitors.
Step 5. Publish ALL of the new files that you created as part of this Samples fiasco.
That would include both large and thumbnail versions of your .jpg files, any PDFs you created, all HTML files that display your .jpg image samples, and of course, the Samples page itself. I know we supposedly already published these files earlier, but you’re bound to have missed a few, so just double check that everything is live.
Step 6. Go back and re-read your Samples page.
Also read all of your individual HTML sample pages, if there are any. Make sure you’ve included an explanation of the portfolio piece if it’s noteworthy, and that you told your reader how they can contact you for a quote.
Step 7. Open your browser and review your work thoroughly.
Read the samples page again. Take another look at how everything is laid out. Click each link and see where it goes (nine times out of ten you’ll find dead links that you have to go back and fix. Be sure that each sample includes a call to action so people have a clear direction on what to do next. People need direction.
Congratulations, now you have your very own living display of the work you’ve done for your copywriting and design clients. This is a huge credibility booster, and you’ll have one up on the millions of other creative professionals bidding against you on Elance.
Your next project will be to advertise your services on Craigslist. But that’s a story for another article.
Copyright 2008 Dina Giolitto, Wordfeeder.com Copywriting and Marketing. All rights reserved.
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