Showcase your work and have a point of contact for clients.

If you want to be a successful freelance writer, it is important to have your own webpage that explains who you are, what your specialties are and how potential clients can contact you. This ensures that people can find you, should they go looking. It also gives you an easy way to showcase your work to prospective employers.

Web Design for Beginners

As a writer, you may not know where to begin when it comes to website design. If this is you, blogger.com or another free web hosting service may be best for you. While it is generally considered more professional to buy your own domain, you might want to begin on a free hosting site until you gain confidence.

If you have a good idea of what you want your page to look like, I highly recommend WordPress Theme Generator. This simple site offers many layout designs that anyone with a modest understanding of HTML can customize. Whichever you choose, be sure to keep a simple, easy to read layout that is not crowded with information.

Grab Attention Quickly

When planning your website, remember that you have only seconds to capture a reader’s attention once they land on your page. The number one way to get the reader’s attention is to include an image. If you are not comfortable posting an image of yourself, post a compelling image that connects to the service you offer. For sites where you can get free images, see this post.

Once you have chosen an image, resize it for easy download, keeping it under 300 pixels wide or tall. Also be sure you coordinate your website colors with the image. The colors can be edited easily in your css file. Keeping a white background with dark-colored lettering is best. Avoid bright, overwhelming colors. You should also be careful not to get too crazy with the font so that more browsers can read your page. Georgia and Verdana are good font choices.

Do not forget to put your contact information in a plainly and clearly visible position for visitors. Do not overload the reader with samples of your work on the landing page. Simply state your mission, contact information and accomplishments. For beginning writers, you should stress affordability, since you will need to work that angle until you build a full portfolio. Once you become established and have some of your work in print (I mean paper, folks) you can begin to put your focus on quality.

Whichever angle you work, state your accomplishments so the reader will have a reason to want to know more about you. Don’t be bashful. Pretend you are talking about your child. Then it becomes easy to brag about your accomplishments. Be sure to add what you plan to deliver to your clients, whether it be well-researched web articles, articles for print publication, website reviews or news stories.

Post Your Positive Comments

Once you have stated your mission, make sure the reader can see positive comments from your clients easily. Put them directly below your contact information. Include the commenter’s name whenever possible.

Use Metatags and Metadescriptions

While going nuts on SEO does not make a lot of sense for a new writer, there are some basic things you should do to make sure people can find you. This includes having your name and any potential misspellings of your name in meta tags. This article will tell you how and why to use metatags on your website. Note it is important that your content keywords match your metatags to gain tracking in search engines. However, the primary purpose of these tags on a writer’s website is to direct users who might misspell your name when looking for you.

Once you have your landing page done, set up categories for your writing. Choose a few where you write the most content and include a miscellaneous section for random topics you write about. Posting links to your writing is the easiest way to show off your content.

You can see my page here as an example. In the first only three months, the site generated numerous inquiries and was well worth the time.

I can do it for you!

If you would like me to set up a writers profile site for you, just drop me an email at mail@killfive.com for a quote.