My So-Called Freelance Life - Michelle Goodman [18]
But have you considered how much time and energy having a web portfolio could save you? New York documentary filmmaker/cinematographer Hope Hall explains it this way:
“In negotiating new jobs, I used to spend a lot of time talking on the phone, giving the same speech when asked to describe my work and my approach. We would then move to the ‘Why don’t you come by with some of your work?’or the‘Send me your reel’part of the conversation, and I would feel exhausted. We weren’t even negotiating the terms yet, and I would have spent what felt like hours on this job already. My website changed the whole process of negotiating possible jobs. I just refer people to it and then say that if there is a specific piece that makes sense for them to see all the way through, I’ll be happy to get that to them. It is a basic website, only three pages, with a resume, a bio, and a filmography that links to excerpts or whole pieces, but I constructed it with words and images that reflect something a phone conversation (or an email) cannot.”
Long story short: Time is money, especially when you can’t bill for all those “getting to know me” phone calls. So why waste it repeating the same old spiel over and over?
I know that you’re busy. And that if you’re not a web designer, you may be unsure where to start, and possibly prone to involuntary eye twitches upon hearing terms like “content management system” and “search engine optimization.” I was all those things before I launched my first website in 2006. I still am. But that’s not gonna stop me from working the web anyway—not when the web is the most likely place for potential customers to find me. Nor should it stop you.
Anatomy of a Digital Portfolio
You don’t need a $5,000 graphically designed corporate logo to be admitted to the digital party. Nor, as Hope just attested, do you need a fifteen-page, text-heavy, image-riddled site crammed with more data than the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Think of your site as your digital portfolio or brochure: clean, streamlined, easy to read.
“I’m of the opinion that less is more,” says Emily Carlin of Jacksonville, Florida, cofounder of Swank Web Style, a seven-woman virtual design studio catering to freelancers, bloggers, and small business owners. “For a portfolio, limiting yourself to one to four pages is your best bet. People are inherently lazy, and you don’t want to bombard them with a million pages/paragraphs of text (they aren’t going to read it) or confuse them with links all over the place (they won’t bother clicking on all of them). I say let your work speak for itself.”
So, where to start? Before you think about whether you’ll create your website yourself, bribe a technically inclined pal to help, or cough up several hundred to a couple thousand bucks for a professional web designer (more on this shortly), you need to figure out what you want to put on your site and get a rough idea of how you’d like it to look.
Your first stop should be the online homes of your creative idols and competitors. What do you love about their sites? Hate? How can you make yours stronger, better, fantastic-er? As with business cards, don’t be afraid to be unique and inventive. Isn’t that what your clients are paying you for?
One of my all-time favorite websites is NoOneBelongsHereMore ThanYou.com, the promo site for filmmaker/performing artist/writer Miranda July’s first book of short stories. It’s hilarious, brilliant, and crazy-original. If there were any rules of website making, this site would probably violate them all. That’s what I love most about it.
The last thing the world needs is another bland portfolio site sporting nonsensical corporate-speak and generic images of suited execs with their arms folded over their chests. Unless you’re trying to woo angel investors or clients like Donald