If you are a freelancer, then obviously you need a respectful presentation, and that you can differentiate your qualities from your competitors in your area of expertise. But do you know how to make a digital portfolio?

If you don't know, then know that without having one that presents their best work, winning over new clients will certainly be a much more complicated task. So the only way is for you to create your online portfolio, and make it stand out above all your competitors in every aspect.

And since our intention here is always to help you, we decided to write this article with some tips and insights on how to create a digital portfolio in 3 simple steps.

And once you've completed all the steps that we'll teach you, then you'll already have your professional online catalog, which will only help you win and retain even more new customers.

1 – Choosing a perfect domain name:

In some cases, finding an ideal name to register your website domain, which will be the name of your portfolio, can be a bit complicated. So always try to think of names that are original, and also check if it is available for registration. But when it comes to making a digital portfolio, then this process becomes much simpler and easier. Just follow the tips below:

• Create a good list with several possible domain names for your digital catalog;
• Try never under any circumstances to use names that are complicated and too long, as this can make it difficult for people to be able to memorize the online address of your portfolio;
• Also, never use numbers or hyphens in your domain, in addition to confusing the user, it may not be friendly to search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo.
• Give preference to register domains that end with the .com or .com.br extension, that way you will probably be able to reach a much larger audience.

If you want, you can also use your own name on your domain, this is a very smart tip for you, as you know that a professional portfolio is nothing more than simply introducing yourself and selling yourself in charge of your work.

If you have a very common name, then the availability to register may vary, and this is where your creativity comes in. But this strategy only works even if you are a freelancer in a solo career.

Because if you are part of an agency, it is very likely that you want to use their name on your domain. This is something that even makes more sense in this case, simply because in addition to involving a number of people working together, it still has the benefit of the agency's name, and if it is known, it will be even better.

And another tip for you when choosing the name of your internet address is that you include your field of activity in your domain. Let's assume that your name is Rafael and you are a well-known massage therapist in your city or region.

So a portfolio site called rafaelmassagistaprofissional.com.br would sound much better. But of course this is your choice, we just gave you a tip. Also try to make sure that the chosen name is easy to read and understand, and once you find the ideal name, just register it.

2 – Defining a hosting type:

You can choose from various types of website hosting to create your portfolio, from shared hosting, VPS, Cloud and even Dedicated. But it all depends on the size of your website traffic. But in several tests we performed, shared hosting performed very well for online catalog sites.

In case you didn't know, shared hosting is where you will be sharing space on the same server with many other websites. And it has a small advantage, which are the costs that are much lower than other types of hosting.

But be careful, if your site starts to receive a very large number of hits daily, then you will need to upgrade to a more powerful type of hosting. And of course we recommend Vps hosting.

So here's our tip, as everything will depend on your number of daily visits, and also when planning to grow your site's traffic, you can start with a shared plan and then switch to a superior asset, which is VPS hosting.

And another very important tip, always look for hosting providers that offer 24/7 support, that make performance resources available to you, and that offer an uptime (website uptime) of at least 99.9% and daily backups. Not to mention the security certificate, to make your portfolio safe.

3 – Creation:

The best thing about learning how to make a professional digital portfolio yourself is that you don't need a lot of skills, and you don't need to learn programming to do it either. Today you can create a website without programming anything at all.

Know that the most interesting are those who present all their works of course, and nothing more than that. Therefore, it completely eliminates the use of complex and complicated platforms to create your online portfolio.

Our tip for you is to use WordPress, which is actually an excellent content management system, which in turn is powerful, capable of making your website amazing in just a few clicks. Even without programming knowledge as mentioned above.

This means saving time and money for you, because using WordPress to create your professional online catalog then everything will become simpler. Including the cost, as practically all hosting providers make it available for free with just 1 single click to be installed. This is not the only platform you can use it on, but due to its simplicity and quality we definitely recommend it.

Boost your portfolio with plugins and themes:

Now that you know what the 3 first steps are to get started, it's time to optimize your website and make it look like you, and just the way you want it. After all, having a good web presence is essential. So right after you install WordPress, you will need to do 3 very simple things for your online portfolio to be fully customized, which are:

• Firstly, you must install and activate a WordPress template specifically developed for this purpose, so you can easily create your photo galleries;
• Then you just need to install a plugin to create your gallery and be able to present your work, we recommend that you use the plugin Photo Gallery by 10web or the FooGallery for that, your image gallery will look amazing;
• And finally, also add a contact form to your website to facilitate contact between your customers and you. Can be the Contact Form 7. Because besides being simple, it works perfectly well;
• Integrate it with a WhatsApp plugin for WordPress as well, this will make it even easier to contact your potential potential customers, thus allowing contact in real time.

A really cool tip for you to start off on the right foot is choosing a theme with a design that you like, and that is mainly responsive on mobile devices. Because nowadays they are used a lot.

The WordPress theme repository is full of them, with both free options that will surely serve you very well, and even paid options that you can use if you want and have the budget for it.

So, for you to find the ideal theme, just go to the WordPress theme repository, and in the search field type “portfolio” without an accent. Then many themes will be listed, so you can see all available themes and use what you like.

Promote yourself and publicize your work:

Well, here you should already have your entire structure ready, with your portfolio working, with images in the gallery, and with the contact form also working. But there is still a very important detail missing to complete this online professional catalogue, which is a simple thing to do, but believe me that to be able to sell your services you will need to talk about yourself.

Then create an “About You” page. This is very important, as this is your biography. It doesn't even need to be that long, just create a mini-biography containing some important points, such as:

• Make a quick explanation of who you are, what you really do and what area you work in, after all, people will want to know who you are;
• Use a well-prominent, up-to-date photo that really shows who you are;
• Put together a brief resume and also put previously done jobs;
• Also insert links to all the social networks you participate in.

And don't ever forget to promote it on the internet, don't wait for visitors, run after them too, if you have a budget, use social networks to do your marketing. Join Facebook groups related to your area of expertise, advertise your services there, it's free.

If you haven't already, then try to create a profile on Instagram, in addition to being one of the fastest growing social media in the world, there you can also promote your work using creative Stories to conquer and engage your audience.

And if you want to increase your visits even more, place ads on Google, here on this ad platform you can redirect your campaigns directly to your target audience. Know that everything we mentioned is practically everything you really need to finally be able to charm and get even more customers on the web.

Conclusion:

So can we help you learn how to make a professional online digital portfolio? We hope so. Always keep in mind that when someone is thinking about hiring a service on the internet, the first thing they will want to see is your catalog.

Place where you can expose all your services, contacts and much more, in short it is essential and indispensable. So don't wait any longer, get to work and let's start creating yours. We're done here, big hug and success?