After writing about getting an online presence, I was going to follow up with a guide to using a hosted portfolio website. But when I thought about it I realised there are so many ways you can get a free online portfolio without needing programming skills, it would be best to cover a number of them in this bigger article.
I really believe it’s important for freelancers to have some sort of online portfolio these days if they are involved in creative work. I’m always amazed how many don’t have one yet. Business is tough at the moment and some creative agencies cannot afford recruitment fees, so you need somewhere online where they can find you and get a preview of your work. Or you may get a word of mouth referral, in which case they will also want to look you up.
So, if you don’t want the expense or hassle of creating your own website, these are some of the many easy ways you can do it:
Hosted portfolio websites
There are a number of very good websites where you can create a portfolio and give information about yourself. These sites are very professional looking and user friendly. The main free ones are:
Coroflot
Behance
Carbonmade
(Free package is limited to 5 projects and 35 images)
Update July 09:
deviantArt
New free portfolio service from the largest art community in the world.
Update Oct 09:
Krop Creative Database
Professional hosted portfolio service and resume builder.
(Free service limited to 10 images)
Indexhibit
A web application used to build and maintain combinations of text, image, movie and sound.
UK websites
If you’re UK based you may also want to look into these two UK specific websites:
Creativepool
View Creatives
Photo management websites
There are a number of good photo management websites around, which you could also use to display images of your work.
Flickr
Probably the most popular and easy to use photo management website. This is also probably the simplist way of getting an online portfolio. However, you’ll need to be aware of their usage guidelines – you’re not supposed to be selling yourself commercially. Use it to display images of work, but not actively promote your services. All you need to do is create an account, then upload your work as you would photos. You can arrange it into categories or projects and add descriptions to each picture. One downside is the lack of ability to add a personal profile, but you can have a short description of yourself.
Hosted blogs
Another neat little method is getting yourself a free blog. You can publish news and photos and put them into categories. If you’re not familiar with what sort of format a blog is I suggest you have a look at some before considering this option. Two popular free blogging platforms are:
Wordpress
Blogger
Update Oct 09:
Tumblr
Posterous
File sharing websites
These websites are basically for online storage and sharing of your computer files. You could upload images of your work, sort them into projects or clients, and then give people the link to them – effectively making an online portfolio.
Dropbox
Basic option allows for 2GB free.
Box
Lite option allows for 1 GB free.
So there we are – many different ways to display your work online without expense. All you really need is a little bit of time to set it up and to sort your work. And that’s time well spent in today’s competitive climate.
If anyone knows of other good ways please add them to the comments below and I’ll update this article.
Related articles
Further reading
- 15 Efficient e-Portfolio Tools
- 8 Amazing Free Online Creative Portfolio Community Sites
- 10 websites to submit your design portfolio
- Post Portfolio Screen Shots on Flickr
- The Behance network and why you should be on it
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And for the Belgians there is http://www.creativeskills.be
Great list.
Creatives should also consider the veteran in this space, indexhibit as well as the new and super glossy Krop Portfolio.
Thanks for all these. I think something missing is the great Tumblr platform as a blog hosting service, with its amazing CMS, customisation options and overall a great community..
Thanks Rus – I will look at indexhibit and I agree about Krop, although their free package is limited to 10 images.
Thanks Panos – I agree about Tumblr and had planned to add this to the article soon. I also like Posterous, which is similar.
Thanks for the shout-out Mark! deviantART’s launch of Portfolio has been spectacular. We already have thousands of artists using our Portfolio, only days after launch.
We hope it gives all artists the edge on the college application and the job search!
I think indexhibit is great. It is really tailor made to show visual work and although one can tweek content and look with css etc, it works pretty efficiently straight out of the box. It’s clean and simple and gets the message across and is user friendly.
I think behance.net has helped me the most, although I have tried the others as well. Behance.net is preferred because it is 100% free, pushes your projects to other sites as well (like PhotographyServed.com am others), and you get an add-free version by adding /frame to your behance.net URL.
Also your welcome to join http://www.voodoochilli.net, a smaller but more specialist online portfolio for visual artist. It focuses more on traditional art rather than design but its open to anyone anyway.