Seven Steps to Creating Your Commercial Writing Portfolio

By Peter Bowerman

Want To Land the Well-Paying Work? You Need Proof, and Here’s the Plan!

So, your commercial portfolio consists of a few articles from the church newsletter, several poems, and the brochure you created for your own business? Sorry. Most corporate clients won’t throw work your way. You don’t have to have the proverbial “overstuffed-with-Fortune-100-gems” book, but do get your presentation up to snuff. All the following ideas can be done while you’re employed elsewhere. Smaller companies will be more open to less impressive samples and can provide juicy opportunities for boosting the quality of your “book.” And you may already have some writing samples. Consider the following:

Past Lives.  So what if your samples are from a past life, say, 15 to 20 years ago? Use ‘em. You might spiff them up by copying them onto glossy paper, or if you’ve got a graphic designer friend, maybe you drop the copy in a new, fresher layout. But, as a rule, good writing is good writing, whenever it was done. 

Past/Present Jobs.If you have some writing projects from a full-time, work-for-hire position (past or present), absolutely you should use them. Just be sure you’re not violating any confidentiality agreements. If they are politically sensitive in some way, simply purge the delicate information, replace with generic verbiage, repackage it and add it to your portfolio. And taking the time to track down past work, even if it takes beaucoup phone calls or legwork, is preferable to having to create a new sample.

Excerpts. If the fruits of past efforts were thick manuals, user guides, reports or other voluminous projects to big or boring to make a good sample, pull out some engaging chunks and reformat them for easier reading. Even if that’s precisely the kind of work you want to land again, it never hurts to highlight your best work to help prospects more quickly get a feel for your abilities. 

Journalism.If you came out of journalism and have a pile of news clips, yes, you can certainly use them. And while you will no doubt earn credibility points in the eyes of your prospects for your professionalism, writing ability and eye for the deadline, by virtue of your former line of work, you’ll still want to beef up your book with some more corporate samples like brochures, ads, newsletters (similar to articles), etc. 

Re-Purpose. Try to leverage any past writing efforts, regardless of the circumstances, if you can honestly say you wrote it. That means doing whatever you need to do to – forgive this loathsome, corporate-speak word – “re-purpose” the samples you do have. Whatever you ultimately have to do to add one to your portfolio will, as discussed above, be less of a hassle than having to land another sample from scratch.

Create A Portfolio.Remember my suggestion in TWFW about teaming with a graphic designer to simply create some ads or brochures for fictitious companies to demonstrate your creative abilities? Well, by definition, this is what grads from the finest arts schools in the country do. They don’t get the chance to work on real jobs until they get a real job, so they build the book they’ll cart around to interviews by simply picking existing companies and making up stuff. Yes, ideally, you’d land some pro bono work with real companies to build your portfolio, but just know that tapping nothing more than your imagination and writing skills is a perfectly acceptable strategy. 

Pro Bono.A proven way to build up your portfolio when starting out. It’s a great strategy for boosting visibility, getting and keeping your name out in the community, building up goodwill, gathering the right kind of corporate-type samples (brochures, newsletters, press releases, ads, etc) and, in many cases, positioning yourself nicely to land paying work from those same entities (which often have healthy budgets) down the road. Below are a couple links for the kinds of organizations that would likely be receptive to a “win-win” pro bono pitch. Try to find the local or regional branches of these often-nationwide organizations and approach them as you would any prospective client.

• http://www.southarts.org/SAF_links.shtml
• http://www.njnonprofits.org/linksNCNA.html

Remember, I didn’t start out working for Fortune 500 companies. I worked up to it on the strength of projects done for smaller companies (AND often by riding in the door of the big boys on a graphic designer’s coattails, so forge those alliances). The bigger the company, the higher the expected quality of work. The smaller the end-user, the more likely they are to give a less experienced writer a shot. By all means, shoot high – especially if you can leverage some past industry experience or contacts. And if you don’t get hired, ask what it would take. Mighty useful information. Good luck.

© Copyright 2005 Peter Bowerman. All rights reserved.

Peter Bowerman is the author of The Well-Fed Writer (2000), an award-winning Book-of-the-Month Club selection, and its companion volume, The Well-Fed Writer: Back For Seconds. A commercial freelancer, business coach and seminar leader in Atlanta, Georgia, his client list includes Coca-Cola, BellSouth, IBM, UPS, Cingular Wireless, American Express, Mercedes-Benz, Junior Achievement and others. Visit www.wellfedwriter.comfor more info and to subscribe to his critically acclaimed free monthly ezine on commercial writing, THE WELL-FED E-PUB.