A while back we discussed building up and displaying your portfolio. Many of you may have noticed that my ‘portfolio’ pages have disappeared from this site. There’s a reason for that. One of my clients complained because I linked his items here on my blog and I included work on the site.
Make sure before you add a persons work to your portfolio they don’t have issues or restrictions that you need to adhere to as it could create issues for you. I’ve removed my portfolio completely and am using only generic links on my oDesk portfolio since this happened.
Another item: I also had an instance where an article that I wrote for a client was posted on a very active blog and I was assigned the ‘by line’ as the author of the work. I put it into my portfolio and when I applied for a similar job I used that link (without looking at it) to show off the work.
I received a very curt email from that potential buyer asking me why I was trying to pass off someone elses work as mine. It appears the final buyer made a few minor changes (i.e. adding hyperlinks and photos) to my original article and assigned it to another person hence resulting in my byline vanishing. I looked like an idiot (and lost the assignment) because I didn’t take two seconds to make sure the article was still active.
Use caution when making your freelance portfolio public.
