A freelance portfolio is something you send
An employed developer's portfolio is browsed by a recruiter. A freelancer's portfolio is sent — in a proposal, a DM, an Upwork reply — to one person with one project in mind. That changes what it should be.
One link per client, not one link for everyone
Your full portfolio answers "what have you done?" A client is asking "have you done mine?". Send them a page with the three sites closest to their brief and one line on why each is there. It reads as attention, which is most of what they are buying.
Do not send clients somewhere they can shop
Many portfolio platforms are marketplaces underneath. Your link lands the client on a page with a directory of other freelancers one click away — often cheaper, often ranked above you. You did the work of finding the client and handed them a comparison site.
A client link should show your work and your contact details, and nothing else to click.
Small things that lose the job
- A dead link in the first three projects. The reader assumes the rest are dead too.
- A link a form will not accept. Some application forms reject URLs containing "@", which many portfolio platforms use for profiles.
- No way to reply. The call to action should be the client's next step, not a newsletter.
- Work you cannot explain. If you were one of five people on a project, say what your part was.
How Bowerdeck is built for this
Your public profile lives at a plain address with no "@", so it pastes into any form. For each client you pick a few projects and send a page from sentwork.com — no Bowerdeck branding, no navigation, no directory — and if the client trims the link back to the root they get nothing at all.
Behind it, every site is checked daily, so a dead one never makes it into a link you send.