Your Portfolio and Copyright Laws

A question I recently received:

Hi Allison,

I was wondering if you can offer me some advice about freelance writing. I want to put a portfolio on my website so that potential clients can see things I’ve written in the past. I am not sure what I’m legally allowed to use. When I sell something, can I still use it for a portfolio? I’m not making any money off of it.

Thanks!

Gooooooood question (and thanks for letting me repost it here – you know who you are). The answer isn’t simple, but I’ll do my best to help you.

First and foremost, copyright laws apply whether you are making money or not. So, for your online portfolio, it doesn’t matter if you have ads on the page or not.

Image: sxc.hu

So, can you use your “clips”?

Well, no…because they aren’t really yours anymore. When you sell an article, blog post, ebook, or other piece of writing to a client, you’re selling them full rights, unless you specifically have a contract that states otherwise. If you repost the text on your own website, you’re plagiarizing! Yes, that sounds silly, but that’s how it works – when you sell your writing, you don’t have the right to use it anymore.

But what about traditional portfolios? If you don’t have any rights, how can you legally use clips?

Think of it this way – when you have a paper portfolio, you aren’t duplicating the writing. You’re just showing another person something someone else has published, specifically as an example of your work. Online, that’s not always the case. If someone types “how to paint your house” and your online portfolio comes up, the searcher doesn’t really care. He or she found out how to paint a house, and it doesn’t matter if it came from your portfolio or from your client, who owns a home improvement website that sells paint. By re-posting something, you’re becoming a competitor and hurting your client’s search engine ranking. In other words, you’re taking profit away from your client.

Don’t worry – you do have options. One is to quote a small piece of the work and link back to the full piece. If you do this, ask your client for permission. Most don’t have a problem with this, since links are good for search purposes. You can also just list links, which you can do with or without permission.

Another option is to write something specifically for your online portforlio or create a blog that can act as a sort-of portfolio of your writing. Either way, you don’t have to ask yourself for permission.

Having an online portfolio is a good idea in general, but it isn’t 100% necessary to find clients. I rarely use mine, to be honest – instead, I send links with my resume or initial email, giving the potential client specific places to see work that is relevant to their project.

Do you have an online portfolio?