By June of 2020, I was laid off from my third full-time job. It's not like I wasn't expecting it. We were in the midst of a pandemic, and the travel industry was crippling. Clearly, the only content writer in the company was one of the first ones to go. With no sarcasm whatsoever, this is just what I needed.

In the middle of my career last year, I kept on wondering when was the right time to delve into freelancing. I wanted to try freelancing at least once in my life since it was such a flexible experience. Well, it was like the opportunity was served to me. 

Once we had our desktop computer set up, I wanted to kickstart my freelance career in writing to get some money flowin'. One of the most recommended platforms to get projects was Upwork. So I made an account there and got to review what my career life looked like so far.

I have a pretty decent resume and portfolio, so I was confident that I was going to book projects in no time. I need to tell this to myself because when submitting proposals on Upwork I was overwhelmed with how valuable connects are and went into an impostor syndrome spiral. 

feedback from my very first Upwork client!

While waiting for projects to come through, I wanted to embrace my freelance career by having a website that showcases my portfolio. Because I'm a sucker for branding, I wanted my website to be visually appealing and not just a list of my work. For me to do that, I need a clear vision of what I wanted my website to look like. 

So like any overachieving professional, I made myself a branding deck, complete with color swatches, fonts, and logo types. 

I wanted my branding to reflect my personality. I'm fun, flashy, quirky, but not overly feminine. I went for orange and yellow as my main colors because they show warmth and youthfulness. I chose Boiling as my font because I wanted a bold serif font that can represent professionalism. 

In case you don't follow me on social media, kleoamo is my "online name." It's my username on most social media platforms, and I want it to be the name of my personal brand. 

I had a lot of internal debate on what platform will I host my website portfolio. For a solid number of days, I was convinced with Squarespace. I told myself that it was an investment. In case you didn't know, Squarespace requires a membership fee for you to use it as a platform. I was also planning to buy a domain.

But since I'm a thrifty gal, I ended up with no domain and on Wix. I had some experience with Wix during my college days, so I'm familiar with it. I also didn't want to go all out with the website; I wanted something I can drag and drop.

Wix is easy and great for a quick website. I had fun working with some animation, plus they let you upload your own font.

The website portfolio is pretty handy. I could upload the articles that I'm proud of and archive my work. If clients or companies ask for a sample of my work, I just link some relevant articles for reference. 

It's fun to have a personal branding deck. It saves me the time on choosing colors and fonts on other materials that I do such as social media content and business cards! 

You can check out my portfolio website here! 

Much love,

Sophia