Every Beginner's Nemesis: The Portfolio

So I've now been doing the freelance thing for about a month. I've actually received a whopping ZERO dollars for my work and have approximately $40 receivable waiting for milemarkers ($20 in one place, $100 in another). It's been rough. Zero actual income for the time between November 15th and December 15th. What do I think has been a big downer for possible income? My portfolio.

Progress is pretty low right now...

Ah, the portfolio. It should be a proper noun. The Portfolio. It's that important. Just as the savvy shopper will pour through reviews and specs for a car before even taking it for a test-drive, prospective employers want reviews and specs of a freelancer before they take them for a test-drive with a test-job. I've been toying with elance.com and iWriter.com, thinking I would get some low-paying jobs as sources to build my portfolio. The problem is, even the low-paying ones want to see a portfolio! iWriter.com is a peach in that the writer gets to pick a job and immediately does it, turning in the work between one and three hours after starting. No quibbling with a prospective client, no fighting other freelancers for the job, simple, direct, clean. BUT... I've been writing for less than $1 per 100 words. Gee, glad I'm not doing this for a living...oh, wait.

 So! What are ways to get the dreaded Portfoli-OH without trolling the web for poorly-written websites to rewrite for free or doing pro-bono work for people with no clear vision of what they want? Here are some ideas I've found as I go:

1) Doing near-pro-bono work for those same clueless clients.
     I said ideas that don't include this, but that makes it the most obvious choice. Having a poor source to encourage portfolio work is still a source. For someone like me that hates doing work with no direct reason, pittance pay is better than no pay. iWriter.com is an excellent example. I netted two near-decent portfolio examples from them and hope to get better examples as I keep working towards that pie-in-the-sky "Elite" writer status (I currently have 5 ratings with a 4.5 rating. Woo!).

2) Look at past work done for fun.
     I tried doing this at the very beginning and thought, "I haven't done ANYTHING worth a portfolio." WRONG! As I looked at job postings and read through different articles, I had epiphanies of "I've done something like that!" Guest blog posts reviewing a book for The Bearded Scribe, some writing articles I've written for LegendFire.com (my absolute favorite writing forum) for their past newsletters, school work I've done in college that netted me a good grade, proofreading and copy-editing I'd done for friends...the list goes on and on.

3) Make your own work.
     One suggestion I saw over and over was to reach out to people for work. With asking dozens of people (and a plaintive cry for help on my personal Facebook page), I only found two people who were even remotely interested. They asked me for (gasp!) examples of my work. To counter, I offered to send them a list of example work I COULD do for them along with examples of things I'd written outside their niche. In writing up that list, I had to sell myself and my skills which, in turn, become fodder for my portfolio!

Now, keep in mind that these three are simply to START a portfolio. This is, as stated, for beginners (which I am). A simple portfolio is better than no portfolio. It grows to something bigger that can take on its own life, shape, personality, and potential. Everyone who decides to do freelance work has done SOMETHING in the past that makes them think, "Yeah, I can do this." It just took me several weeks to realize that.