Upwork portfolio vs external portfolio ( or website)

[jboazman]

Wondering what others think about using a link to an external portfolio for bids or is it better to just use your portfolio on here? 

[sergio-soria]

The problem I find with the Upwork portfolio is the blurred thumbnails. It looks really awful and this is very detrimental for the freelancers who specialize in graphics. Unfortunately this has been an issue for ages here and it seems they will not fix it any time soon. If you check the community you will see tons of posts about it. Also there was a time you were able to upload animated GIFs and later that function stopped working. I am not sure if it's fixed now. It would be also good to have a video preview by default but here you only get a link which is not really noticeable, where prospective clients need to click to open a window and then play the video.

You can avoid all this by having your own website or similar and sending the link in proposals but some clients may not like to click on links. Some others actually ask for links. I believe it's good to have your external portfolio just in case, but if you do send proposals including it please make sure there is no contact information in that external portfolio. It's also not allowed to give contact information in your profile intro.

[jboazman]

Thanks for the info Sergio. 

[petra_r]

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Sergio S wrote:

... if you do send proposals including it please make sure there is no contact information in that external portfolio. It's also not allowed to give contact information in your profile intro.

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You may not have a link to a website that has contact info on your profile, but you may include a link to a website with contact info in a proposal.