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Tuesday Tastemaker #35:
A peek inside my copywriting portfolio

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Happy Tuesday, Reader!

Last week, I took on a massive, random project nobody asked me to do (because, obviously), and spent three days straight putting together a snazzy PDF portfolio of my copywriting work over the years.

It took me a long time and was very labor intensive, but the end result is gorgeous and professional and makes me look like a bona fide somebody:

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You might be surprised that I didn’t already have something like this, given I’ve been writing copy and designing email strategies for a DECADE now…

And...well, you’d be right.

I should have had a razzle-dazzle portfolio way before now.

But let me tell you why I didn’t—

A long long time ago, somebody stole my work.

I used to share samples of my work on my website, ages ago. And one time I interviewed with a potential client who informed me they’d interviewed another copywriter who’d submitted one of my emails as his own.

It was a very distinctive email, part of a sequence that got sent out when a recurring member’s payment was declined. It’s probably not that mind-blowing by 2025 standards, but she sure turned a lot of heads back in her day.

Enough so that some random jabroni thought he could pass it off as his own. (Why are men like this? Discuss.)

I never did find out who that was, but it became a lifelong sticking point.

Showing off the results my client got always tripped me up.

As a copywriter jockeying for a gig, you want to prove that your words can make money, period.

And throughout my career, I've had three big problems with this:

1. If my work was front-facing (like a website or a sales page), I was long gone by the time those sorts of stats were available. So I honestly had no idea if my pages were making money or not.​
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   Yes, yes, I know this is a solvable problem and there are things I could’ve tried in order to gather this information. In my defense, not everyone tracks these things in the first place. This (sort of) leads to my next problem…
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2. Even if an asset DOES make money, it’s not ONLY because of the copywriting. Similarly, if a campaign tanks, the copy may or may not be a contributing factor.
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   ​There are way too many other factors at play, which I won’t go into here, and it takes a lot of tech skill, patience, and methodical testing to figure it all out.
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   Most online businesses (especially pre-2020) were more in the “move fast and break things” camp, and they were NOT patient enough to parse the data in this way. Everyone else was just duct-taping their shit together and hoping it worked.
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   My Capricorn insistence on the absolute truth and rightness of every teeny tiny detail of everything anyone ever says (fun, I know) has gotten in the way of me saying things like, "This email generated $75,000."
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3. Most of my work that definitely DID make money lived behind the scenes — the emails that go out as part of a launch; a welcome sequence after someone joins your list, etc.​
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   That means they required context in order to be impressive, because it wasn’t *just* the words on the page that made the money; it was the method and strategy behind them. The WHY behind the words, if you will.
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   I could never quite land on a sleek, easily digestible way of sharing this with potential clients… so I just never did.

The amount of words I’ve written is truly staggering.

Honestly, you should see the ‘Work Archives’ folder in my Google Drive. 😳

I’ve saved everything I’ve ever written, down to my very first writing job. And even though there are literally thousands of documents in here, when I start picking through my former client work, I’m also missing a lot that didn’t survive my exit.

How am I supposed to decide what’s good enough for the portfolio and what isn’t? A lot of my favorite pieces aren't necessarily my BEST pieces, you know?

I’ve been busy.

Working a service-based business means that when you have clients to service, they kind of take priority over everything else, including building a professional portfolio that would help you get future clients to service. Ain't nobody got time to spend an entire week making a copywriting portfolio!

The point of all this is… I wasn’t ready.

I didn’t have the proper framework for a professional portfolio that made sense for my style, range, and privacy concerns. Now I do. (I will share it with you in a sec.)

There’s also something here about confidence, but that feels boring to talk about. We all grow in confidence as we age and accumulate more experience — blah blah blah. Anyway I’m more proud of my writing than I used to be.

There’s no way I could’ve made this portfolio four years ago, or seven years ago, or even ONE year ago, even though almost all the pieces in here are at least that old.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is, you know that thing you keep beating yourself up about for not having done yet?

Maybe you’re just not ready.

P.S. Here’s the portfolio workshop I mentioned. You have to be a paid subscriber to watch, but there’s a free trial available.

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Other People Doing Cool Things: READ BOOKS. GET PRIZES. This week I logged two books in Mary Williams' CEO Summer Rebellion, and it made me so stupidly excited. You get one raffle ticket for every 100 pages, plus extra tickets for posting on social and such. The prizes are legit, and you also have a chance to attend some VERY cool workshops throughout the summer (I'll be on a copywriting panel for one of them!) ​ COME READ WITH ME!