Nicholas Holmes is the Tourism Editor at AFP/Relaxnews, the world’s first leisure newswire, as well as a freelance contributor to publications including the Independent, the National (Abu Dhabi), the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) and MSN Travel. In October, he launched Cuttings.me, a portfolio platform for freelance journalists. Ebyline asked Holmes about his new site, how it could benefit freelancers, and how to best present clips.
Why did you decide to start Cuttings.me?
I’m always up for a challenge with technology, especially where I can see a problem that needs to be solved. In this case, I found I was looking up links and digging out PDFs to send to people several times a week, whether they were editors, copywriting clients, colleagues, etc etc. I was surprised that I couldn’t find anything out-of-the-box to hold a portfolio of great written work, similar to 500px or Viewbook for photographers/designers.
What did you find lacking in other sites? How is Cuttings.me customized for journalists?
I found that existing sites were either strong on ease-of-use or content, but rarely both. Services such as Flavors or About.me, for instance, are great for quickly establishing an identity and connecting your social media accounts together, but don’t offer much in the way of showcasing what you’ve done content-wise. Setting up a content management system for a portfolio site offers a way to store loads of content, but feeling of personalisation is easy to lose in bad design, and it’s very time-consuming.
Cuttings.me tries to offer the best of both in a format specifically designed with writers in mind – a strong, good-looking identity, with a place to expand more on what it is you do and for whom.
What are the benefits of Cuttings.me over other websites?
It takes minutes to get set up, which is something not many people who have beautiful journalism portfolios can say. In fact, one of the most common pieces of feedback I’ve heard is “I wish I had have found you before I had a professional design my site.”
It’s also very easy to customize (choosing colours, uploading backgrounds etc) and you can add as little or as much as you want about you and your work. No long forms, no pressure. When you’re ready to add your published content, you’ll find several ways to display it — add a link to your work or a PDF upload, illustrate each piece with a picture or don’t bother, etc etc.
One of the biggest benefits is the low time cost of ongoing maintenance – moving cuttings around is as simple as dragging them and adding a new one can be done almost instantly. It makes keeping your portfolio up to date far easier than maintaining a hosted site.
What other features are you planning on adding?
The site has recently been significantly improved for its second major release so I’m currently collecting feedback on what should come next – if anyone has ideas, they’d be welcome at @cuttingsme on Twitter.
Do you plan on charging eventually?
The service that’s available today will always be free to freelancers.
What do you hope your platform will accomplish?
Freelance writers have a lot to worry about when it comes to managing their time, selling projects and making sure the money keeps coming in. If Cuttings.me helps people raise their exposure or cut down the time they spend keeping their portfolio up to date, I’ll consider it a success.
As an editor/freelancer, what advice would you offer to other freelancers in terms of what editors look for in clips and their presentation?
I would say try to include as broad a selection of work as possible, to show you’re capable of writing in different styles for different audiences – whether that’s in print or on a website, blog, social media site etc etc (by that I don’t mean upload everything you’ve ever written – just select some of the best examples that really showcase how multi-faceted you are).
If you’re skilled in different disciplines, make that abundantly clear in both your biography and the type of work you choose to display, even if the clips are from a personal blog or other non-commissioned source – the subject matter knowledge is what counts.
