What I learned from building a portfolio site for 100+ freelancers (and what most dev portfolios get wrong)

Most developer portfolios focus on what was built but clients and recruiters care more about why and how.

Here are 3 things I noticed after analyzing 100+ real freelance portfolios:

• No clear value proposition: “I build web apps” is vague. “I help startups validate MVPs in 3 weeks” is specific and trust-building.

• No social proof: Testimonials, LinkedIn reviews, even GitHub stars help. It’s about perceived trust.

• Not optimized for mobile: You’d be surprised how many portfolios look broken on phones. Even though most clients check them from mobile.

I built a simple profile system to solve these problems. It’s not a resume site, more like a clean one-pager where you plug in your headline, projects, and links. And it just works.

Won’t plug it here (don’t want to break rules), but DM if you’re curious.