Need an ONLINE Portfolio?

It is rare that actually portfolio books are swapped nowadays. Now everyone asks you for your online portfolio. I have both to meet the needs of online networking and face to face interviews. 

What is the difference between your website and online portfolio if both contain your work?

My website: www.beautybyrivera.com is public for everyone to view and can be found on google and other search engines. It is the website I use on my business card and is mainly for hiring purposes. Therefore, I show not only my professional portfolio, but I have client work and before & afters. I also have a page dedicated to my prices and another for reviews. I also have a page dedicated to my services for makeup classes. Basically this website is geared to the everyday person who is looking for wedding, prom, or special occasion makeup. I also will send this link to wedding planners. 

My online portfolio: www.behance.net/jessicarivera is also public, but you cannot find it easily. Pretty much, people who see that page are either a part of Behance or are sent to that page by me personally. I do not use this page for hiring purposes unless it's to hire me for a professional photo/video shoot. Therefore, I only have my professional work on here ie. agency model shoots and published work. You will not find any pricing or reviews on here. It is solely to display my work, a picture and bio of me, and a way of contacting me. This is the link I send to agencies, photographers, models, etc. It is not geared to the everyday person. 

Showing my online portfolio page to potential bridal clients for example can intimidate the client or make the client think you are too expensive, especially if you have published work. Your clients want to relate to you, even if in a small way. So seeing regular people and how you work with them is very important, so know the difference between the two sites and know which one to send out.

Need an online portfolio? Here are some good options:

www.behance.net : is what I use. You can put video and photos on here which is a plus if you do makeup for television or music videos. The only problem you may have is that you may want to keep all your beauty work together, fashion work together etc. With behance, it's more like having photo albums, so I have an album for every shoot I have worked on. Also, you don't get your own url, which for me is not a problem at all. Also, behance is free! If you want it even more professional looking, they have a partner site called ProSite which you can create by just adding your already uploaded work into the prosite but this site charges monthly. It is visible on the iPad/phone. I like that when you post a new project, you can twitter share it. 

www.photocrew.com : I used to use this one as my portfolio, but the more work I got, I realized you are only allowed three or four albums and I couldn't fit all of it in here! I believe you have to pay for more space, but not positive. It is sectioned into three or four albums, which makes it easier to separate your work into Beauty, Fashion, Lifestyle, etc. You can upload videos on here, but it does not show up on your portfolio, it shows up on your photocrew page, so this is a downside for me. It is visible on the iPad/phone.

www.dripbook.com : This is a very nice online portfolio to have. The reason I don't have it is because it was difficult for me to navigate, and you have to pay monthly. If I could, this is what I would have as my online portfolio, but at this time, I cannot add another bill to my life lol. It allows many photo albums to separate into beauty, lifestyle, fashion, etc. It also has a contact form in your portfolio page. And you can add video. I love dripbook and will maybe one day pay for a dripbook portfolio, but I hate that it is hard for me to navigate through! It is visible on the iPad/phone.

www.wix.com :You can use this for a portfolio but Wix is what I use for my website. You can have a free wix website by having the url contain wix.com in it and having Wix ads on your website. I pay around $9 a month to have my own url and to remove the Wix ads. Problem is, it is Flash based, therefore, is NOT visible on the iPad/iPhone. Although you do get a mobile version of your page for free along with your website which is visible on the iPad/phone but, it looks NOTHING like your cool page that you worked so hard on; which is why I don't mind Wix for my regular website because the mobile version still shows what it needs to show, but to show a portfolio, it can look unprofessional. Beware, at first Wix may be hard to use, but keep playing with it and it's super easy. For $9 a month, this is the best site I have found because you can upload sooooo many photos and create a website however you like! I like that anytime you update your site, you can Facebook share it. Not sure about twitter....

What sites do you guys recommend?