10 great places to promote your designs online

How many portfolios do you have? How do you cater to specific groups of potential clients other than lumping everything together on your own domain? Are these even things that you consider when you begin promoting your work online? I ran into these questions recently when working on a redesign of my portfolio and thought I’d put the list of 10 great places I found that you can promote your designs through – for free.

Not only do you get the added promotion, but you can also connect and network with some other great designers. I’ve had designers who were too backed up with work pass some along to me through twitter and a couple other social media networks, so I can honestly say that it will help your design business. Don’t go into it looking for handouts and you’ll get a much better response.

So below are the 10 places I’ve found that I will be utilizing here in the upcoming months. Look each of the sites over and see which type of design work usually does best and cater your portfolio there to that type of work. Design marketing at its best 

1. Flickr - With the endless amounts of simply amazing flickr groups that are run by design blogs like Fuel Your Creativity and Design Shard, you can get your work in front of thousands of people every month.
2. DeviantArt - I wouldn’t say that Deviant Art is a place for clean cut website designs, but for those of us who are creative and can utilize 3d elements, amazing textures and span the more intriquet details of design, it’s definitely the place to be. There are some amazing surrealism pieces there that I drool over.
3. Carbon Made - When asking on twitter about what other designers would recommend for promoting your design work, Carbon Made was mentioned more than any other on this list. I love how their portfolio page shows portfolios by recently updated and also by category. Definitely a must have if you’re looking for other marketing avenues for your design services.
4. Coroflot - Armed with a free portfolio on Coroflot, that is only the beginning. There’s also a job board that you can check out and find design work. People can “like” your work and that also helps you get added promotion on the site. Definitely another must have in your designer marketing arsenal.
5. CSS/Logo/Flash Galleries - So you want the recognition of putting a bunch of logos in the bottom of your portfolio to show which websites have featured your work? These are the types of sites to do it on. There are tons of design galleries out there and you should be trying to get your work on all of them – yes, all of them. Why not?
6. Shown’d - You can import your flickr sets automatically and also embed your shown’d galleries into your other web pages around the internet. You can become a featured artist on the home page and you can also get hired through shown’d. Plus, it allows you to track your portfolio’s performance with google analytics.
7. FigDig - By now you might be thinking, “what can these type of sites offer that the others don’t?” – well, what about being able to upload your graphics in HD? No more size limits and restrictions. If you create a great design, you want people to see it in all it’s glory right? This would be the place to do it.
8. Behance - Another twitter favorite, behance is a great website to put up your free portfolio. I know there are even a few big name designers who swear by it as their single best form of business generation.
9. Creative Binge - With portfolios ranging from vector illustration to photo manipulation, Creative Binge is another place you should set up a portfolio. The community is active and you can “binge” your favorite designs and others can do the same with yours. Instead of just “Browsing Portfolios” you are actually able to “browse designs” so you have a better shot at being featured – and more often.
10. Computer Love - From featured portfolios to featured people, CPluv breaks the barrier of the website being “just another portfolio” and allows great interaction between its users and it also gives us a great dose of design news from their site as well as others. This is one I will definitely be signing up to.

So there you have it – Now, go start your marketing. Sticking to the same routine every day might work – but will it work forever? When your twitter well runs dry, where will you find work? These are ten places you can start.

Do you have a favorite place to promote and market your portfolio(s) ? Drop me some links to your fave’s as well as your portfolio links so everyone can check them out.