When freelance journalist Nicholas Holmes wanted to upload and share examples of his work could not find the ideal platform – so he built one.

Cuttings.me, which was launched earlier this month, allows freelancers, journalists and trainees to create an online portfolio with a simple, clean and effective layout.

You get your own URL (cuttings.me/nicholasholmes, for example), can upload your own background image and select from a couple of different layouts. Holmes promises more customisation options will be available in the near future.

It takes just a few minutes to create a portfolio, complete with biography and links to your blog, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts, and then you can start bringing in your cuttings by adding links or uploading PDFs.

You can see examples of journalists’ Cuttings.me profiles at cuttings.me/simonrobinson and cuttings.me/momtaz.

There is currently no index of users so although profiles are technically not private, no one will see your page unless they have the URL.

“It’s possible that in the future I will introduce a feature where I can browse other people’s profiles,” Holmes said, explaining that he would inform users before making changes.

Holmes, who is British but lives in Switzerland, is tourism editor at France-based leisure newswire AFP/Relaxnews “and a bit of a geek on the side”.

“As well as doing my day job for the newswire I am also pitching for freelance stuff,” he told Journalism.co.uk.

What I found is that I was always having to send different URL’s in emails. It all got a bit messy when I was trying to remember the best bits that I had done and found I had the need for a single place to put all of this stuff and wanted the ability to direct people to that single page.

There are lots of resources online where you can hook up your Twitter feed, your Facebook URL and your LinkedIn URL but there was nothing specifically designed for journalists and so I thought I’d have a bash at developing it.

Cuttings.me is now in public beta and Holmes is looking for feedback, which you can give by tweeting @cuttingsme.