How to share a PDF portfolio with a link (and see which pages get read)

Sending a portfolio as an attachment means you never learn whether it was opened, and a 40 MB PDF may not arrive at all. A link solves both. This guide is part of our sharing and presence section; for the deeper question of read receipts and email tracking, see how to know if someone opened your PDF.

Attachment vs link

How to share a PDF portfolio as a link

1. Export the portfolio as one PDF, compressed for screen. Put the 3 projects closest to the prospect's industry first.
2. Upload it to a document sharing tool and give the link a name that tells you who it's for ("Portfolio, Acme Foods, Oct"). Make one link per prospect so you can tell their views apart.
3. Choose access: ask for an email before viewing if you're sending to a general inbox, add a passcode for sensitive work, and decide whether to allow downloads.
4. Set an expiration date if the portfolio includes client work you're only allowed to show privately.
5. Send the link in a short email that says what's inside and how long it takes to look through.
6. Watch for the first open, then follow up within a day using the template below.

What page-level viewing data tells you

Page times are approximate (a tab left open counts, a closed laptop doesn't), so read them for patterns, not seconds. A prospect who spent most of their time on your packaging case study and skipped the web design pages is telling you what to talk about. Several opens over a few days often mean the portfolio is being shown to someone else, which is a good moment to offer a call with the whole team. No open after three days usually means the email got buried; resend with a different subject line. If the email gate shows a new address you don't recognize, look it up before the follow-up: it is often the decision maker.

Follow-up email after the first view

Subject: [Project type] for [their company]

Hi [name],

Thanks for taking a look at my portfolio. If the [specific project they spent time on] is close to what you have in mind, I'd be glad to walk you through how I approached it and what it would look like for [their company].

I have time for a 20-minute call [two specific options, e.g. Tuesday at 10:00 or Wednesday at 15:00 your time], or you can pick a slot here: [booking link].

[Your name]

Don't say "I saw you viewed my portfolio". It's accurate, but it makes some people uncomfortable. Mentioning the project they lingered on gives the same benefit without pointing at the tracking.

Worked example

In SoloWOS

In SoloWOS you share PDFs with tracked links: upload the PDF, then choose whether visitors enter their email first, add a passcode, set an expiration date, allow downloads, require an NDA before the document opens, or stamp a watermark with the viewer's email and the date. You get a notification in SoloWOS when the document is opened, and if the visitor agrees, you see about how long each page was on screen. You can turn a link off at any time and it stops loading, even for people who already have it. The PDF behind a link can't be swapped, so for a new version, upload it as a new link and turn the old one off. Basic ($2/month) includes 10 shared documents, Solo ($15/month) 50 and Team 200. For sensitive pitches, see sending an NDA before a call; for photographers and designers, our pages for photographers and for graphic designers show the rest of the workflow, and SoloWOS vs DocSend compares tools.