"Design roles and job titles are confusing, and what makes it even worse to navigate is that people love to debate them constantly. If you worked in the industry in the mid-2000’s, it’s very likely called a Web Designer or Information Architect. However, after the rise of SaaS products, we started seeing the terms Product Designer and UX Designer applied to the people working in the interactive design (digital design) as well.
That being said, I think that it’s pretty important for you to understand the different UX roles early on. If you’re aiming to get your first job in UX, you will need to have a good understanding of the role you will be taking on. That’s because each role will have different skill requirements, which you will need to master, but also the portfolio you will be creating will vary dramatically depending on the role you target..."
that being said, I personally am not at a point where I get a lot of offers just through my website, I find that LinkedIn is still the no. 1 tool when it comes to networking with potential clients, but I'm continuing to improve and see what others -- that do mainly get clients from just them visiting their portfolio -- are doing differently.
that will largely depend on how you market yourself. most people (at least in the industry I work in -- design) will go from job to job and get hired purely based on their written experience, with just a resume and a very simple pdf portfolio.) other, like myself on the other hand, try to market themselves, for example as consultant or freelancers and in this case having a publicly available portfolio, that you can show to people and that you can drive traffic towards does greatly help with getting offers.