Before you have an agent it’s wise to start marketing yourself with media and websites. Some are pay and some are free. Here are some sites you could start adding your work to so you could self promote. Even after you have representation like an casting agent/agency or manager these sites will probably be maintained by them as well.
IMDB / IMDB Pro
This is the defacto place for tv and film actors to have their work listed. Many times you will find in background or featured work it’s hard to get a production to credit you but you’re still 100% allowed to list yourself as simply uncredited. Once you start to get larger speaking roles and residual payments, production companies themselves list you without you doing anything to their own benefit. Until then, take a screen capture or image from production, put it up on IMDB and tag yourself and other actors in the scene with you.
IMDB Pro gives all SAG Actors a discount for the yearly subscription so keep that in mind and google details of that or look on the IMDB page. You will need your SAG # when applying for the discount when you pay for the annual subscription.
BACKSTAGE
Backstage is great for a lot of production and very good for non-union work. It is pretty sparse for SAG actors, so join up during black friday or their first year $100 discount if it’s available. The website design alone for your portfolio is worth the cost as is. It’s really well laid out and you can just send your backstage profile without even really buying a .com of your name like actors used to do 10-15 years ago.
SOUNDCLOUD
If you’re a voice over artist, or a singer, even someone who just likes to read books or poetry for practice and wants to share with others, there’s no better place than soundcloud to upload your work. It’s free for the basic profile and you can link your soundcloud files to backstage on your profile and other places like wordpress as you can see below.
