4 questions to ask yourself before trying to be a ghostwriter

4 questions to ask yourself before trying to be a ghostwriter

Being a ghostwriter basically means you're writing content for a website or company, getting paid for your words, and hand it over for them to post under their own accounts.  Companies will come to you to see if you want to write for them, but usually you'll have to approach them to see if you can do it for them, either way, you'll be getting paid for your content   You can start writing on plenty of companies out there that will set you up with an account on their blog, but usually you'll start off writing under the company account, which means you will post the content and you won't be getting direct credit for it.

Ghostwriting isn't for everyone, especially the people out there that need constant recognition, people that can't work with schedules, and people who want to be a writer but just have bad grammar and writing skills lol.  If you go out there right now and search for clients, you likely won't get anyone to pay you because you don't have experience in the field and you haven't built up any authority.  Now, that's not a career killer, you can build up your experience and even ghostwrite the first few articles for free, so a company knows you're good at what you do and they can trust your work

In this discussion, I'll be going over the top 4 questions you should ask yourself before you step into ghostwriting, and they are:


Do you like writing content?
Liking what you do, regardless of the amount of money you can make from it, matters a ton when it comes to your own happiness.  If you're not a dedicated writer and love every keystroke you make, then ghostwriting might not be for you.  You will be writing a lot, like 20,000+ words a day if you get enough clients, which means you'll be at your computer for a long time just typing.  If you type at 100 words per minute, that means you'll be typing for at least 3 hours and 20 minutes.  Now, this means you don't stop for a single second and your words per minute never drop below 100.  If you've ever typed up content, for yourself or a client, you know that these are unrealistic numbers. 

When I type up content, an article that is 1,000 to 1,500 words will take me a minimum of 30 minutes if I don't have to research the topic, but normally it will take much longer because clients tend to have titles related to something I'm not 100% familiar with.  I'll tend to take 10 to 20 minute researching the topics, then write them for the next 30 minutes, which means I take between 40 and 60 minutes to write a 1,000 to a 1,500-word article.  This means that 3 hours and 20 minutes is actually 13 to 20 hours a day to get everything done.  Now, if you were to get to that point, you would be making a decent amount of money per article, and you could actually start building a writing team and handing out titles to write on, then get the articles back and send them to the clients.  You would profit from the articles, but you wouldn't get the full price because you would have to pay your own freelance writer something for the work done, which is a normal process.

Do you always need recognition for your work?
When you're ghostwriting, you won't get any recognition for any of the content you're writing, which is why you're ghostwriting and not guest posting.  A ghostwriter works in the shadows and isn't seen by the website visitors because your name doesn't go in the article.  The company that you're writing for will post your article under their own name, which is the agreement you came to when you decided to become a ghostwriter, so you probably shouldn't get into this field of work if you need the company to link back to your website with every article you write.

Can you work with someone's schedule?
Some companies want to pay you for content, but they need it in a specific amount of time, which is pretty common with any sort of online service.  If you can't work with a schedule or a timeline, ghostwriting might not be something you should get into.  Clients want a quick return on what they purchased from you, so you'll need to stick to deadlines you set for yourself.  If someone orders 20,000 words of content, in 20 different articles that take you 20 hours to write, you might need to give them a 5 day turn around time to be safe.  They will understand that getting 20,0000 words written for them is a big job, so they will usually agree to the 5-day deadline, but you'll need to get to work right away and not put it off. 

To build a lot of returning clients, you will need to send in your content prior to what the deadline is, so your clients can see you're on top of their order.  If you can do this, and over deliver on every article with additional words, the client will usually come back and order multiple times

Are you a good writer?
If you're not a good writer, you won't last long as a ghostwriter, because no one will want to work with you due to the bad reviews circulating online.  If you want to be a writer, but you don't know what you're doing, you should probably take some classes or read some grammar books to know exactly what needs to be done to structure a sentence and please the clients.  I don't have the best grammar and structure, but I usually put everything through my premium Grammarly account prior to sending anything out, just so I'm sure there aren't any major mistakes that could turn off the client and make them not want to order a second or third time.


In conclusion
Ghostwriting is a great job to get into if you can get the clients rolling in.  Just like any other business model, it's a difficult start because you don't usually have many reviews online from previous clients, so you'll have to sell your services for a lower price and increase it over time when the positive reviews start to roll in.  If you're the type of person that needs constant acknowledgment, can't work with a schedule, aren't a good writer, or you just don't like writing content in general, this probably isn't the best job for you to consider.  If you can do everything I mentioned above, maybe you have what it takes to be a good ghostwriter and can make a decent amount of money from it


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Tommy Carey