Ghostwriting for beginners
What is ghostwriting and why is everyone talking about it?
I am going to cover why some freelance writers are making over $1,000 per day writing things like blogs and ebooks for their clients. Many people don’t understand that clients will pay an arm and a leg if they can claim authorship over a piece of writing. When clients claim authorship over your writing, that’s known as ghostwriting.
An official definition: when one person, group, or company claims ownership over a piece of writing that was created by another person.
Ghostwriting happens all around you, from the tv show scripts you consume every evening, to the books you buy at Barnes & Noble. Ghostwriting can occur in a collaborative arrangement as well, but for the purposes of this blog, we’re going to look at the individual ghostwriter, like myself, who is cleaning up in the money department.
Real quick down the history road, ghostwriting has been around for thousands of years. Many parts of the Bible were written in collaboration by multiple authors, hundreds of years after events had transpired. Since intellectual property didn’t exist back in the day, the act of storytelling between generations was normal and accepted - even if the person was sharing information that had been previously discovered by someone else.
Fast forward to the age of enlightenment, and individuals started wanting individual credit for their ideas and inventions, which brings us to today.
People hire ghostwriters for a number of reasons, mainly to:
speed up the process and save them time
draw on a professional writer’s expertise and experience
bring in an outside view that will help the finished work be that much more well-rounded
In reality, most of these clients are lazy or don’t have the time. So they come onto a site like Fiverr to find a ghostwriter to do the work for them. That’s where someone like me comes into the picture.
Ghostwriters Charge 3-4x More Than Regular Freelance Writers
Ghostwriters, can therefore, charge 3x the amount they would have charged for an article accredited to them. For my ghostwriting ebook gig, I charge $1,250 for a 10,000-word ebook, knowing full well clients will pay it in order to slap their name on it and load it into Amazon. Many ghostwriters include a commission structure, asking to be paid 50% of all royalties made off of their ghost written work for a certain amount of time.
Whereas a person may charge $50 for a 500-word blog normally, it’s not uncommon to see a $200 charge for a 500-word blog that the client gets to claim as their own.
When I started offering ghostwriting back in 2018 on Fiverr, that’s really what boosted my sales from $63,000 the prior year, to $273,000 in 2018 (that and joining Fiverr PRO).
And a lot of people say to me - doesn’t it bother you that you don’t get the credit? Not one bit. You know why? If I was credited to everything I’ve written in the last 8-years, I’d have over 6,000 pieces of content online that would come up if you Google me. Many times, I have written on things I don’t even agree with. It’s business as usual for me - the client is happy, I get paid a lot, I get a testimonial, and I get experience. It’s important to drop the ego if you want to make money selling a service today. You get the last laugh!
To make over $1,000/day as a ghostwriter, you have the option of charging $100 to $200 per 500-words, which means in 5-6 hours of work, you can hit that mark. You also have the option of doing a revenue sharing model of $100 per 500-words with a 50% royalty payout thereafter. You can do what I do and hire other freelancer writers eventually to do the ghostwriting, taking home about 30 to 35% of what the business makes in an entirely passive arrangement. Linking to resources below that explain this further.
Ghostwriters are cleaning up, and as more businesses than ever before come online today, it’s only going to grow. I think a recession will fuel all of it, forcing more businesses to pivot online like they did during the pandemic. What do you think? Check this blog out in video format with more information here.