Dear Writer,
So you want to be a Ghostwriter?
I started ghostwriting for founders and C-level executives in 2016—back when there was a stigma attached to the word. Hiring a ghostwriter sounded like you were somehow “cheating.” And still, despite that stigma, I very quickly went from making slightly above minimum wage to upwards of $20,000 per month as a full-time ghostwriter.
Today, nearly a decade later, and ghostwriting is one of the fastest-growing and most-popular jobs for writers (and the stigma is completely gone). So much so, that you can now find pieces in major publications like, “Want To Earn Six Figures As A Writer? Try Ghostwriting,” in the The Wall Street Journal, or “How A Ghostwriter Makes $200,000 Per Year Writing Tweets” in Business Insider.
There are 3 industry-wide tailwinds causing this surge in ghostwriting’s popularity as a career path for writers:
Tailwind #1: Every day, more and more companies know they need to create content online. This tailwind started in the early 2000s and has been accelerating ever since. As the Internet grows in scale (and “eats” the analog world, turning it digital), so too does the number of companies that want to participate in this digital-first economy.
Tailwind #2: Every day, more and more founders, business owners, executives, etc., want to build personal brands. This is a secondary effect of Tailwind #1. As the Internet grows, and more companies want to participate in the digital-first economy, the people who run or work within those companies also want to participate, scale their knowledge & insights online, and become known in the digital world. After all, people don’t want to hear from brands. People want to hear from people.
Tailwind #3: Smart people are (increasingly) insights-rich and time-poor. Especially in the digital world where an hour can feel like a lifetime, a lot of the “game” for businesses (and their founders, executives, investors, etc.) is staying relevant, everywhere, all the time, forever. The problem is, the most knowledgable people in every industry usually are also the people with the least amount of time—meaning the only way for them to participate in the digital world is by hiring some help.
Aka: a ghostwriter.
Now, here’s where there’s a misconception.
Ghostwriting doesn’t mean “I write for you, and put words in your mouth, with zero oversight.” In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Ghostwriting is the art of saying what the client has already said, thought about, or clarified themselves, over and over again on the Internet. You use and re-use their own words to create new versions of their core, most valuable insights and ideas.
Remember: these people—founders, executives, investors with decades of experience—are insights-rich and time-poor.
Whereas you, the writer, are (usually) time-rich but insights-poor.
Which is what makes smart people & ghostwriters such a perfect match.
What about AI?
The next question people ask, whenever I talk about ghostwriting being such a lucrative opportunity for writers, is some variation of, “But what about AI?Why would a CEO hire a ghostwriter when they could just use ChatGPT?”
I’ll tell you why: because ghostwriting isn’t just about writing.
A lot of the value you provide as a ghostwriter is:
On the front-end: Interviewing the client, coming up with high-quality & differentiated ideas, helping them clarify their thinking, etc.
And on the back-end: Setting up and optimizing their profiles, connecting accounts, building email automations, segmenting lists, etc.
Considering most people don’t even know how to set up a basic filter in Gmail, do not underestimate how difficult all of these things are for the average person to execute—let alone a busy, time-poor executive or startup founder. (I’ve had ghostwriting clients tell me that our weekly content calls were so helpful that they felt like “business therapy” sessions.)
And sure, while there may come a point in time when you can open an AI tool and just say, “Make me a thought leader in my industry online,” and a hundred AI agents spring into action to do all of these things for you, we are still a very, very far away from that happening.
AI isn’t going to steal a ghostwriter’s job.
AI is going to make ghostwriters 10x more efficient and effective.
For Beginners: 7 Ways Ghostwriting “Pays” You
I have generated millions of dollars in revenue for myself as a ghostwriter.
But in all honesty, the financial side of this career path isn’t even its primary benefit.
I cover all of this in my book, The Art & Business of Ghostwriting, so here’s a compressed explanation of why I’m such a big fan of ghostwriting as a career path—particularly for beginner writers:
Ghostwriting pays you to learn.
Ghostwriting is sort of like going to school for free, except better. Because instead of learning passively from “a teacher,” you learn directly from someone who is actively doing that thing you want to learn about, at a very high level, in the real world. You get to learn from the source. You get to ask them any question you want. And then, you get to send them an invoice… and they pay you!
Ghostwriting pays you to practice.
As a beginner writer, your primary bottleneck isn’t money. It’s time. You need to rack up as many hours of practice as possible in order to “get good.” Which is why I strongly encourage beginner writers to start ghostwriting on the side (or, even better, become a full-time ghostwriter!) so you can get paid to practice. This is a much better strategy than working a non-writing job during the day and only having 1-2 hours to “get good at writing” each night.
Ghostwriting pays you to build a network.
I am not exaggerating when I say that because of ghostwriting I now have a multibillion-dollar network. If my entire life burned down and I needed a job tomorrow, there are hundreds of founders & CEOs I could call and ask for an opportunity—because they all used to be my clients. If I wanted to raise money for a new venture, there are hundreds of angel investors, venture capitalists, and high-net worth individuals I could call—because they all used to be my clients. If I was trying to get connected with someone, get access to an exclusive event, or even just needed advice on a business decision, there are hundreds of smart people I could call—because they all used to be my clients.
Ghostwriting pays you to know about trends early.
I’ll give you a crazy example. When I was 26 years old, at the very beginning of my ghostwriting journey, one of my first ghostwriting clients was a cryptocurrency entrepreneur. The topic of our first article together was on the future of Ethereum—back when ETH was approximately $20. By the end of our content call, not only had I learned a tremendous amount about this new technology, but I had “found out” about Ethereum before the masses. I got off our call and was so convicted in the technology that I bought $20,000 of it—almost all of my savings at the time. But 2 years later, as crypto started taking off as an industry, that $20,000 turned into $250,000. Not a benefit I expected from ghostwriting!
Ghostwriting pays you to experience different lives.
I’ve ghostwritten for billionaires. I’ve ghostwritten for some of Silicon Valley’s most successful tech entrepreneurs. I’ve ghostwritten for quirky venture capitalists, ego-maniac founders, socially awkward CIOs, cutthroat executives, Grammy-winning musicians, Olympic athletes, New York Times best-selling authors, you name it. And every time I would ghostwrite for someone new, I would see the world in a slightly different way.
Ghostwriting pays you to learn how to write in different voices.
There is a trope in the writing world that one of the hardest parts about becoming a writer is “finding your voice.” Well, here’s what ghostwriting taught me: you don’t “find” your voice. You create it. After ghostwriting for so many different types of people, in so many different industries, I’ve learned that “voice” is really just a combination of variables—tone, vocabulary, formatting, structure, etc. And as you master each one, you become more capable of creating any voice you can imagine, including the voice you desire most for yourself.
Ghostwriting pays you to write about topics you’re passionate about, but don’t have the credibility or experience to write for yourself (yet).
Finally, ghostwriting is sort of like being an actor… except on a page instead of a stage. You get to write about all sorts of things you probably never considered writing about yourself. For example, I love personal finance. I love learning about money and investing. But I never (especially in my 20s when I was broke) thought of myself as someone who could write about those topics because I wasn’t an expert, hadn’t made millions of dollars, etc. But as the ghostwriter of a millionaire FinTech entrepreneur, or real estate investor, or venture capitalist, I could.
The Art of Ghostwriting
So, how do you become a ghostwriter?
The first thing you need to understand is there is a direct correlation between how many different skills you bring to the table and how much you get paid. This is true for just about any job in modern-day society, but it is especially true in the world of ghostwriting.
In order to be a successful, well-paid writer or ghostwriter, you can’t just “be a good writer.” That’s not enough. And there’s a reason why we train writers on all of these skills inside our Premium Ghostwriting Academy.
Because you must be more than a writer—which means acquiring the following Hard & Soft skills.
The Hard Skills
There are 5 Hard Skills every ghostwriter needs in order to be seen as a trusted collaborative partner and not just a “hired hand” freelancer:
Project Management
Interviewing & Idea Generation
Writing (In Their Voice)
Platform Expertise
Technology Expertise
Let’s walk through each one.
Project Management
Freelance Writers make such little money because they act like low-level employees, waiting for the client (the “boss”) to tell them what to do.
Premium Ghostwriters do the opposite. Writing is just a small part of their value. They also act like Project Managers—taking the client by the hand, walking them through their process, over-communicating and giving them reassurance all along the way. If you want to know why Premium Ghostwriters tend to make significantly more money than Freelance Writers, this is a big reason why.
Because they don’t act like “freelancers.”
They act like 1-Person business owners.
Interviewing & Idea Generation
Next, most people don’t know what they want to write about—smart, successful, wealthy clients included. And even if they do, most of the time they have very little clarity over how to communicate their ideas well. The vast majority of the clients I’ve worked with, including some of the smartest people I’ve ever met, true industry experts, couldn’t wrap their heads around how to organize a very simple 800-word article on one specific topic.
Which is why your value as a ghostwriter starts long before the writing.
It’s your job to help the client identify the right topics for them, based on their unique industry insights, credibility, or personal experiences, and then organize their ideas into content their target reader finds value in consuming.
Writing (In Their Voice)
Third, you have to consciously build the skill of writing well in other people’s voices.
It doesn’t matter if what you write is smart, or compelling, or valuable… if it doesn’t sound like the client. And trust me, they will let you know. They will come back to you and say, “This doesn’t sound like me.” And if you don’t have clarity over what they mean, you’re not going to keep that client for very long.
Now, luckily, learning how to ghostwrite in other people’s voices is a pretty easy skill to build—if you know what to look for. I explain this in-depth in my book, The Art & Business of Ghostwriting, but here are the sparknotes.
The vast majority of clients can be reverse-engineered into these 5 archetypal voices:
The Storyteller: Someone who speaks primarily in stories. You can recognize this voice by cues like, “You know, back when I was building my first company…” or “Let me tell you about the first time I…”.
The Opinionator: Someone who speaks in strong opinions. You can recognize this voice by cues like, “I just think it’s crazy that…” or “Something a lot of people get wrong is…”.
The Fact Presenter: Someone who leans on research or data to back up what they’re saying. You can recognize this voice by cues like, “According to Harvard Business Review…” or “Did you know that 47% of consumers…”.
The Frameworker: Someone who speaks logically, step by step. You can recognize this voice by cues like, “If I was trying to build an app, there are three things I would do…” or “Here’s a reliable framework for making hard decisions…”.
The F-Bomber: Someone who leans on expletives and controversial language to make their point. You can recognize this voice by cues like, “The number one rule I have at my company is Figure It The Fuck Out…” or “Stop bitching and start working.”
I’m sure, even with just this little bit of explanation, you can recognize who in your life—family members, friends, your boss or manager, or any of your existing clients—fits one of these five archetypes.
This is the first key: knowing how to recognize which archetype is the client’s voice. The second key is knowing how to replicate that voice over and over again for every client that fits that specific archetype.
Platform Expertise
Fourth, the ghostwriters who earn the most money specialize—either by service or by platform (or both).
This is because writing on LinkedIn is different from writing on X, which is different from writing on Medium, which is different from writing on Quora, which is different from writing thought leadership articles on a company’s blog, which is different from writing free newsletters, which is different from writing paid newsletters, and so on. Each type of writing, on each platform, you should think of as a slightly different version of the Digital Writing language—sort of like how both America and the United Kingdom speak English, but use different words, with different meanings, spoken in different accents, with different pronunciations.
So, pick a platform. And become the go-to ghostwriter for that specific platform.
Technology Expertise
And fifth, building on the above, is your ability to not just write… but scale your client’s library of work using technology.
This means not just having proficiency over a platform, but living at the cutting-edge and constantly experimenting with new ways of writing, publishing, scheduling, and tapping into the viral formats of the moment.
Especially in today’s digital-first, AI-forward world, this is a skill that requires constant evolution. Just because you know how to use a specific social platform, email marketing tool, or website builder today doesn’t mean you will know how to use it tomorrow (or that it will even remain relevant!). These tools and platforms are constantly changing—which means you need to remain curious and open to changing with them.
The Soft Skills
In addition to the Hard Skills, there are 3 Soft Skills that separate the highest-paid ghostwriters from the mediocre ones:
Close Listening
Radical Honesty
Information Advantage
Over the years, I’ve learned these Soft Skills play a massive role in how long clients decide to work with you, and the degree to which they let you into their lives.
Close Listening
A brutal truth in life is that most people don’t listen.
When you are talking, the other person isn’t really hearing you. What they’re hearing is their own thoughts interpreting what you’re saying and trying to decide what they should say as soon as your mouth stops moving.
“Close Listening,” on the other hand, is an almost meditative practice. You have no inner monologue fighting for your attention. You are completely tuned-in to the other person: what they’re saying, how they’re saying it, but most importantly, what they’re not saying.
I truly believe this Soft Skill is the reason why I was able to ghostwrite for such insanely successful, high-profile clients at such a young age. Because I listened. Unlike even seasoned writers, journalists, and publicists twice my age, I didn’t “try” to listen. I didn’t wait for the client to stop talking so I could say something that showed them how smart I was, too. I just listened, mirrored back to them what I had heard, and helped them clarify their own thinking.
Having this skill feels like a cheat code in life because so few people have it (or chose to consciously develop it), but everyone values it.
If you can listen, closely, people will open their entire world to you.
Radical Honesty
Another unfortunate reality about the business world is that most people don’t tell each other the truth.
If a client is being difficult, most freelancers just bite their tongue and say, “You’re right.” If a client has a bad idea, most agencies just validate their egos so they can keep the retainer payments coming in. These bad habits make things easier in the short term, but always lead to long-term condemnation.
Which is why, whenever I am mentoring other writers and ghostwriters, this is the rule I tell them to live by: It’s the client’s money, which means it’s the client’s final decision. But it’s your responsibility to tell the truth.
The faulty belief here, and why so many freelancers and agencies struggle with this, is because they think “going against the client” is what leads to conflict. And the vast majority of the time, it’s the opposite.
Telling the client the truth, and doing so with compassion, is what earns their respect.
Information Advantage
The last skill to build, and this is where all the compounding happens, is having an Information Advantage in the industry you’re writing within—which is really just a fancy way of saying “having a personal interest.”
For example, imagine you are a ghostwriter but, as a hobby, you’re obsessed with aviation. You love planes. You love watching aviation videos on YouTube. You’re constantly researching planes for sale on secondary markets, just for fun. And then one day, you find yourself at a dinner party… and the person next to you is an entrepreneur working on a new piece of aviation software technology.
Now, what are the chances you and that entrepreneur not only become instant friends, but naturally want to find some way to work together?
I’ll tell you: the chances are very, very high.
There is something magical that happens, especially in the world of ghostwriting, when a client in a specific industry sees you have a true personal interest in their same industry. Immediately, all traditional qualifications go out the window. They couldn’t care less about where you went to college, how many years you’ve been working as a ghostwriter, or any other fancy accolade.
Personal interest, and the result of that personal interest—which is an Information Advantage—trumps all, and is the reason why that sort of client will want to work with you, and only you.
Now, none of these skills are difficult to build. They just require conscious practice.
But again, how much you earn as a ghostwriter is directly correlated to how many of these skills you acquire.
Ghostwriting Is A Dividend On Your Talent
A different way of thinking about ghostwriting is like this:
All ghostwriting really is, is a dividend on your talent. It’s a way for you to monetize skills you already have, or are actively building on your own as a writer.
If you write short-form content for yourself on X or LinkedIn, you can monetize that skill by ghostwriting short-form content for other people on X or LinkedIn in your industry.
If you have a weekly newsletter, you can monetize that skill by ghostwriting newsletters for other people in your industry.
If you write articles on Medium, or answers on Quora, you can monetize that skill by ghostwriting thought leadership articles for other people in your industry.
If you write books, you can monetize that skill by ghostwriting books for other people in your industry.
Etc.
All you have to do is offer the skills you’re already practicing on your own, as a service to other people, and you will double or triple your income.
Easily.
Case Study: Neil Strauss
Neil Strauss is one of the best examples of what it looks like to be a writer who collects a dividend on their talent through ghostwriting.
Strauss started his writing career out of college at an American news and culture publication called The Village Voice. From there, he went on to have his own Pop Life culture column at The New York Times, as well as land a contributing editor role at Rolling Stone. He wrote cover stories on musicians and pop-culture icons ranging from Kurt Cobain to the Wu-Tang Clan.
This was in the late-90s and early 2000s, back when journalism was one of the leading Writer Career Paths. Of course, we all know the end of that story: by the 2010s, Facebook and digital media had started eating the world, magazines started shutting down, and newspaper sales started falling off a cliff; and by the 2020s the career path of being a freelance journalist and contributing writer had been put out to pasture. Today, the vast majority of these writers have either been let go, plateaued, or forced to change career paths altogether.
Strauss, on the other hand—whether he saw where the world was headed, or was simply following his curiosity elsewhere—decided to explore other career paths much earlier than many of his peers.
By the early 2000s, he had already co-written/ghostwritten books like The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, an autobiography with Marilyn Manson; The Dirt, a collaborative autobiography with Mötley Crüe; and How To Make Love Like A Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale with Jenna Jameson, taking his journalism skills but bringing them into the more lucrative world of books.
He also began writing “Gonzo Journalism” style books of his own—his best-known work (and one of my favorite books, ever) being The Game: Penetrating The Secret Society of Pickup Artists. It is an investigative reporting memoir of Strauss’s multi-year journey into the “seduction community” where men share psychology strategies to pick-up women. The book, published in 2005, quickly became a New York Times best-seller, and a year later Sony optioned the rights to turn it into a film.
Today, not only is Neil Strauss one of the best-known non-fiction authors in the world, but he is also one of the highest-paid ghostwriters for celebrity memoirs.
In fact, you have probably read his most recent work and didn’t even know it was him: Rick Rubin’s best-selling book, The Creative Act.
Time Horizon
Your time horizon for success as a ghostwriter depends heavily on three variables:
Which service you want to provide
Whether you want to get paid in status or money
And the degree to which you build your own credibility as a writer along the way
Let’s walk through all three, and I’ll explain why:
The Service
Of all the “written” services a ghostwriter could provide, books are the hardest: the hardest clients to find, the hardest clients to land, the hardest projects to execute, the longest to complete, etc.
Conversely, learning how to write short-form LinkedIn posts or weekly newsletters for a business owner isn’t very hard. It’s an easy skill to learn, and clients are everywhere.
So your time horizon for both “success in general” (which we should really call Status) and profit is dependent upon which service you want to provide, and for whom.
Speaking from experience here, book ghostwriters (especially for celebrities and mega-high-profile CEOs) tend to receive the most status. They also get paid the largest lump sums of money. It’s very common for someone at Neil Strauss’s level to get paid anywhere from $250,000 to $2,000,000 to ghostwrite or co-author a book. And at first glance, that might seem like an exorbitant amount of money… until you ask the question, “Over what time horizon?”
Most book projects take anywhere from 2-4 years to complete.
So $300,000 seems like a lot of money until you divide it by three and realize you could have made a whole lot more than $100,000 per year as a ghostwriter providing easier, more efficient services.
Which is why, instead of pursuing books, I encourage every ghostwriter to provide one or multiple of these three services:
Educational Email Courses
Weekly Newsletters
Social Content
These projects are easier to land (much easier than convincing a high-profile celebrity to trust you to write their memoir), much easier to execute, and almost always more profitable.
Status vs Money
The next variable is whether you want to get paid in Status or Money.
When I was living in Los Angeles in my late-20s, I did a lot of ghostwriting projects that didn’t pay me very much money (many times, not at all), but paid me tremendously in status. I got to go to dinner parties in Hollywood Hills I never otherwise would have been invited to; I got to attend VIP events, drive sports cars, and hang out with mega-millionaires; and I got to listen in on conversations that were way above my pay grade.
You can unlock a tremendous amount of status as a ghostwriter because, when you are someone’s “ghostwriter,” they inherently want you around them—a lot. They want you to “soak up what they know.” They want you to become familiar with their world. And the more high-profile the client, the more incredible (and sometimes, insane) their world can be.
It’s very cool.
Now, the con of getting paid in Status is that status-doesn’t-pay-the-bills.
At a certain point, you will have to decide which is the priority: whether you want to work with someone because of who they are, who they can introduce you to, what you can learn from them, etc.… or what they’re willing to pay you.
My personal take here is that you want a bit of both. You need to make a living, but you should also reserve 10-20% of your capacity for clients whose value extends beyond “just money.” Some of my favorite clients, and the ones who taught me the most about business, were clients I worked with at a discount (or in some cases, for free) simply because I wanted to learn.
Your Own Credibility As A Writer
Neil Strauss has ghostwritten for Rick Rubin.
Mark Manson has ghostwritten for Will Smith.
Tucker Max has ghostwritten for Tiffany Haddish.
Notice a trend?
The more successful you become as a writer on your own, the more other successful people want and trust you to be their ghostwriter. And this isn’t just true for books. I know writers in every possible vertical—sales copywriters, social media writers, newsletter writers, content writers, you name it—who, because of their success in their respective vertical, get hit up constantly from other people wanting help doing that same thing, for themselves.
Which is why I like to think of ghostwriting as a dividend on your talent.
Whatever you’re good at writing, for yourself, I promise, there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people out in the world who would love to pay you to help them do the same.
The Business of Ghostwriting
How do ghostwriters make money?
There are three ways most ghostwriting projects or retainers get structured:
Flat-Rate, Per Project
Monthly Rate, Per Recurring Service
Up-Front Cash, Plus Performance Upside
Let’s walk through each one.
Flat-Rate, Per Project
Some ghostwriting services provide the creation of an asset with a clear end point.
For example, the primary asset we train ghostwriters on how to write, build, and sell inside our Premium Ghostwriting Academy is a 5-Day Educational Email Course—which is a high-value opt-in for businesses and/or people with personal brands to capture customer emails. This is an asset that takes about a month to build, but then can run via email forever. And for this project, we recommend ghostwriters charge a flat rate of $5,000.
Whenever you’re ghostwriting fixed assets that don’t have any sort of recurring nature, charging a flat-rate per project is the way to go.
Here are some other ghostwriting projects where a flat-rate makes sense:
Website Copy: Once the website copy is created or “fixed,” the project is usually considered done. You don’t need to “keep creating” or “keep fixing” the copy every month, month after month.
Automated Email Sequences: Things like Upsell Sequences, Book-A-Call Sequences, Abandoned Card Sequences, etc. Once one of these sequences has been created, it usually doesn’t need to be continuously tweaked. It’s done, it’s created, and now it’s running on autopilot.
eBooks or Books: These are projects with clear end-points. Once the book is “done,” you don’t continue to tweak and re-write it over and over again—which is why books are usually billed at a flat-rate.
Pricing
When you’re ghostwriting an asset with a clear beginning and end to the project, and you decide to charge a flat-rate, there are a couple nuances in how pricing typically works.
If the project is $5,000 or less, it’s standard for the client to pay 100% up-front. Work begins after you’ve received a paid-in-full invoice.
If the project is more than $5,000 (especially once you cross $10,000), it’s standard for the client to want to pay in installments—usually 50% at project kick-off, and 50% upon project completion. If you are charging for a project in this price range, I would encourage you to proactively offer this to the client as a show of good faith.
The project should have a clear end, measured either by milestone completion or time. Despite charging a flat-rate, it’s very common for these types of projects to “run on indefinitely.” So it’s very, very important that you establish when the project is actually deemed completed.
Monthly Rate, Per Recurring Service
Other ghostwriting services create recurring assets with clear deliverables but no clear “end point” in the engagement.”
(Some recurring clients churn after a month, and others stay with you for years!)
For example, after a ghostwriter in our Premium Ghostwriting Academy lands their first Educational Email Course client, we then show them how to upsell the client with two options:
More Flat-Rate Projects: After a client has a high-value opt-in like an Educational Email Course, now they probably need a few automated email sequences. If they are a services business, they probably need a Book-A-Call Sequence. If they’re a digital project business, they probably need an Upsell Sequence. Etc. So the ghostwriter can extract more revenue from the client by upselling them on additional flat-rate projects (helping them solve the “next problem” in their business).
Recurring Services: The other option, after a client has a high-value opt-in like an Educational Email Course, is to upsell them on recurring services. If the client needs to increase the amount of traffic going to their Educational Email Course, they probably need a Social Media Ghostwriter. And if the client needs to increase the number of free email subscribers who eventually convert into paying customers, they probably need a Weekly Newsletter Ghostwriter. Both of these services are recurring in the sense that, once you start creating social content or writing weekly newsletters, you don’t really ever want to “stop.”
Nothing “Recurs” Forever
Now, a common misconception is that “recurring revenue is better than project-based revenue.”
And in theory, that’s correct. Money coming in every month is better than having to chase down new money every month.
The problem is, even recurring revenue doesn’t “recur” forever.
Just because you sold a client on a recurring service—like Social Media Ghostwriting or Newsletter Ghostwriting—doesn’t mean they are now contractually obligated to pay you your monthly retainer, every month, for the rest of your life. What’s really happening is the client is re-selling themselves on that “recurring service” at the beginning of every month. If they are happy with the work, they stay on. And if they’re not, they leave. (And if you’re thinking, “But what if they sign a contract…?!” that doesn’t matter. They’re going to cancel, and you’re not going to sue them, and you’re both just going to move on with your lives.)
Both project-based services and recurring services have the potential to generate plenty of revenue for you as a ghostwriter.
So don’t rule out project-based services just because they aren’t recurring.
Pricing
The vast majority of recurring ghostwriting services fall in the $3,000 to $7,000 per month range.
If you’re charging less than $3,000 per month for a recurring service, you are most likely undercharging. Not because you don’t have the skills, or the credibility. But because you have some faulty belief swirling around inside of you insisting you “can’t.”
And if you’re charging more than $7,000 per month, it’s because you have some sort of other strong variable working to your advantage. You might have a huge personal brand with a ton of public credibility, or an insanely valuable network you’ve found a way to monetize, etc.
Best practice for these recurring services is to bill the client in-full at the beginning of the month (or whenever the engagement officially starts), and then every 30 days thereafter.
Up-Front Cash, Plus Performance Upside
Now, there is a third way to charge as a ghostwriter, and that’s some blend of up-front cash and long-term upside.
For the vast majority of beginner and even intermediate ghostwriters, not only are these kinds of opportunities rare, but I would discourage you from taking them. These are high-risk, high-reward projects. So until you’re in a strong position of financial independence, I would just take up-front cash and forgo any long-term upside. (For context, I have done dozens of these types of deals over the course of my career and I’ve only had one actually be ROI positive. The rest all lost me money and were a massive waste of time.)
But, just to future-pace a bit for you, here’s how these projects typically go.
Think of Up-Front Cash and Long-Term Upside as two different levers:
Cash Up, Upside Down: If the amount of Up-Front Cash you receive for the project goes up (which means your “risk” in participating in the project goes down—since more of your compensation is guaranteed), then it makes sense for your Long-Term Upside to go down. The client is the one taking on more risk, which means they are entitled to more of the long-term rewards.
Cash Down, Upside Up: If the amount of Up-Front Cash you receive for a project goes down (which means your “risk” in participating in the project goes up—since less of your compensation is guaranteed), then it makes sense for your Long-Term Upside to go up. You’re now sharing a larger chunk of the risk with the client, which means you are entitled to more of the long-term rewards.
Ghostwriting books as a service is a good example of this.
When you enter the upper-echelon of ghostwriting books, and you are a successful writer and have leverage of your own (like Neil Strauss, Mark Manson, etc.), you now have some negotiating power. Which means you could charge for the project in all sorts of different ways.
In this hypothetical example, and using round numbers, let’s say you typically charge $500,000 to ghostwrite a book for a celebrity.
Option A: You could take all $500,000 up-front but forgo any back-end, long-term royalty. This would be zero risk for you but also zero long-term upside.
Option B: You could take $350,000 up-front but ask for a 1% perpetual royalty on the back-end. This would mean putting $150,000 of your guaranteed compensation “at risk” for a chance at earning more than that in the future, based on the performance of the book.
Option C: You could take $100,000 up-front but ask for a 10% perpetual royalty on the back-end. This would mean putting $400,000 of your guaranteed compensation “at risk” for a chance at earning much more than that in the future, based on the performance of the book.
Option D: You could take $0 up-front but ask for a 50% perpetual royalty on the back-end. This would mean taking on the most risk, forgoing any guaranteed compensation but sharing equally in the long-term upside of the book.
There’s no right answer. It’s completely up to you how much risk you want to take on, and how much upside you think there is in the project.
You can also use these pricing mechanisms to structure much smaller ghostwriting deals, if you’d like. For example, you could reduce the amount of cash you take up-front for ghostwriting social media content, but create an incentive where you get paid $1,000 for each post you write that receives over a million views. Or, you could take no cash to ghostwrite someone’s paid newsletter, but share in the profits 50/50. Everything in life is negotiable.
But I will tell you this: in all my years doing performance-based deals, I’ve learned that the deals you want, people won’t give you; and the deals you don’t want, people will offer you all day long.
Which is why I tell ghostwriters, just take the up-front cash.
Case Study: Digital Press
“But Cole… is ghostwriting scalable?”
“But Cole… are there really clients out there who will pay me thousands of dollars?”
“But Cole… how am I supposed to get ghostwriting clients if I can’t talk about my work, and can’t use testimonials?”
Trust me when I say that, in the beginning, I had all of these same questions (and faulty beliefs) too.
In 2016, when I told one of my closest friends I had quit my 9-5 job and was making $250 per article ghostwriting for business owners, he didn’t believe me. He, like everyone else, pushed back and said, “Why? Couldn’t they just hire some freelance writer on Upwork for $20 per hour to do the same work?”
18 months later, and our ghostwriting agency had 80+ clients and 23 full-time employees (ghostwriters, editors, and salespeople), generating $180,000 per month in revenue.
Forget $250 per article—we got all the way up to charging $2,500 per article.
One of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn in business is that anytime I think something isn’t “scalable,” it’s not because that’s true. It’s because I don’t believe it to be true, because I’m incapable of seeing the skill gap between who I am today and who I would need to become in order for “this thing” to be scalable.
I remember charging $250 per 800-word article and thinking, “This is crazy expensive.” Then I started charging $500 per article and thought the same thing. Then $800 per article and thought the same thing. Then $1,000 per article. Then $1,500. Then $2,000. Then $2,500.
You will always be able to find reasons why you shouldn’t or can’t do something. You could point to any product or service on planet earth and make a good case for why that thing can’t succeed or scale. But there’s a cliché saying in the business world that I’ve come to love over the years, and it goes like this: “If you want to be right, be pessimistic. If you want to get rich, be optimistic.”
Despite everything I’ve shared with you here, I’m sure you can think of 100 reasons why ghostwriting won’t work, or won’t work specifically for you. And you know what? You’re probably right.
But do you want to be right? Or do you want to get rich?
If you want to be right, you will talk yourself out of every opportunity.
If you want to get rich, you have to be willing to embrace the unknown, go on the journey, and figure out how to make it work for you.
My Recommendation
If you are a beginner or aspiring professional writer, I would strongly encourage you to start ghostwriting.
For three reasons:
Ghostwriting is your fastest path to $10,000 per month. No other Writer Career Path can get you there faster, with less risk. Ghostwriting requires no advanced skills, no huge audience, and no up-front costs to start.
Ghostwriting pays you to practice. Remember, your primary bottleneck to “getting good” at writing is time. How do you solve for time and money at the same time? Ghostwriting, where you can power-level your earnings and get paid to practice all day long.
Ghostwriting is a dividend you can collect on your talent for the rest of your career. The more successful you become as a writer yourself, the more your talent is worth, the more you can earn as a ghostwriter. It also makes your earnings more predictable, and your career more defensible. You will never go hungry as a writer.
Your big takeaway here should be: no matter what Writer Career Path you choose to pursue, you should consider double-monetizing it with ghostwriting.
Anything you get good at writing for yourself, you can get paid a premium to ghostwrite for other people.
I love your authenticity. I would love to collaborate
Thank you for sharing.