5 Ways Ghostwriting has a Massive Future in the World of Digital Writing: How I have built a digital writing business towards $10,000 per month in under a year.
Want to make a living as a writer without spending years building a platform? Ghostwriting can get you there. 👻
Ghostwriting has been around for a long time. It has become increasingly popular in the Digital Age. It’s no longer the realm of writing books for famous folks.
[This story was originally published on Medium. You can check it out here.]
As the demand for content has grown, so has the need for writers who can produce high-quality work quickly and efficiently. Ghostwriting is an excellent career or business choice for writers who, in some cases, want to stay anonymous and earn a good income.
There are now more than 5 billion+ people accessing the Internet around the world. This is over 60% of the global population.
This past week, I delivered a workshop to students at a university in Thailand. I’m based in western Canada. These students were working on their capstone projects in business and IT studies. The workshop was focused on content production for social media — with a focus on business development.
Before delivering I did a little research to find out how many people in Thailand access the internet. Research suggests over 50 million people in a population of approximately 70 million people. This is over 70% of the population, which is quite high in comparison to many countries. In Canada over 90% of the population has access to the Internet, which is over 36 million people. It is similar in the U.S. with over 90% of the population which is over 310 million people.
The number of people, organizations, and business online is astounding. Digital writing and specifically Ghostwriting continues to be a massive opportunity to make a living and build a thriving business.
Ghostwriting is a form of writing in which an individual or organization hires a writer to create content on their behalf. The Ghostwriter’s role is to capture a client’s voice and convey their ideas in a way that is clear and engaging.
A Ghostwriter can be useful — and paid — by anyone who runs a business or any business that creates content or should be creating content. Ghostwriters assist in presenting other people’s ideas to the public. And, in the digital world, this is a massive list of opportunities.
Part of my Digital Writing Business is Ghostwriting.
This month marks 11 months since leaving public sector employment after a decade-plus. Next month will mark 12 months. That is the runway my wife and I allocated to building a sustainable digital writing business — 12 months.
From about 2010 through the early 2020s, I worked my way up the career ladder in higher education and healthcare. Over those years, I tripled my annual income and worked my way up to managing teams and decent-sized budgets. At one point, I was the Director of a team that dispersed almost $1 million annually in community grants and projects. We were also at the heart of work addressing systemic and structural racism in healthcare. We then landed in 2 years of COVID emergency planning and response.
It was a time that resembled trying to fly a plane while building it. Those skills transferred well to building a profitable digital writing business in under a year.
After walking away from a 6-figure salary in the public sector, I set out to build a digital writing business. In the first few months of posting, I simply wrote and pressed publish. Spray and Pray approach.
I had a lot of ideas and thoughts in my head that just needed to get out the door. I posted nearly daily, mainly on LinkedIn. I was in no rush to run out and get clients. I was not interested in sales jobs and DM’ing across platforms. I just wanted to read, write, post, and learn. I looked for thought leaders in this work and followed them.
After about four months with my overall health starting to come back — boosted by daily rides on my bikes (mountain and gravel) — I began to establish some goals for digital writing business development. I focussed on some goals for income — with $5,000/month within 12 months of starting — as the target. This would get me to a bit less than half the annual income I walked away from.
Ghostwriting: Trusting the Process
After 7 months, I was beginning to feel pressure to identify where my income was going to come from. Then a former colleague reached out:
“Hey, I see you’re posting daily on LinkedIn, I have some writing work I need assistance on…interested?”
This has evolved and become a $5k per month contract. This put me four months ahead of my goals.
This contract involves writing a weekly newsletter and preparing some LinkedIn posts during the week for a non-profit organization that is an association of many organizations. It’s now evolving into more concept and discussion papers, preparing business case studies, and more grant writing. It’s really enjoyable to work and a critical niche.
Most importantly though, this work and contract was a big confidence booster in realizing possibilities. I took this confidence boost and prepared a proposal for an organization I knew was struggling to expand its reach.
It has a business model dependent on 1:1 practitioner to client. The organization has dabbled in expanding into online learning and workshops to generate increased revenues and profits — but without a plan or much structure. I drafted a brief outline for a business development project and essentially cold-pitched it — granted I know the business owners (but not well).
It landed positively. We’ve been back-and-forth and this past week we finalized details on a 4-month timeline for development. This project will involve Ghostwriting marketing, social media posts, and frameworks for an expanded set of online educational offerings.
This will be about the same monthly revenues as my other contract. These two projects, for the time being, push us potentially 7 months ahead of earlier goals. Now it’s time to start building more.
One of the ways in which I’m doing this is by building educational email courses.
Introductory Educational Email Courses.
I build Educational Email Courses, which are part of a portfolio of building digital writing assets and approaches. One of the first courses is a 5-day Educational Email Course focussed on overcoming the 5 biggest mistakes I’ve overcome in building a digital writing business.
Introductory 5-day educational email courses have several benefits for any business including:
Providing a low-risk way for potential customers to learn more about a topic or product before committing to a larger investment.
Establishing the business or individual as an expert in their field and building trust with potential customers.
Encouraging engagement and interaction with the audience through a series of targeted and actionable content.
Growing an email list and establishing a long-term relationship with a client and audience.
Creating opportunities to upsell or promote related products or services after the course has ended.
Overall, 5-day educational email courses can be an effective marketing tool to attract new customers and build a loyal audience base over time. There is also a massive market for Ghostwriting educational email courses.
The Future of Ghostwriting is Bright.
The future of ghostwriting is promising, as more and more writers are realizing the benefits of specializing in this niche. Here are five reasons why:
Less competition: By calling themselves a Ghostwriter instead of a freelance writers, writers can immediately differentiate themselves from the millions of other writers out there. This can lead to more specialized and higher-paying opportunities.
Working directly with business leaders: Ghostwriting often involves working with business leaders or individuals, rather than content marketing teams. This can lead to more specialized projects and greater access to high-level clients.
Specializing in one thing: Ghostwriters often specialize in one specific area, such as social media, articles, speeches, or books. This can lead to greater pricing power and the ability to charge a premium for one’s services.
Practicing on oneself: Ghostwriters can use their own writing as a case study to demonstrate their abilities to potential clients. By creating and promoting their own content, Ghostwriters can show they can create content for others, and drive traffic to websites or other landing areas.
The Free Work Pitch: Offering to create a free outline or sample of work for potential clients can be a powerful way to demonstrate one’s abilities and win new clients. By front-loading the work and getting clients excited about the project, Ghostwriters can make it easier to close deals and earn more money.
In conclusion, ghostwriting offers a promising future for writers who are looking to specialize and earn a premium for their services. By differentiating themselves from the competition, working directly with business leaders, specializing in one specific area, practicing on oneself, and offering a Free Work Pitch, ghostwriters can build successful businesses and earn a comfortable living doing what they love.
Are you building a digital writing business? A side-gig writing business? Do you Ghoswrite? What are some of the challenges you have overcome?