Boo! Five Ways to Ghostwrite Online

Happy Halloween! I don’t know about you, but this time of year really snuck up on me. Halloween always marks the beginning of the frantic holiday season full of family, food and lots of spending. Becoming a ghostwriter online, or expanding your existing ghostwriting business, can really help offset those holiday costs.

It’s every writer’s dream to see their name in print, or at least on the screen. But sometimes you’ve got to get “spooky” in order to pay the bills. Ghostwriting takes a lot of shapes and forms online, but here are five of the most successful ways I’ve found to work with clients as a ghostwriter.

Boo!

1. Ghostwriting ebooks - Information products are here to stay, and every marketer wants a piece of the action. If Joe Marketer knows he needs an ebook on losing weight by eating chocolate (wouldn’t that be great!) but can’t string a sentence together to save his life, then you can be his life preserver.

Make sure to find out what style the marketer wants the ebook in and iron out all of the details on length and format before you start. The good thing about writing ebooks, from your perspective, is that you don’t have to research 20 different topics in order to make the same money.

2. Ghostwriting blog posts - Blogging is a great tool for getting to know a target market and branding yourself in a niche, but not all of my clients have time to do it. Providing short, informative and entertaining blog posts can help them stay in touch with their market.

Writing blog posts is easy if you do them in monthly groups. Instead of having to sit down each day, spend a few days ironing out the following month’s posts. Then the client can pre-load them into their blog for the following month.

3. Ghostwriting Autoresponder Sequences

If you don’t know what an autoresponder is, then sign up to receive my free Web Writing Report. I don’t have a long sequence in there, but you’ll get the idea. When you visit a website and sign up to receive a report, the site owner will generally have a sequence of five to seven messages that will continue the contact with the prospect.

In this sequence, they might offer additional information on the same topic, or point out helpful resources. They will also be pre-selling the audience on another product or service they might enjoy. Writing autoresponder sequences is part content writing and part copywriting. You’ll need to inform and also persuade the reader to take the next action.

4. Ghostwriting Reports

Reports are smaller ebooks of 5 to 15 pages that can be used for sale, or as a giveaway product. They help a marketer brand themselves for a specific niche, and increase their mailing list. They can also be used a pre-cursor to a larger product. It’s a great way for someone to test out the waters in a niche without commiting to writing, or rather having YOU write a long ebook.

5. Ghostwriting for Yourself

This may sound like my head is full of cobwebs at first, but hear me out. As you brand yourself online as a writer, you start treating the Internet as a virtual office. Knowing this, you may want to keep your writing career and your affiliate marketing seperate.

For example, you decide to try your hand at doing some article marketing for a health product. You write articles all about a health problem that you had, and how this product helped, etc, etc. Do you necessarily want your client to see that as the first thing that pops up on Google attached to your name?

I’m not saying you need to hide the other things that you are doing online. But it can help your organization and your branding to keep everything seperate and use a pen name for your other article marketing that’s not associated with your writing business. It’s free and it helps keep things simple.

Even if you decide to put it all under one name, take some time to make yourself your client. Ghostwriting is profitable, but you always want to be thinking about the next thing and affiliate marketing through writing articles is a natural next step.

Consider these spooky methods for making money as an online ghostwriter, and enjoy your Halloween. I’ll be carting around my fairy princesses and trying to avoid eating too much chocolate (where’s that client with that brilliant ebook idea when you need ‘em?)

October 31, 2007 | Filed Under Making Money, Web Writing Basics | 4 Comments 

Yerba Mate

Caffeine addicts unite! I was never a coffee girl, but darn if I couldn’t start a morning without a Diet Pepsi. I know– gross, right? I was drinking so much soda I wish that Diet Pepsi had bonus points for use.

There are so many things wrong with diet soda, I can’t even begin to name them all. Just look up “aspartame neurotoxin” on Google and your head will be spinning.

The sad part is, I was so addicted I KNEW about the dangers and still continued to drink the stuff.

I’m not a fan of coffee, and green tea makes my stomach hurt, so I had to find a new solution.

Enter Yerba Mate. It’s a “tea like” beverage that is made from plants found in South American rainforests. In addition to being uplifting, it’s also got antioxidants and B vitamins that give you an extra boost.

So two thumbs up! I found my Yerba Mate at Trader Joe’s. If you need some liquid inspiration, give it a try.

October 30, 2007 | Filed Under Resources | 6 Comments 

Are you an ostrich or a butterfly?

Maybe you noticed I’ve been missing for a few days (or maybe you haven’t at all). I’ve been having one of those “head in the ground, total focus on my client’s work” weeks and my networking and blogging have definitely taken a big hit. Personally, I tend to alternate between being an ostrich and a social butterfly.

Some weeks, I get my work done but spend a lot of time twittering, checking in at forums, answering e-mails - all of the fun social stuff that makes the working online enjoyable. Even though my husband is now home with me, working at home can still get a bit lonely - especially when I start rattling on about PLR, affiliate marketing and Aweber. It helps to have “co-workers,” even if they are other entrepreneurs, to bounce ideas off of or just vent.

Other weeks, when I’ve overbooked myself or life has taken me on a detour, I have to put my nose to the grindstone and work. The urgent but not important things like e-mail fall by the wayside. It’s amazing how little time it takes me to feel totally disconnected from the web world.

It’s a tough thing to balance. At face value, participating in forums or twittering doesn’t make money. But I’ve built the main part of my business from networking in particular forums. And my last ghostwriting content offer wouldn’t have sold if I hadn’t used twitter to promote it.

One thing that I admit I need work on is reading other people’s blogs and posting. I haven’t done a whole lot of that, and I think my blog is suffering because of it.  I’m going to try reducing the list of blogs that I follow so I can fully participate in the ones I do comment on, instead of trying to hit a whole bunch at once.

I’ve found yet another dichotomy to balance besides work/family, personal projects/ghostwriting and sleep/sanity. So are you an ostrich or a butterfly?

October 26, 2007 | Filed Under Organization | 11 Comments 

Spotlight on Hope Wilbanks (www.hopewrites.com)

I’ve had a note to give Hope some link love for quite some time, and today is the perfect day since she’s running a contest at
Hope Writes!

There are many good things about Hope’s blog, and Hope in general. I’m happy to have met her online. She’s got a great perspective on writing (a good mix of creativity and marketing), a nice looking blog design and always has interesting posts.

Some of my recent favorites are:

Why You Should Hire a Ghostwriter to Write Your Book

Ask Hope: Blogging for Cash

Writing Made Fun

Priming the Pump

She just reached 1000 unique visitors, so she’s running a special contest today. Go check it out!

October 19, 2007 | Filed Under Link Love | 2 Comments 

100 Tools for Freelancers

I just got wind of a new resource list for freelancers. It’s called The 100 Tools Freelancers Can’t Live Without

There are some fun things on the list, and some essential tools that I personally use (like Firefox, Skype and CutePDF). They may not be as necessary as the title of the list would make them out to be, but it’s worth a look.

Just remember that it’s easy to feel busy “working” when you add too many online apps, organizational systems and utilities and still not get any actual work done.

Do you have experience with any of the tools on this list? Share your thoughts!

October 16, 2007 | Filed Under Link Love, Techniques and Tips, Resources | Leave a Comment 

Handling Phone Calls During Worktime

Writers are communicators by nature. So it can be hard to section yourself off from people and have some productive time. I often find myself taking calls during work hours, or getting distracted by “needing” to call someone back during work hours. My writing time is limited, and most likely yours is too. So going off on a “phone tangent” can be a problem for productivity.

Since we’re still experiencing the transition of having my husband working at home too, I’ve tried to keep things more flexible but the time has come to be firm with myself and others. I’ve resisted setting regular office hours, but I think the time may have come where I need to have a set schedule for my own piece of mind.

Once you set your schedule, you’ve also got to let people know that you’re working during certain hours. People who work at home commonly have problems with friends and family assuming that just because they are home they are free. I always feel a little bad when I have to remind someone that I have work to do and can’t drop everything at a moment’s notice.

How do you make it clear that you are working during certain times? Do you screen your calls? Do you let people know your working hours? How do you emphasize that your work is important without hurting feelings?

October 15, 2007 | Filed Under Techniques and Tips | 3 Comments 

How to Gain Experience without Getting Paid Peanuts

I see some disheartening posts occasionally from new writers who are bending over backwards to gain experience. In an effort to grow their business, they are willing to be paid peanuts.

I know everyone has to start somewhere, but $1 an article is no way to start. Even if you’re the newest of new writers, you can find jobs that pay $5 an article and lines of people just waiting to give you work at that price.

Here are some tips for starting out on the right foot with web content writing:

1. Believe in yourself.

You’re new. You know it. You’re working with people who are making thousands of dollars per month. Who are you to charge more than a fraction of a cent per word, right? Wrong.

Get these types of thoughts out of your mind right away. You’re providing a service. You’re making things convenient for them and making their lives easier. Therefore, they need to pay you for the convenience. Start believing that your time and skill are worth money, and turning down those penny a word jobs will be a piece of cake.

2. Never, ever, ever write custom samples for free.

If you’re starting out,  write some samples from scratch. Hit a writing forum and ask for some feedback on your samples. Make sure they’re great and cover some different topic areas. When people ask to see your work, send them those samples or put them on your website.

If someone asks you to write custom samples, let them know that they can get a sense of your writing style from the samples. If they push the issue, just say “No thanks!”

3. Ask for recommendations after every job.

Nothing builds your reputation, credibility or article price higher than having someone else recommend you. Collecting blurbs from other clients about your writing skills, your customer service and your general awesomeness is the best reassurance for new clients that you’re the real deal.

Hope Wilbanks has a great post today about how to ask for a recommendation.

The easiest way to stop writing for peanuts is to just say no to bad pay. :) There is higher paying work out there but if you’re stuck in the middle of a 25 articles for $50 job, there’s no way you’ll be able to jump on it.

October 9, 2007 | Filed Under Link Love, Making Money, Techniques and Tips, Motivation | 6 Comments 

Next Page →