Itās been 17 months since I switched my offer from content writing to LinkedIn ghostwriting.
And in that time, Iāve generated $182,344.
The most impressive part of all of this is that Iāve never had more than THREE retainer clients at any given time.
I donāt say this to brag...
I'm sharing this to show you donāt need a ridiculous number of clients to build a six-figure ghostwriting business.
A small amount of the RIGHT clients will do the trick.
It sounds simple on the surface, but it's not easy.
Iāve made a ton of mistakes along the way.
Some cost me money.
Others cost me time Iāll never get back.
And a few taught me lessons that changed how I approach business.
This is what I want to share with you today...
Iām going to take you behind the scenes of my ghostwriting business and show you how I generated $182,344 in 17 months.
Youāll get insights into:
How I found and landed clients willing to pay thousands of dollars per month.
How I packaged and priced my ghostwriting services.
The mistakes that cost me money
The decisions that helped me generate more of it.
My hope is that by the time youāve finished reading, youāll have a much clearer idea of what it takes to build a profitable ghostwriting business.
But to understand how I got here, we need to go back to where it all started...
Where it all started...
In 2023, I was making around $2,000ā$3,000/month as a freelance content writer.
Most people would say, āThatās good money.ā
But I was living in LONDON.
One of the most expensive cities in the world.
26% of what I earned was gone as soon as I accounted for tax and national insurance.
This left me with around $1,480-$2,280/month.
At the time, I was living in my grandmotherās heavily discounted social housing home while she was stuck in Ghana because of COVID-19.
Rent was $800.
So whatās thatā¦ $680-$1,480/month left over?
My bank also charged a $6.67 flat fee to convert my money to GBP, plus a 1.5%- 3.5% exchange-rate markup.
I could live like this alone because my expenses were pretty low.
The problems started when my grandmother passed away in 2021ā¦
I got into a 2-year dispute with the housing association over whether I had the right to succeed to the property since I'd lived there for 12+ months.
But I lost on a minor technicality.
So I had to find a place to liveā¦
Issue isā¦ I REFUSED to live in a shared accommodation with a bunch of strangers.
And I wouldāve been lucky to find a 1-bed going for anything less than $1,588.20/month.
Even if I did, I didnāt have enough money to comfortably rent an apartment and cover my monthly obligations.
I couldāve moved back in with my parentsā¦
But they wouldāve taken advantage of me.
They donāt respect remote work.
As long as you can be seen, youāre available.
So my next best option was to move into their retirement home 5,000 km away in Ghana, West Africa.
The house was paid for outright, so the only things Iād have to manage were electricity, water, and foodā¦ Like Iād been doing already in my grandmotherās place.
Except Iād get an $800 pay bump since Iām no longer paying rent.
Well, the pay rise was a little more than that because I barely knew anyone in Ghana, so I was out a lot less.
The one thing I dreaded was spending the rest of my life living somewhere cheaper because I couldnāt afford to live where I wanted.
So I put most of my extra resources into figuring out how to make more money writing online.
This forced me to rethink what I was sellingā¦
Why I switched to LinkedIn ghostwriting
I knew I was a decent writer.
Otherwise, NVIDIA, DataCamp, and Neptune.ai (acquired by OpenAI) would never have come to me to buff up their content machine.
What I didnāt know is that being a good writer didnāt mean making good money from writing.
Because thatās how it works in most other industriesā¦
The best footballers get paid the most.
It took me 4 years to come to this realization.
But when the penny dropped, it all made senseā¦
The best-paid writers are those who know how to structure their services to allow them to earn more from less work.
Up to that point, I'd structured my writing business the opposite way.
No wonder I worked 60+ hours a week and still earned breadcrumbs.
But I found hope when I came across a LinkedIn post from a guy called Nicholas Coleā¦
In it, he said something along the lines of āGhostwriters could make $5,000 from one client in less than a month.ā
I remember thinking, ā$5,000 from ONE client?ā
That was more than Iād made in an entire month from 4 clients.
This was the beginning of my journey into ghostwriting.
How I landed my first ghostwriting client
The first step was to tweak my offer.
Iāve shown you how to do that here:
The next step was to find customers.
Up until this point in my career, I had NEVER done outreach.
For 4 years, I relied on referrals and inbound leads.
It was great when they came, but it sucked when they didnāt.
In fact, I strongly believe the stress of wondering what if I lost a client and couldnāt replace them has a large part to play in why I went bald in my mid-twenties.
Anywaysā¦
I needed to figure out how to tell people about what I was doing.
