I started writing online in 2020.
At the time, I wasn’t trying to build a business…
I was simply sharing what I was learning about AI.
But as my audience grew, something unexpected happened...
An AI startup in San Francisco reached out and asked me to write for them just two days after being made redundant.
This was the moment I realized I could earn a living writing online.
So I went all in.
Over the next 4 years, I wrote for companies like:
NVIDIA
DataCamp
Neptune.ai (which was later acquired by OpenAI in a deal reportedly valued under $400M)
On paper, things were going great.
But financially? Not so much.
I was working 60+ hours per week and making around $2,000 per month from client work, plus another $1,000 or so from the Medium Partner Program.
Meanwhile, I kept seeing writers online making significantly more money while seemingly working far less.
It pissed me off.
Clearly, writing wasn’t the problem…
How I was monetizing my writing was.
So in 2024, I became obsessed with answering one question:
How can I make more money while working fewer hours using the writing skills I already have?
That’s when I discovered ghostwriting.
I spent the year learning everything I could about the business.
How ghostwriters positioned themselves.
What they sold.
Who they sold it to.
How they priced their services.
And eventually, I completely changed my offer.
The following year, I made $100,000 in 8 months.
Same fundamental skill.
Completely different business model.
And that’s why I’m writing this article…
Because if you’re already a decent writer, you probably don’t need to spend another 5 years getting better at writing before you can make good money.
You need to learn how to package that skill into something valuable to people who can afford to pay for it.
So in this article, I’m going to show you exactly how I’d become an executive ghostwriter today...
Even if I’d never ghostwritten before.
What is executive ghostwriting?
Before we get into how to become an executive ghostwriter, let’s clarify what you’re getting paid to do…
Executive ghostwriting is NOT simply:
“Writing content for someone who doesn’t have time to write.”
That’s part of the job.
But it goes much deeper.
An executive ghostwriter helps someone with valuable expertise communicate their ideas under their own name.
Think:
Founders
CEOs
Investors
Consultants
Senior executives
Industry experts
These people usually have years of knowledge, stories, opinions, and experience sitting inside their heads.
The problem is they either:
Don’t have time to turn those ideas into content
Don’t know how to communicate them effectively
Don’t understand how different content platforms work
Or simply don’t enjoy writing
That’s where you come in.
Your job is to extract what they know and package it into content that sounds like them.
For example, an executive might tell you a 15-minute story about how they nearly destroyed their company by hiring too quickly.
You:
Identify the lesson.
Extract the strongest details.
Understand their perspective.
Then turn the conversation into a LinkedIn post, newsletter, article, or whatever format you’ve agreed to produce.
They publish it under their name.
You get paid for creating it.
Hence the term ghostwriter.
The content is published under somebody else's name, while your involvement typically remains behind the scenes.
But here’s the important distinction...
You’re not being paid because you can type words onto a page.
You’re being paid because you can take someone’s messy thoughts and turn them into clear ideas worth paying attention to.
The executive brings the expertise.
You make that expertise consumable.
And the better you become at:
Extracting ideas → understanding their voice → packaging their expertise → creating compelling content
...the more valuable you become as an executive ghostwriter.
The different types of ghostwriting
Now that you know what executive ghostwriting is, there’s something else you need to understand:
Not all ghostwriters do the same thing.
The fundamental job remains the same.
You extract somebody else’s expertise and communicate it in their voice.
But what you create with that expertise can look completely different depending on the type of ghostwriting you specialize in.
For example, you could become a:
Social media ghostwriter
You create short-form content for platforms such as:
LinkedIn
X
Instagram
Threads
This is where I’d recommend most beginners start.
The content is relatively short, you can practice publicly by writing for yourself, and you don’t need a client to start building proof that you understand the platform.
Newsletter ghostwriter
You write emails that executives send directly to their audience.
These could include:
Educational newsletters
Personal essays
Industry commentary
Company updates
Newsletter ghostwriting usually requires stronger long-form writing skills because you have more space to develop an argument, tell stories, and explore ideas.
Article ghostwriter
You write long-form articles published under the executive’s name.
These might appear on:
Their personal blog
Their company website
Publications
Platforms like Medium or Substack
This is actually how I developed many of the skills I use as a ghostwriter today, even though I wasn’t technically ghostwriting.
If you Google my name alongside some of the companies I’ve worked with, you’ll find articles I wrote for them.
The process was similar…
I’d take someone else’s expertise, research, and ideas and turn them into compelling long-form content.
The difference was that my name was attached to the work.
Speech ghostwriter
You help executives communicate their ideas verbally.
Think:
Keynotes
Conference talks
Company presentations
Award speeches
Internal communications
The writing has to sound natural when spoken rather than read, which makes this a slightly different skill from writing social content or articles.
Book ghostwriter
This is probably the form of ghostwriting most people traditionally associate with the profession.
An executive has the expertise, experiences, or story.
You help turn it into a book published under their name.
These projects are significantly larger and can take months to complete, so I wouldn’t recommend starting here unless you already have strong long-form writing experience.
But here’s the important part...
You don’t need to do all of these.
In fact, I’d recommend the opposite.
Choose one.
Get ridiculously good at it.
Then expand later if your clients need you to.
For me, that eventually became social media ghostwriting, particularly LinkedIn.
And that’s the approach I’m going to focus on throughout the rest of this article because it’s one of the easiest ways to start building your skills, getting proof, and finding executive clients.
Step 1: Write for yourself
Before you write for somebody else, write for yourself.
This is probably the single most important thing I did before becoming a ghostwriter.
Remember, I started writing online in 2020.
I published around 500+ articles under my own name before anybody ever paid me to ghostwrite for them.
And although I didn’t realize it at the time, I was building the skills I’d eventually sell.
Every time I published something, I learned a little more about:
What makes people click
What keeps people reading
How to explain complicated ideas simply
How to tell better stories
What makes an idea resonate
How to develop my own writing style
More importantly, I got feedback.
Sometimes that feedback was good.
Other times, I’d spend hours writing something I thought was incredible...
And nobody gave a shit.
But that’s how you learn.
You need somewhere to make mistakes before somebody is paying you not to.
And your own content is the cheapest place to make them.
This is also why I don’t think you need ghostwriting clients before calling yourself a ghostwriter.
You need proof you can write content people want to consume.
When I eventually started selling ghostwriting, I wasn’t approaching people as somebody who had decided three weeks ago that writing sounded like a good way to make money.
I’d already:
Spent years writing online.
Built an audience.
Written hundreds of articles.
Worked with reputable brands.
My own body of work made trusting me significantly easier.
Of course, you don’t need to spend 4 years doing this before getting your first client.
That’s overkill.
But if you’ve never written online before, I’d strongly recommend becoming your own first client.
Choose the platform you eventually want people to pay you to write on.
Then start publishing.
Don’t wait until you feel qualified.
Your first 10 posts might suck.
Your first 50 might suck.
That’s fine.
You’re collecting reps.
Because there’s another benefit to writing for yourself that most aspiring ghostwriters overlook...
You experience the platform as a creator.
You learn what it’s like to stare at a blank page.
You learn what happens when a post flops.
You learn what gets people talking.
You learn which ideas look good in your head but die when they reach the feed.
And eventually, you develop the instincts that no course can give you.
This matters when an executive starts paying you.
Because they’re no longer hiring someone who has merely studied content.
They’re hiring someone who has created it, published it, failed with it, succeeded with it, and learned from the feedback.
So before you worry about finding clients...
Become your first one.
Write for yourself.
Step 2: Learn the fundamentals of the platform you write on
Being a good writer doesn’t automatically make you good at writing for a specific platform.
Let me explain…
When I first started writing online, Medium was my main platform.
I’d publish long-form articles there and share them on LinkedIn.
This worked pretty well.
My audience on both platforms grew quickly, and eventually, people started reaching out to work with me.
But there was something I didn’t realize at the time…
I wasn’t actually good at LinkedIn.
Most people who followed me there had discovered my writing somewhere else first.
They’d read one of my Medium articles.
Or they’d seen something I’d written for a client.
LinkedIn was essentially the place they came to find me afterward.
So when client work started piling up in 2022, I ditched it since it wasn’t producing much for me directly.
Fast-forward to 2024...
I started learning about ghostwriting and realized LinkedIn was probably the easiest place for me to break into the industry.
There was only one problem:
I hadn’t mastered the platform.
So instead of immediately trying to convince executives to pay me to write their LinkedIn content...
I came back and spent roughly 3 months writing for myself.
I studied things like:
What makes somebody stop scrolling
How LinkedIn posts are structured
Which topics generate conversations
How formatting affects readability
What types of stories perform well
How people use comments to distribute their content
What separates a good LinkedIn post from the rest
Please don’t skip this step.
Every platform has its own “language.”
A great Medium article probably won’t work if you copy and paste it onto LinkedIn.
A great LinkedIn post won’t necessarily work on X.
And a great X thread won’t automatically make a great newsletter.
The fundamentals of writing remain largely the same.
But the packaging and consumption behavior change.
This is why you must learn the “language” of whichever platform you plan to sell as a service.
Study the people who consistently perform well there.
Pay attention to what they repeatedly do.
Publish your own content.
Look at the feedback.
Form hypotheses.
Test them.
Repeat.
This is exactly what I did when I returned to LinkedIn.
And after roughly 3 months of learning the platform by using it... I landed my first ghostwriting client.
The point I want you to understand is this:
Don’t charge someone to be your experiment.
Learn the fundamentals with your own content first.
Because when an executive pays you to write for them, they’re not just paying for your ability to write.
They’re paying for your understanding of how to make writing work on the platform where their reputation is being built.
They want results!
And if you haven't figured out how to get results for yourself, you're going to have a much harder time getting them for somebody else.
Step 3: Choose the type of executives you want to work with
Once you understand the platform, you need to decide who you want to write for.
This is where your existing experience becomes incredibly valuable.
When I started ghostwriting, I didn’t randomly decide to write for executives in AI.
I’d already spent years writing about:
Artificial intelligence
Machine learning
Data science
Technical concepts
I’d also written for companies like NVIDIA, DataCamp, and Neptune.ai.
So AI was the obvious choice.
I understood the industry
I understood the terminology.
I understood the types of conversations happening within it.
And most importantly...
I had proof.
If an AI founder was considering hiring me, they didn’t have to take my word for it when I said I understood their world.
They could look at hundreds of articles I’d already written.
My content became evidence of my expertise.
This gave me a massive advantage over approaching an executive in an industry I knew absolutely nothing about.
Imagine two ghostwriters approach an AI founder.
The first says:
“I’m a ghostwriter and I’d love to help you create content.”
The second has spent three years working in and writing about AI, built an audience around the subject, and produced work for recognizable companies in the industry.
Assuming their writing ability is similar...
Who feels like the safer choice?
Exactly.
This is why I recommend starting with what you already know.
Look at your:
Subjects you’ve spent years learning
Professional experience
Existing network
Education
Hobbies
Skills
Then ask yourself:
“Which type of executive would value what I already know?”
Maybe you spent 10 years working in finance.
Write for finance executives.
Maybe you’ve spent your career in SaaS.
Write for SaaS founders.
Maybe you’re a personal trainer who happens to love writing.
Write for fitness entrepreneurs.
Your existing knowledge reduces the amount you need to learn before you can understand your clients and their audience.
But what if you don’t want to write about anything you already know?
There’s another option...
Choose something you’re genuinely eager to learn about.
You don’t need decades of experience in an industry before you’re allowed to write about it.
But you do need enough curiosity to immerse yourself in that world.
Read the books.
Follow the industry.
Study the terminology.
Consume the podcasts.
Talk to people working in it.
Write about what you’re learning.
Because you’re going to spend a ridiculous amount of time thinking about whatever industry you choose.
You might as well find it interesting.
This makes extracting their ideas easier because you’ll be able to ask intelligent questions.
And better questions lead to better insights.
Better insights lead to better content.
That’s the advantage of understanding your client’s world…
You don’t have to be the expert.
But you need to know enough to have an intelligent conversation with one.
Step 4: Package your ghostwriting offer
Now you know:
What platform you’re writing on
How that platform works
Who you want to write for
The next step is figuring out what you’re going to sell them.
This is where I went wrong for years…
When I was making around $2,000 per month from client work, I essentially sold my ability to write.
A client needed an article? I wrote it.
They needed an ebook? I wrote that too.
The more money I wanted to make, the more writing I had to do.
And this is how I ended up working 60+ hours per week.
When I discovered ghostwriting, I realized the writers earning significantly more than me weren’t necessarily better writers.
They were better at packaging their writing skills into an offer people were willing to pay more for.
This is an important distinction.
Executives don’t wake up thinking:
“I really need someone to write 12 LinkedIn posts for me this month.”
They think about what those posts could help them achieve.
Maybe they want to:
Generate inbound leads
Get invited onto podcasts
Attract talented employees
Become known in their industry
Build trust with potential customers
Create opportunities for their company
The content is the deliverable.
The outcome is what makes the deliverable valuable.
So instead of selling:
“I’ll write 12 LinkedIn posts per month.”
You could package an offer around helping an AI founder become recognized as an authority in their industry using LinkedIn.
The posts are simply the mechanism you use to help them get there.
Once I understood this, my earnings skyrocketed.
Because I stopped selling writing as the end product and started packaging it around a result my clients cared about.
At minimum, you must define:
1/ Who you help
Be specific about the type of executive you work with.
2/ What outcome you help them pursue
What does having a stronger presence do for them?
3/ How you help them achieve it
This is your service.
It could include:
Strategy
Idea extraction calls
Content creation
Editing
Publishing
Engagement
Analytics
4/ How the engagement works
Decide:
How often you’ll speak
How much content you’ll produce
How revisions work
What you need from them.
Then package everything together into one clear offer.
And please don’t make the mistake of stuffing 25 deliverables into it because you think more stuff makes your offer more valuable.
It usually creates more work for you.
I know because I’ve done it.
The goal is to create the smallest collection of services required to produce the outcome you’re promising.
Remember:
You’re trying to escape the trap of getting paid based purely on how many words you can produce.
So don’t build yourself another job where earning more automatically requires working more.
Package your writing around a valuable problem.
Once somebody sees you as the person who can help them achieve an outcome rather than simply the person who writes their posts...
Your writing becomes significantly more valuable.
Step 5: Tell your friends/acquaintances first
Now you’ve got an offer.
You need someone to buy it.
And when you’re starting out, I wouldn’t waste months building complicated funnels or sending hundreds of cold DMs.
Start with people who already know you.
That’s exactly how I landed my first two ghostwriting clients.
My first client was someone I’d known for around 2-3 years.
One day, I published a post about using content in a way that was directly relevant to what he was trying to achieve.
He reached out.
We started talking about the post, and during the conversation, I mentioned that I could help him create his content.
He agreed.
Just like that...
I had my first ghostwriting client.
No cold outreach.
No fancy sales funnel.
No elaborate proposal.
The second client happened slightly differently.
Again, this was someone I’d known for a few years.
We’d even met in person after connecting through LinkedIn.
I sent him a DM explaining that I’d started ghostwriting for people in his space.
The pitch was simple:
I could take content creation off their plate so they could spend more time focusing on the things only they could do.
But I didn’t ask him to become a client…
I just asked whether he knew anybody who might need my help.
His response?
“Yeah, me.”
And that’s how I landed client number two.
There’s an important lesson here.
When you’re new to ghostwriting, your existing relationships are an unfair advantage.
A stranger has to answer several questions before hiring you:
Can this person actually write?
Can I trust them with my ideas?
Do they understand my industry?
Will they deliver what they promised?
Are they going to disappear after I pay them?
Someone who has known you for years already has answers to many of those questions.
You’ve built trust before you ever tried selling them anything.
You don’t have to manufacture credibility from scratch.
So make a list of everyone you know who could either:
A) Benefit from your ghostwriting service.
Or:
B) Know someone who could.
Friends.
Old clients.
Former colleagues.
People in your industry.
People you’ve met online.
People you’ve built relationships with over the years.
Then tell them what you’re doing.
You don’t need some elaborate pitch.
Something as simple as:
“Hey, I’ve started helping AI founders turn their expertise into LinkedIn content so they can build their reputation without spending hours writing every week. Do you know anyone who might find that useful?”
That’s enough to start conversations.
Notice you’re not begging them to hire you.
You’re simply making sure people know:
What you do.
Who you do it for.
What problem you solve.
Nobody can hire or refer you for something they don’t know you do.
You might already have your first ghostwriting client sitting somewhere in your network.
They just don’t know you’re a ghostwriter yet.
Step 6: Turn results into case studies
Once you’ve started getting results, document them.
And they don’t necessarily have to be client results.
Your own results count too.
If you’ve:
Grown an audience
Generated inbound leads
Built a newsletter
Created a viral post
Turned content into business opportunities
…that’s proof you understand what you’re selling.
In fact, using your own results is probably the easiest place to start.
But I had a slight problem here.
When I returned to LinkedIn, I already had an audience from my years writing about AI.
But now I was talking about completely different things:
Content strategy
Personal branding
Thought leadership
Growing a business through content
A large percentage of my existing audience simply wasn’t interested.
So my posts weren’t generating ridiculous numbers of likes or impressions.
And I couldn’t exactly approach a potential client saying:
“Look at how many impressions my LinkedIn posts get!”
Fortunately, I had something much more valuable...
Client results.
As I started getting results for the people I worked with, I documented everything.
The before and after.
The analytics.
The growth.
The inbound opportunities.
The posts that performed particularly well.
The business outcomes the content contributed to.
Then I turned those results into case studies.
Essentially, my first few clients gave me the opportunity to create proof.
This proof made landing future clients significantly easier.
Because instead of saying:
“I can help executives build their authority on LinkedIn.”
I could say:
“Here’s exactly what happened when I did it for someone like you.”
Huge difference.
One is a promise.
The other is evidence.
This is also why you shouldn’t obsess over follower counts when you’re trying to become a ghostwriter.
Yes, having a large audience can help.
But your audience is only one form of credibility.
Maybe your proof is your own content.
Maybe it’s your audience growth.
Maybe it’s the opportunities your content generated.
Maybe it’s what you’ve achieved for clients.
Use whatever legitimate evidence you have.
Then, as you get better results, replace weaker proof with stronger proof.
This creates a simple cycle:
Get a result → Document it → Turn it into a case study → Use it to win better clients → Get better results → Repeat.
This is how you gradually reduce the uncertainty of hiring you.
The more results you get, the less time you need to spend convincing prospects to hire you.
Your results do the convincing for you.
Step 7: Raise your prices
Once you have proof you can deliver results, start raising your prices.
But I wouldn’t obsess over finding the “perfect” price when you’re starting out.
I certainly didn’t.
When I landed my first ghostwriting client, my biggest problem wasn’t figuring out what the market would pay.
It was having the confidence to ask somebody for a significant amount of money.
I’d never sold ghostwriting before.
So asking someone to hand me thousands of dollars every month for it felt uncomfortable.
Instead of pretending otherwise, I started at a price I felt confident asking for.
Since then, I’ve increased my price by 150%.
Not because I suddenly became 150% better at writing…
I became more experienced.
I accumulated more proof.
I understood my clients better.
And most importantly…
I became more confident in the value I was providing.
That’s why I wouldn’t tell you to immediately copy what established ghostwriters charge.
Start with a number you can confidently say without feeling like a fraud.
But there’s an important caveat...
It still needs to be worth your while.
Don’t charge $500 per month simply because you’re scared nobody will pay you more.
Remember what executive ghostwriting involves.
You’re:
Learning how somebody thinks
Extracting their expertise
Capturing their voice
Developing ideas
Writing and editing content
Helping build their reputation
That takes time.
And if you massively undercharge, you’ll need more clients to earn a decent living.
More clients means more calls.
More revisions.
More deadlines.
More context switching.
More work.
Before you know it, you’ve recreated the exact problem ghostwriting was supposed to help you escape.
So start with a price that makes the work worthwhile and that you feel comfortable asking for.
Then earn your way up.
Get results.
Build case studies.
Improve your process.
Become better at solving your clients’ problems.
And as your confidence and proof increase...
Raise your prices.
You don’t need to become the most expensive ghostwriter in your industry overnight.
You just need to make sure your price grows alongside the value you can prove you provide.
Final thoughts
Ghostwriting completely changed the economics of writing for me.
Before I discovered it, I already knew how to write.
I’d spent years publishing online.
Built an audience.
Written hundreds of articles.
Worked with reputable companies.
But I was still working 60+ hours per week and wondering why other writers seemed to be earning significantly more while working less.
The problem wasn’t my writing ability.
I simply hadn’t learned how to package that ability into something more valuable.
Executive ghostwriting gave me a way to do that.
And if I had to start again today, I wouldn’t overcomplicate it.
I’d:
Write for myself.
Master the platform I want to write on.
Choose executives in a space I understand.
Package my skills into a valuable offer.
Tell people who already know and trust me.
Turn every result into proof.
Raise my prices as my confidence and credibility grow.
That’s it.
You don’t need years of ghostwriting experience before somebody will pay you.
I didn’t have any when I started.
What you need is the ability to write, enough understanding of your client’s world to communicate their ideas properly, and proof that you can create something worth paying for.
The rest comes from doing the work.
Your first client gives you experience.
Experience gives you results.
Results give you proof.
Proof gives you confidence.
And confidence allows you to charge more.
That’s how I went from discovering ghostwriting in 2024 to making $100,000 in 8 months the following year.
So if you’re already a good writer wondering how to make more from your skills...
You might not need to become a better writer.
You might just need a better way to sell what you already know.
Thanks for reading!