Last year, I went from making $2,000-$3,000/month to $14,000+/month.
And I didn’t have to:
Learn any new skills.
Work longer hours.
Take on more clients.
I simply made my offer stupidly obvious to my ideal customer…
… and priced it accordingly (this is important).
These little tweaks changed my life.
And in this article, I’ll show you how you could change yours too.
A bit about me
For the first four years of working for myself, I struggled to get things off the ground.
I was a generic content writer, writing blog posts for pretty much anyone who asked, as long as it involved AI.
Since I didn’t make much money from any individual project, the only way I knew to make more money was to do more work.
It sucked!
At one point, I worked 60+ hours a week to just about survive.
I knew if I wanted my business to reach the heights I had envisioned for it, something had to change.
And in 2025, the penny finally dropped…
People don’t pay for skills.
They pay for what they believe will get them what they want.
In other words, nobody wakes up thinking, “I really need 4 blog posts this week.”
They envision an outcome.
Then they look for vehicles that can help them get there.
The more responsibility you take for getting them from where they are to where they want to be, the more valuable your offer becomes.
And the more you can charge.
This realization changed my business.
I repackaged my offer and made $100,000 in 8 months.
Here’s a step-by-step guide for how I built my offer…
1. Pick ONE ideal customer
When you’re just getting started, I strongly recommend going narrow.
This feels counterintuitive because you’re technically reducing the number of people who can buy from you.
But it’s the smartest thing you can do because:
It’s easier to become known for solving one problem extremely well for one specific type of person.
When you’re known for solving one problem, people associate you with it and come to you for help.
It’s easier to find people you can help.
You reduce the competition (and don’t have to compete with more experienced/credible people).
Your offer becomes easier to build because you can design it around one type of person’s problems.
Over time, your target customer will expand (if you want it to) as you become more known.
But it’s always best to start with someone specific.
So the most obvious question becomes “How do I choose?”
My best suggestion is to start with an industry you already know well.
This gives you an advantage over generic writers and makes your ideal customer more confident you can write about that industry's technicalities.
For example, before I started ghostwriting, I already had years of AI experience, so I wasn’t starting from scratch.
But defining the industry isn't enough because there are different types of people within it.
This is why you must go deeper on WHO your offer is for.
I used to write for AI and data companies that helped people upskill in those areas, but I realized it made more sense to shift my writing from companies to individuals.
Why?
Because people generally prefer following people over company pages.
This means an individual can pull in more traffic with their content than a company can, then divert those eyes to the company's offerings.
Who’s the best person in the company to do this for?
The founder.
Why?
The founder controls the company's finances
The founder is incentivized to grow the company (they will make more money)
The founder’s reputation can directly influence the company’s reputation, which makes building their audience commercially valuable.
Getting clear on this defines the most important part of your offering…
Who you help.
So your headline after doing this would look something like this:
I help [X].
We’ll add what you help them do later.
For now, we just need to know exactly who we’re talking about.
🏋️ Practical Exercise
List all of the subjects and industries you know extremely well.
This could come from:
Your career.
Your education.
Previous clients.
A business you’ve run.
Something you’ve studied independently.
An industry you’ve spent years obsessing over.
Give each one a score out of 10 based on two things:
Knowledge: How well do you understand this space?
Interest: How interested would you be in learning even more about it?
Once you’ve chosen an industry, go one level deeper.
Ask yourself:
What roles could I serve?
What type of business do they operate?
What do they sell?
Can I easily find these people?
By the end of this exercise, you should be able to complete this sentence without using vague words like “entrepreneurs,” “professionals,” or “business owners”:
I help [ROLE] at [TYPE OF BUSINESS] in [INDUSTRY] who sell [TYPE OF OFFER].
Example: “I help founders of AI education companies that sell training programs.”
2. Identify your ideal customers’ reasons to buy
Now you know WHO you want to help.
The next step is understanding WHY they will be willing to pay.
Remember, an offer is simply an exchange of value.
Your customer gives you money.
You give them something they believe is worth more than the money they gave you.
If you don’t understand why they would make that exchange, you’ll most likely run into two problems:
You’ll create an offer based on an assumption that doesn’t appeal to your ideal customer.
You’ll lack confidence when it comes time to sell it.
So this step is crucial.
At a high level, the reason we buy things is simple…
We believe the thing we pay for solves a problem for us.
This problem can be anything:
Effieciency
Boredom
Hunger
etc.
People who pay for ghostwriters often do so for two reasons:
They don’t have time to write themselves but want to achieve a specific objective through writing.
They don’t know how to write themselves and have no desire to learn, but want to achieve a specific objective through writing.
Trying to sell your ghostwriting offer to someone who doesn’t fall into one of these two categories will be damn near impossible.
And assuming the specific objective your ideal customer wants to achieve through writing will weaken your offer's stickiness.
So you must dig deeper to discover WHAT the specific outcome your ideal customer wants to achieve through their writing.
You can form hypotheses on this based on WHO you’re serving.
For example, if you serve founders of AI education companies, they'll likely want leads.
But lead generation can’t be the only thing they want, since they could have invested their money in other lead-generation mechanisms, such as paid ads.
So it’s safe to assume they want leads through thought leadership.
In other words, they want to be seen as a reputable figure in their area of expertise so it attracts people to buy from their business.
Understanding this will make it much easier to find ideal customers because you can look for signals.
For instance, if you see someone who fits your ideal customer profile but seems to have everything figured out on the surface based on their content, they would most likely hire you because they want to save time.
And if you meet someone who fits your ideal customer profile but their content sucks, they would most likely hire you to help them establish themselves as a thought leader in their area of expertise so they can generate leads.
But all of this is still an assumption!
You still need to test these hypotheses in the market.
But for now, you have enough to keep building.
You know WHO you help (e.g., founders of AI education companies).
And you have a hypothesis for WHAT they want help with (e.g., building authority that attracts potential customers to their business).
Now you’re in a much better position to make them an offer in exchange for what you want.
🏋️ Practical Exercise
Find 10 people who match the ideal customer you defined in the previous section.
Study what they’re currently doing and look for signals that suggest why they might hire a ghostwriter.
Ask yourself:
Do they already create good content but do a lot that suggests they’re short on time?
Do they have strong expertise but struggle to communicate it?
Are they inconsistent with their content?
What outcome could better content help them achieve?
Why might they choose ghostwriting over another solution?
Look for patterns across all 10 people.
Then complete this sentence:
I help [WHO] achieve [WHAT THEY WANT] without [WHAT’S CURRENTLY GETTING IN THEIR WAY].
Example: I help founders of AI education companies build authority and generate leads without spending hours creating content themselves.
⚠️ Remember: this is still just a hypothesis.
You’ll validate it with the market later.
3. Define the vehicle
You’ve chosen WHO you help and WHAT they want.
The next logical step is to define HOW you’ll help them get it.
We already know the vehicle is ghostwriting if you’re reading this article.
But you could ghostwrite in dozens of ways.
For example:
X posts.
Whitepapers.
Email courses.
Lead magnets.
LinkedIn posts.
Substack articles.
Email newsletters.
Instagram content.
Long-form articles.
Truth be told…
Your customer cares far more about getting the outcome than the specific deliverables you use to get them there.
This is why you don’t need to go overboard with bundling a bunch of stuff in here to make it seem like your customer is going to receive a ton of things.
I made this mistake.
I said I would ghostwrite for my client, but I also included outbound connection requests and outreach, which increased my output and limited my capacity.
After adding two extra clients, I was overstretched because I’d accidentally built an offer that required far too much of my time to fulfill.
You’ve just got to focus on the minimum requirements to help the client achieve what they want.
So let’s say you’re doing LinkedIn ghostwriting…
HOW you help your ideal customer achieve their desired outcome may include:
Profile optimization
Two 60-minute calls for idea extraction
Content strategy building
20 LinkedIn posts
60 minutes of daily engagement (5x p/w)
And that’s all.
Remember, every additional deliverable requires additional time, which reduces the number of clients you can serve and increases the cost of fulfilling your offer.
So keep it simple.
If removing a deliverable wouldn’t significantly reduce your customers’ chances of achieving the outcome, then don’t add it.
🏋️ Practical Exercise
Write your WHO you help and WHAT you help them get at the top of a page.
Then list everything you could do to help your ideal customer achieve it.
For every item, ask:
Why does this need to exist?
What role does it play in achieving the outcome?
What happens if I remove it?
Remove anything you can’t justify.
Then complete this sentence:
I help [WHO] achieve [WHAT] through [VEHICLE].
Example: I help founders of AI education companies build authority and generate leads through LinkedIn ghostwriting.
‼️ Disclaimer: Keep a document detailing HOW you help your ideal customers get WHAT they want for internal purposes.
4. Set the investment
Now you know:
WHO you help.
WHAT they want.
HOW you’ll help them get it.
The next step is deciding what they’ll have to give you in exchange.
Remember, an offer is an exchange of value.
Your ideal customer gives you what you want, and you give them something they believe is worth more than what they gave you.
That last part is important…
If you charge someone $5,000 and they believe your offer is only worth $3,000, buying from you makes no sense.
But if they believe paying you $5,000 could create $20,000 worth of value for them, the decision becomes much easier.
This is why I don’t recommend pricing your ghostwriting based purely on:
Number of posts.
Word count.
Hours worked.
What other ghostwriters charge.
How long each deliverable takes you.
Those things matter to you because they determine whether the service is profitable to fulfill.
But your customer is thinking about the other side of the equation: “Is what I get worth what I have to give up?”
And “value” doesn’t necessarily mean direct revenue.
Maybe your ghostwriting helps them:
Save 10 hours every week.
Generate qualified leads.
Build authority in their industry.
Grow an audience they can sell to repeatedly.
Create opportunities they otherwise wouldn’t have access to.
Avoid spending years learning how to write themselves.
The more valuable the outcome is to your ideal customer, the more room you have to charge for helping them achieve it.
And the faster you can help them get what they want, the more you can ask for.
But there’s a catch…
Your ideal customer determines whether your offer is worth it.
This is one reason choosing the right ideal customer matters so much.
Imagine you help someone generate five qualified leads per month.
If their average customer is worth $500, those leads have one level of potential value.
If their average customer is worth $50,000, those exact same five leads could be worth considerably more.
Now, this doesn’t mean you should go back and change your offer.
You just have to consider WHO you’re helping and what the problem is worth to them.
So here’s a rule of thumb I’d follow for defining your starting price:
Define your minimum hourly rate.
Break your offer into every task required to fulfill it.
Estimate how long each task will take you per month.
Multiply the total hours by your hourly rate.
Multiply that number by 3.
For example, let’s say your minimum hourly rate is $50.
And your offer requires:
Profile optimization: 2 hours
Idea extraction: 2 hours
Content strategy: 2 hours
Ghostwriting: 10 hours
Engagement: 20 hours
That’s 36 hours of work (which you will fulfill across 4 weeks).
36 × $50 = $1,800.
$1,800 × 3 = $5,400 → final price
Why multiply it by three?
Because you’re not an employee getting paid for every hour you work.
The additional margin needs to account for things like:
Admin.
Revisions.
Software.
Sales.
Client communication.
Time between clients.
Hiring other people (eventually).
It also gives you room to make a profit.
If you charge your hourly rate multiplied by the hours required to fulfill the service, you’ve simply created a job for yourself.
But this calculation only gives you a pricing floor.
You still need to compare that number against the value of the outcome to your ideal customer.
If your calculation says you need to charge $5,400, but your ideal customer would never pay more than $2,000 to solve the problem, you probably have an offer, market, or ideal customer problem.
On the other hand, if solving the problem could reasonably be worth tens of thousands of dollars to them, $5,400 may make perfect sense.
Your goal is to find the point where:
The investment is high enough to make the service profitable for you, but low enough relative to the perceived value that buying feels like an obvious exchange for them.
🏋️ Practical Exercise
Break your offer into every task required to fulfill it.
Then calculate:
Total hours × minimum hourly rate × 3 = starting price
Then take your offer to the market and test it with 10 prospects.
Don’t change your price after the first “no.”
Pay attention to the pattern.
If several qualified prospects think the investment is too high relative to what they’re getting, revisit your:
WHO
WHAT
HOW
Investment
Your first price is a hypothesis.
The market will tell you whether you got it right.
Final thoughts
I used to think making more money as a writer meant becoming better at writing.
But that’s not true.
My Medium blog impressions and followers were skyrocketing, yet I was still struggling to make ends meet.
It got so bad that I had to move to my parents retirement home in Ghana to give my business a chance at survival.
Eventually, I realized writing ability is only one part of the equation.
The other part is how you pacakge and sell your writing ability.
This is why two ghostwriters with the same skills can have vastly different earnings…
One may simply have attached their writing to a more valuable problem for a more valuable customer.
And this is the foundations of an offer that can’t be refused.
You’ve got to give someone what they want and make them feel like what they have to invest to get it is a no-brainer in order to get what you want.
It’s an exchange of value.
So don’t obsess over stuffing lots of deliverables into your package.
Get obsessed with understanding the person on the other side of the transaction.
Know exactly who they are.
Understand what they want.
Figure out the simplest way you can help them get it.
Then price it so the exchange makes sense for both of you.
Your first attempt probably won’t be perfect.
That’s why you take it to the market, listen to what people tell you, and keep refining it.
That’s exactly what I did.
And eventually, the same writing skills that struggled to make me $2,000-$3,000/month helped me build a six-figure business in just 8 months.
Thanks for reading!
This must be an amazing read. Even if you don’t sell ghostwriting.
This is GOLD! Thank you Kurtis, for such a detailed breakdown.