One of my ghostwriting clients has been paying me $5,000 (and sometimes more) for the past 15 months.
The 2020-2024 version of me would’ve scoffed at this statement.
Back then, I was a generic content writer making $2,000-$3,000/month.
The only ways I believed I could make more money were to:
Become a better writer.
Find more clients.
Work longer hours.
My 2025 financial year dispelled this whole belief.
I repackaged my offer and built a 6-figure business in just 8 months.
But creating the offer was still only half the battle…
An offer sitting in a Google Doc doesn’t make you any money.
Someone has to buy it.
And getting that first person to hand you thousands of dollars can feel like the hardest part when you don’t have:
A huge reputation.
Endless testimonials.
A sophisticated sales system.
People constantly asking to work with you.
I didn’t have any of that.
So how did I do it?
Rather, how would I do it if I had to start all over again?
Here’s exactly what I’d do…
1. Start with an offer worth $5,000
Before you start looking for clients, you need something worth selling.
In my previous article, I broke down how I built my ghostwriting offer using four components.
WHO → WHAT → HOW → INVESTMENT
In simple terms:
WHO do you help?
WHAT do they want?
HOW will you help them get it?
WHAT do they need to invest?
I won’t repeat the entire framework here.
But there’s one thing you need to understand before trying to land a $5,000 client…
You’re not trying to convince someone your writing is worth $5,000.
You’re looking for someone with a problem where your writing can contribute to an outcome worth considerably more than $5,000 to them.
In other words, your job is simply to supply demand.
If someone already wants to build their authority, generate more opportunities, and spend less time creating content, you don’t need to convince them those things are valuable.
You just need to demonstrate that your offer is a viable way to get them there.
This is why choosing the right prospect matters so much.
Trying to sell a $5,000 ghostwriting offer to someone who:
Doesn’t care about building an audience.
Has nothing valuable to sell.
Loves writing their own content.
Has plenty of time to do it.
Can’t afford $5,000/month.
…is going to be an uphill battle, no matter how good you are at sales.
Trying to manufacture demand that doesn’t exist is friggin’ hard.
It’s much easier to find someone who already has the problem, desire, and money required for the exchange to make sense.
So find those people.
2. Send 50 LinkedIn connections per day
Now you need to get in front of people who could buy your offer.
I’d do most of this on LinkedIn.
And if I were starting from scratch, I’d aim to send 50 connection requests to ideal customers every day and start around 50 conversations.
There are two groups of people I’d target:
Warm leads
Cold leads
Warm leads are people who have already interacted with you in some way.
Maybe they:
Liked or commented on your content.
Followed you.
Viewed your profile.
Sent you a connection request.
Messaged you.
These are the easiest people to start with because there’s already some familiarity.
But this assumes you’re creating content and have an optimized profile, which I highly encourage.
I’d regularly go through these people and check whether they match the ICP I defined earlier.
If they do, connect with them.
Don’t overcomplicate the message either…
Something as simple as:
“Hey [name], saw you [interaction] and you’re a [ICP reference], so thought I’d connect. How’s [ROLE] going?”
…is enough.
You’re just opening the door.
If you don’t already have a large audience, you’ll probably run out of warm leads pretty quickly, so it’s a good idea to supplement your warm outreach with cold outreach.
Cold outreach is reaching out to people who match your ICP but haven’t interacted with you before.
For this, I’d use LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
Take the ICP you created in the previous article and turn it into filters for things like:
Job title.
Industry.
Company size.
Geography.
Seniority.
Keywords.
If you don’t know which filters to use, give your ICP to ChatGPT and ask it to translate it into a Sales Navigator search.
Then start working through the results.
But pay attention to their prior activity on the platform because if they’re not active, there’s a high chance they won’t connect with you.
I learned this the hard way when I ran outreach for my ghostwriting clients.
We spent months connecting with people who hadn’t been active on the platform for ages, so most of our requests went unanswered.
So make sure the people you’re trying to connect with are active on the platform.
